Dr. Emad Abdul-Latif
The Culture & Arts Chapter of Qatar University (QU) Alumni Association organised a cultural webinar entitled: “The Rhetorical Empowerment of Audiences.”
The webinar was presented by Dr. Emad Abdul-Latif, Professor of Rhetoric and Discourse Analysis at College of Arts and Sciences – QU.
The webinar was moderated by Kholeh Mortaza Mortazawi, President of the Culture & Arts Chapter. The webinar provides various examples of audience empowerment through rhetoric in multiple communication contexts and historical times. It also offers strategies for teaching public rhetoric abilities in schools and universities to equip students with the skills they need to become rhetorical audiences.
Commenting on the webinar, Amna Abdulkarim, Vice President of Culture & Arts Chapter, QU Alumni Association, said, “We chose this topic because it is a knowledge field that was developed by the recent studies of Dr. Emad Abdul-Latif, one of Qatar University’s leading faculty members in this field. It is a science that studies the relationship between discourse construction and performance on the one hand, and the responses of the audience on the other.”
“To enable the public to produce eloquent responses, through which it can detect forms of speech abuse such as racism, hatred, manipulation, discrimination, oppression, and subjugation, and resisting these abuses through eloquent responses that achieve the audience’s communication goals, and pushing speakers - individuals or institutions - to monitor their speeches, rationalize them, and make them more righteous, noble, humane to train the audience to eloquent responses,” Amna added.
For his part, Dr. Abdul-Latif said: “For the public to become eloquent, they must have knowledge and practice differentiating between manipulative speech intended at controlling and managing it, and a liberated discourse aimed at attaining free communication, employing misleading, falsification, and deception as tools. This understanding allows one to identify biases, exaggerations, fallacies, reality paradoxes, and internal contradictions in the speech and the functions it aims to perform. We call a speech or a speaker “eloquent” if it is beautiful, convincing, and influential. We call a person “eloquent” if they are good at saying or writing beautiful, persuasive, and influential speeches. How can somebody be eloquent if he can only make limited replies like interrupting, displaying admiration or disapproval by shouting or clapping, or asking a question or making other answers if the speech is delivered orally.”
