Trade books and monographs
- Rhetorical Figures and Grammatical Constructions are linguistic patterns studied in parallel traditions of the Communication Sciences. They have very significant overlaps and crucial differences. Most importantly, they both align form and function. But figures align form and function by leveraging iconicity. Constructions align them by leveraging convention. Figures appeal to neurocognitive perceptual and categorization biases (similarity, correlation, proximity, repetition, …) to give expressions salience and memorability. They are engines of innovation and change in language, associated with poetry and extravagance. Constructions appeal to direct communicative demands (clarity, conformity, economy). They are engines of stability, clarity, and social identity.
- This book will chart a research programme that brings constructions and figures together, advancing both Rhetoric and Linguistics.
- "This is that rare book in Human Computer Interaction we all hope for: the presentation of a practical design process for an emerging important area that is carefully developed out of supporting science. Harris's book offers a competitive edge for designers and a provocative framing of problems for researchers in language." —Stuart Card, PARC.
- Soundly anchored in HCI, cognitive psychology, linguistics, and social psychology, this supremely practical book is loaded with examples, how-to advice, and design templates. —ACM Digital Library
The linguistics wars. 1993. New York: Oxford University Press.
Second edition, with the subtitle, Chomsky, Lakoff, and battle over deep structure. 2021. New York: Oxford University Press; Chinese translation. 2027. Chongqing: Chongqing Publishing House Co.
- "an extremely engaging account of the rise of generative syntax and of some of the linguists who participated in this development, focusing on the scruffy fights that held a lot of people’s attention in the second half of the 1960s, ...[Harris] is a terrific writer, the likes of which we rarely see among academics" John Goldsmith, History and Philosophy of the Language Sciences.
- "Randy Harris has done the intellectual world a remarkable service by displaying in detail the battles that defined the field of “theoretical linguistics” for many years." Geoffrey Sampson, lingbuzz/006550.
- "Linguists, whatever your persuasion, please read this book. Seriously, it's hard to understand the current field without knowing this history. It's unbiased (no one is immune), accurate, and most importantly, entertaining." https://t.co/NNvK5xxGxW — Adele Goldberg (@adelegoldberg1) November 2, 2021
- Harris ... demonstrates a deep knowledge of the issues in the conflict; he also brings a needed sense of perspective to the story. His stunning bibliography runs a monograph-length 65 pages, with over 1600 entries, and he appears to have absorbed it all. —Andy Rogers, LINGUIST
- “As an attempt to bring the discipline to life the way James D. Watson brought DNA research to life in The Double Helix, it is a complete success. ... This is intellectual history crossed with a Shakespearean history play.”—David Berreby, The Sciences.
- "...outstanding ... meticulous detail ... great sensitivity and unswerving impartiality ... Harris has achieved the near impossible: being fair to both sides in a civil war." —Neil Smith, Nature
- "brilliantly comprehensive in its grasp of historical fact and conceptual detail, and engagingly written to boot." —Geoffrey Galt Hapham, Salmagundi
- "[T]he book is extraordinarily well written ... not only broad but also deep ... refreshing ... the standard of scholarship exemplified in the book is simply stunning. —John Lawler, LINGUIST
- "In a replication of Heilman and Scholes' principal results, it was found that the aphasic population was significantly less reliable overall than normals in a forced choice task and that the difference between correct responses and function errors was not significantly greater than chance for sentences with normal intonation. However, a salient effect was discovered, in that the subjects were significantly more reliable with acoustically boosted tokens of the key function word. Harris suggests that there is a performance component to Broca syndrome functor difficulties and offers an explanation of the results in terms of short term memory difficulties. The work includes a literature survey more comprehensive than any to date in this area. Mr. Harris' book will find interested readership from the fields of both linguistics and communicative disorders." —IULC catalogue.
Books—Collections
Featuring an introduction by Fahnestock and me and individual chapters by each of us, and chapters by Michael Billig & Cristina Marinho, Bryan Blankfield, Martin Camper, Davida Charney, Martha Cheng, William Donohue & Mark Hamilton, Sara Greco & Anne-Nelly Perret-Clermont, Alan G. Gross, Mansup Heo, Chris Holcomb & Heather Buzbee, Cornelia Ilie, James Jasinski, David Kaufer & Suguru Ishizaki, Gabrijela Kišiček, John Lawrence & Jacky Visser, Jennifer Lin LeMesurier, Daniel Libertz, Ashley Rose Mehlenbacher, Cameron Mozafari, Sisanda Nkoala, Todd Oakley, John Oddo, Alex Parrish, Penny M. Pexman, Christopher Tindale, Steve Wilcox, James Wynn, and Ying Yuan.
Featuring an introduction by me; and with chapters by Charles Bazerman and René Agustín De los Santos; John Angus Campbell; Leah Ceccarelli; Jeanne Fahnestock; Alan G. Gross; Paul Hoyningen-Huene; Thomas Lessl; John Lyne; Carolyn R. Miller; Lawrence Prelli; and Herbert W. Simons.
- "Harris’s booklength introduction ... impresses me as a real tour de force. The book is worth buying for this essay alone for the revealing way it disentangles themes in the literature on incommensurability, including discussion of rhetoric and ways of dealing with incommensurability." —Struan Jacobs, International Studies in the Philosophy of Science
- "Not only is Harris’s ‘‘Introduction’’ theoretically sound, it is also written with a wit and humor that thoroughly engages the reader. I admit I found myself laughing out loud on more than one occasion." —S. Scott Graham, Rhetoric Society Quarterly
- "Rhetoric and Incommensurability should attract attention from almost anyone interested in rhetoric. The incommensurability issue has implications that encompass all flavors of rhetoric, and the book seems well designed both to engage the rhetoric of science specialists and the more general audience of rhetoricians." —Michael C. Leff (prepublication)
- "[This book] will be of interest to rhetoricians, students of scientific rhetoric, and a range of scholars in various arenas of science studies. It will also be of interest to philosophers of science, and to philosophers interested in rhetoric." —Harvey Siegel (prepublication)
Books—Anthologies
Featuring an introduction by me; and with reprinted essays by Charles Sanders Peirce; P. N. Campbell; Philip C. Wander; Herbert W. Simons; Leah Ceccarelli; J. E. McGuire & Trevor Melia; James H. Collier; David J. Depew & John Lyne; Nathan Crick; Kenneth S. Zagacki & William Keith; Carolyn R. Miller; Jeanne Fahnestock; Gordon R. Mitchell; Lynda Walsh (now Olman) & Kenneth C. Walker; Xiaosui Xiao; Celeste M. Condit; Craig O. Stewart; Ashley Rose Mehlenbacher & Kate Maddalena; and two essays by Alan G. Gross.
- "[I]nvaluable for graduate students and scholars new to the area ... extremely valuable history" (David Gruber, POROI).
- "Harris’s comprehensive grasp of the rhetoric of science literature is impressive ... [He] is unmistakably a storyteller. But he is also a cartographer, charting, in detail, the bumpy rhetoric of science terrain for future travelers" (Alexander William Morales, Social Epistemology)
Landmark essays in rhetoric of science: Case studies . 1997. Second edition, 2018 (Routledge). Mahwah, NJ: Hermagoras Press (a Lawrence Erlbaum Associates imprint).
Featuring an introduction by me; and with reprinted essays by Charles Bazerman; John Angus Campbell; Leah Ceccarelli; Jeanne Fahnestock; Alan G. Gross; S. Michael Halloran; John Lyne & Henry Howe; Ashley Rose Kelly [now Mehlenbacher] & Carolyn R. Mille;, Greg Myers; Lawrence Prelli; Carol Reeves; Michelle Sidler; Richard M. Weaver; Craig Waddell; and James Wynn; and with a bibliography by me [deleted for the second edition]
- "Randy Allen Harris has brilliantly sketched into place the origins and history of the field" (Jeanne Fahnestock, Techical Communication Quarterly)
- “Harris’s introduction is an illuminating and witty presentation of the kinds of assumptions lay readers make about why scientists try to appeal to the public, and why scientific methods themselves can be considered instruments of persuasion. … Together the case essays and Harris’s introductory conversation challenge the reader to ask: If the scientist in question is attempting to introduce new evidence, what will it take to persuade other scientists of its validity. Or is any science, any experimentation, or system of validity an attempt to persuade any public, scientific or popular, to believe in a model of reality? What makes this collection vital is that it addresses these questions through specific landmark cases and, in the process, reveals the impact of having asked them.”—Rebecca Hettich, Technical Communication.
- "Ultimately, both volumes of Landmark Essays offer profound insights not just about rhetoric of science, but the rhetorical studies field in general. The essays included in these books offer profound insights about the nature of rhetoric and I encourage rhetorical scholars of all types to consider exploring these works. Rhetoric of science is a field constantly evolving, and Harris’s anthologies serve as invaluable resources for anyone interested in continuing this area of inquiry. " —Alexander William Morales, Social Epistemology
- See Alexander William Morales's "An X too far" in the Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective, my reply, "X marks the spot," and if you want to keep going, Morales's reply to my reply, "Why didn’t I pick a fight about X?: An inquisitive response to Harris;” as well as the tandem reviews by David Gruber and Pamela Pietrucci in POROI, "Where Did the Rhetoric of Science Go?," and yet more from me, responding again to Morales and also to the Gruber and Pietrucci reviews, Everybody stands ready for eXcetera: Rhetoric of science meets the Pickwick Papers; or A humble reply to Morales (and Gruber and Pietrucci); as you may have realized by now, the mushrooming exchange turned into something of a colloquy about rhetoric of science, as a practice and a discipline.
Proceedings
Literature, Rhetoric, and Values. Edited with Shelley Hulan and Murray McArthur. 2012. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Scholars Press.
A selection of essays developed out of the Literature, Rhetoric and Values Conference held at the University of Waterloo in 2011, commemorating the 50th year of the English department.
- The essays in this collection combine cutting-edge literary and rhetorical scholarship to investigate the evolving values of the modern world, confronting such issues as torture, genocide, environmental apocalypse, and post-traumatic stress syndrome. First delivered as part of the vibrant ideas exchange of an international conference, they are the product of rigorous selection and review undertaken with an emphasis on their complementarity.
- The authors include established scholars such as groundbreaking genre-theorist Carolyn R. Miller, phenomenological rhetorician and cultural critic Michael MacDonald, and eco-critic Andrew McMurry, alongside an exciting company of emerging voices. Together, they essay the ethical and cultural dimensions of ‘works’ ranging from whiskey bottles and microblogs to graphic novels and classified government documents, as well as more established forms of poetry and fiction. An introduction by the editors frames the rhetorical and literary critical backdrop to these studies, summarizes their individual contributions, and sets them in relation to each other and the guiding themes of the conference.