MSc, Rensselaer
MSc, Alberta
MA, Dalhousie
BA, Queen's
Extension:
45362
Email:
raha@uwaterloo.ca
Biography
I
was
born
in
the
new
hospital
in
Kitimat,
BC,
jaundiced,
bald,
underweight,
and,
quoting
my
father
now,
"ugly
as
sin."
Understandably,
nothing
much
happened
after
that
until
I
found
myself
by
sheer
chance
at
the
University
of
Lethbridge
20
years
later,
only
to
discover
I
was
pretty
good
at
schoolwork,
something
neither
I
nor
anyone
else
had
noticed
up
to
that
point.
I
transferred
to
Queens
after
two
years,
though
it
recognized
only
about
half
my
courses,
and
none
toward
the
major,
so
I
ended
up
taking
nothing
but
historically
based
English
literature
classes
for
the
next
two
and
a
half
years.
The
Victorian
novels
course
alone
almost
killed
me.
I
lived
in
the
library.
I
loved
it.
There
followed
a
string
of
different
academic
preoccupations,
at
a
variety
of
institutions,
as
I
dabbled
in
every
passing
fancy
(literary
theory,
linguistics,
cognitive
science,
professional
communication,
graphic
design,
rhetorical
theory)
over
the
next
dozen
years.
But,
miraculously,
I
was
employable
anyways,
and
I
have
been
toiling
joyfully
at
Waterloo
ever
since,
still
dabbling.
Books
Editor, with Jeanne D. Fahnestock. The Routledge Handbook of Language and Persuasion. London: Routledge, 2023.
The Linguistics Wars. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2022.
Editor. Landmark Essays in Rhetoric of Science: Case Studies. 2nd ed. , 2017, and Landmark Essays in Rhetoric of Science: Issues and Methods, 2020 London: Routledge.
Editor, with Shelley Hulan and Murray McArthur. Literature, Rhetoric and Values: Selected Proceedings of a Conference held at the University of Waterloo, 3-5 June 2011. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013.
Editor. Rhetoric and Incommensurability. Parlor Press, 2005.
Voice Interaction Design: Crafting the New Conversational Interfaces. San Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann, 2005.
Acoustic Dimensions of Functor Comprehension in Broca's Aphasia. Bloomington: Indiana University Linguistics Club, 1988.
Selected Keynotes
"Rhetorical schemes and algorithms." Logic and Algorithms in Computational Linguistics 2021 (LACompLing2021). 16 December 21.
“'You can take the linguist out of MIT, but you can’t take MIT out of the linguist:' Construction Grammar and Rhetorical Schemes." LACUS 2019. St. Jerome's University, Waterloo, 23 July 19.
"Form-Function dyads and computational rhetoric." CMNA XVII - Computational Models of Natural Argument, 16 June 17. Strand campus, King's College, London.
"Chiasmus, Cognition, Computation; Computation, Cognition, Chiasmus," at Computing Figures, Computing Figures II, 12 August 16. University of Waterloo.
"The antimetabole construction." The 12th Argumentation Dialogue Persuasion Conference. 21 May 14. Staszic Palace, Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland.
"Rhetoric, incommensurability, and the curious case of David Brewster." Incommensurability 50, 3 June 12. National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan.
"The return of the body." 20 March 10, Max Planck Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Berlin, Germany.
"Cognitive rhetoric and the genesis of genetics." 10 January 07, Cathedral of Learning, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA.
Fellowships & Awards
-
University of Waterloo Arts Award for Excellence in Research, 2023
-
Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, elected 2022
- Co-operative and Experiential Education Employer Impact Award, for the Rhetoricon Database Project, 2021
- Award of Excellence in Graduate Supervision, University of Waterloo, 2019
- Outstanding Performance in Research Awards; University of Waterloo, 2005, 2019
- Izak Walton Killam Memorial Post-doctoral Fellowship; University of Alberta, 1990-92
- SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship; Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 1985-87
- Sir James Lougheed Award of Distinction; Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 1985-87
- Rensselaer Scholar Fellowship; Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 1985-86
- Province of Alberta Scholarships; University of Alberta, 1982-83, 1983-84
- Izak Walton Killam Memorial Pre-doctoral Scholarship; Dalhousie University, 1980-81.
Grants
- Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Insight Grant, " Gamesourcing a rhetorical figure ontology”; University of Waterloo, 2018-2021, 2022-2027
- Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Partnership-Engage Grant, 2020-2022
- Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Insight Grant, " Gamesourcing a rhetorical figure ontology”; University of Waterloo, 2018-2021
- Network on Aging Research Catalyst Grant, 2018-19
- Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Insight Grant, "Computational Rhetoric"; University of Waterloo, 2015-2018
- Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Standard Research Grant, "Cognitive Rhetoric"; University of Waterloo, 2010-2013
- University of Waterloo 4A Scholar Grants, 2005, 2007, 2008, 2010.
- Mitacs - Accelerate Grant, "Large Inbox Voice Interaction," 2009
- Learning Initiatives Grant; University of Waterloo, 2005
- SSHRC Standard Research Grant, "Rhetoric and Incommensurability"; University of Waterloo, 2002-2004
Current research
I
am
currently
preoccupied
with
the
way
in
which
rhetorical
figures
reflect
brain
structure.
(You
want
to
remember
a
phone
number?
Repeat
it
over
and
over.
Hey!
That's
ploke!
You
want
to
structure
a
list
in
the
most
cognitively
efficient
way?
Arrange
the
phrases
into
parallel
syntactic
patterns.
Hey!
That's
parison!
You
want
to
learn
something
new?
Compare
it
to
something
you
already
know.
Hey!
That's
simile!)
This
study,
the
study
of
the
mental
correlates
of
figuration
and
other
aspects
of
argumentation,
aesthetics,
and
persuasion,
is
Cognitive
Rhetoric.
I
am
also
increasingly
interested
in
the
computational
investigation
of
figures:
on
the
one
hand,
building
an
ontology
of
figures
to
model
the
cognitive
landscape
of
figuration;
and
on
the
other
hand,
charting
the
way
individual
and
clustered
figures
can
signal
genres,
authorship,
sentiment,
and
argumentation
in
discourse.
Areas of graduate supervision
- Rhetoric (especially computational and cognitive rhetoric, rhetoric of science, history and theory of rhetoric)
- Professional communication (especially document design, usability, and multimedia)
- Interaction design (especially speech), and linguistics (especially cognitive linguistics and history of linguistics)
- Cognitive Poetics (especially the affective dimensions of linguistic and textual form in literature)
- Construction Grammar (especially the intersection of everyday expressions and rhetorical schemes)