Hi!
My name is David Erland Isaksen, Associate Professor of Communication at University of South-Eastern Norway. I hold a PhD in Rhetoric and Composition from Texas Christian University, a master's in English, a master's in Interpreting and Translation (German/English), and a bachelor's in Literature and Languages. I started this blog back in 2010 in order to gain some experience with online publishing so I could teach it to my freshman writing class, and since then I have kept updating it with personal thoughts and with spin-off projects from my university assignments. The posts do not all represent my current views, but I have kept them as a record of my thinking at the time I wrote them.
Some of the articles are difficult to read because they are papers I have written for my classes, but I have tried to generally write for both academic and lay audiences, so there should be a little bit for everyone here.
I am Norwegian by birth and by choice, but I have more than 5 nationalities in my close family (long story) and I like to think that I have a somewhat cosmopolitan perspective. I write Intelligence of Persuasion because I hope that if rhetorical knowledge is more widely disseminated people may be able to make better choices and engage in a more productive exchange of ideas and perspectives. I want to uncover "hidden rhetoric" and manipulation. Jeff Grenny writes that "manipulation is the strategy which stops working once the other person understands what you are doing." By exposing manipulative practices, I hope to make it a less effective strategy to coordinate action, and one I hope people will shun it since it destroys both credibility and relationships. I also hope that I can help more people learn how to communicate ethically and have their message heard so that more people feel they have a say in the development of their local communities and nations.
Please feel free to give me feedback about what was helpful or hurtful to you and how perhaps I could improve, and of course feel free to share and use my work.
You can contact me at david.e.isaksen@usn.no
My LinkedIn profile is at