Rhetoric is the art of persuasion, which along with grammar and logic, is one of the three ancient arts of discourse. Rhetoric aims to study the techniques writers or speakers utilize to inform, persuade, or motivate particular audiences in specific situations. Aristotle defines rhetoric as "the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion" and since mastery of the art was necessary for victory in a case at law, for passage of proposals in the assembly, or for fame as a speaker in civic ceremonies, he calls it "a combination of the science of logic and of the ethical branch of politics". Rhetoric typically provides heuristics for understanding, discovering, and developing arguments for particular situations, such as Aristotle's three persuasive audience appeals: logos, pathos, and ethos. The five canons of rhetoric or phases of developing a persuasive speech were first codified in classical Rome: invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery.
A sophist was a teacher in ancient Greece in the fifth and fourth centuries BC. Sophists specialized in one or more subject areas, such as philosophy, rhetoric, music, athletics, and mathematics. They taught arete – "virtue" or "excellence" – predominantly to young statesmen and nobility.
An ideograph or virtue word is a word frequently used in political discourse that uses an abstract concept to develop support for political positions. Such words are usually terms that do not have a clear definition but are used to give the impression of a clear meaning. An ideograph in rhetoric often exists as a building block or simply one term or short phrase that summarizes the orientation or attitude of an ideology. Such examples notably include <liberty>, <freedom>, <democracy> and <rights>. Rhetorical critics use chevrons or angle brackets (<>) to mark off ideographs.
Communication theory is a proposed description of communication phenomena, the relationships among them, a storyline describing these relationships, and an argument for these three elements. Communication theory provides a way of talking about and analyzing key events, processes, and commitments that together form communication. Theory can be seen as a way to map the world and make it navigable; communication theory gives us tools to answer empirical, conceptual, or practical communication questions.
Rhetorical criticism analyzes the symbolic artifacts of discourse—the words, phrases, images, gestures, performances, texts, films, etc. that people use to communicate. Rhetorical analysis shows how the artifacts work, how well they work, and how the artifacts, as discourse, inform and instruct, entertain and arouse, and convince and persuade the audience; as such, discourse includes the possibility of morally improving the reader, the viewer, and the listener. Rhetorical criticism studies and analyzes the purpose of the words, sights, and sounds that are the symbolic artifacts used for communications among people.
Visual rhetoric is the art of effective communication through visual elements such as images, typography, and texts. Visual rhetoric encompasses the skill of visual literacy and the ability to analyze images for their form and meaning. Drawing on techniques from semiotics and rhetorical analysis, visual rhetoric expands on visual literacy as it examines the structure of an image with the focus on its persuasive effects on an audience.
The New Left Review is a British bimonthly journal covering world politics, economy, and culture, which was established in 1960.
Chantal Mouffe is a Belgian political theorist, formerly teaching at University of Westminster.
Narrative paradigm is a communication theory conceptualized by 20th-century communication scholar Walter Fisher. The paradigm claims that all meaningful communication occurs via storytelling or reporting of events. Humans participate as storytellers and observers of narratives. This theory further claims that stories are more persuasive than arguments. Essentially the narrative paradigm helps us to explain how humans are able to understand complex information through narrative.
Chaïm Perelman was a Belgian philosopher of Polish-Jewish origin. He was among the most important argumentation theorists of the twentieth century. His chief work is the Traité de l'argumentation – la nouvelle rhétorique (1958), with Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca, translated into English as The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation, by John Wilkinson and Purcell Weaver (1969).
Rhetoric of science is a body of scholarly literature exploring the notion that the practice of science is a rhetorical activity. It emerged following a number of similarly-oriented disciplines during the late 20th century, including the disciplines of sociology of scientific knowledge, history of science, and philosophy of science, but it is practiced most fully by rhetoricians in departments of English, speech, and communication.
Frame analysis is a multi-disciplinary social science research method used to analyze how people understand situations and activities. Frame analysis looks at images, stereotypes, metaphors, actors, messages, and more. It examines how important these factors are and how and why they are chosen. The concept is generally attributed to the work of Erving Goffman and his 1974 book Frame analysis: An essay on the organization of experience and has been developed in social movement theory, policy studies and elsewhere.
Symbolic convergence theory (SCT) is a communication theory developed by Ernest Bormann proposing that the holding of fantasies in common transforms collections of individuals into cohesive groups. SCT offers an explanation for the appearance of a group's cohesiveness, consisting of shared emotions, motives, and meanings. Through SCT, individuals can build a community or a group consciousness which grows stronger if they share a cluster of fantasy themes. Symbolic convergence theory provides a description of the dynamic tendencies within systems of social interaction that cause communicative practices and forms to evolve. This theory allows theorists and practitioners to anticipate or predict what will happen and explain what did happen. One thing SCT does not do is allow for control of human communication. It attempts to explain how communication can create and sustain group consciousness through the sharing of narratives or fantasies.
Colin Hay is Professor of Political Sciences at Sciences Po, Paris and Affiliate Professor of Political Analysis at the University of Sheffield, joint editor-in-chief of the journal Comparative European Politics. and Managing Editor of the journal New Political Economy.
Roderick Arthur William Rhodes, usually cited as R. A. W. Rhodes, is a British professor of political science.
Philosophy & Rhetoric is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal covering rhetorical theory, ethics, continental philosophy, informal logic, argumentation theory, critical social theory, and political theory. It is published by Penn State University Press and was established in 1968. The editor-in-chief is Erik Doxtader. The journal was established in 1968 by Henry Johnstone Jr. and Carroll Arnold, who saw a need for a journal that would, among other things, investigate "rhetoric as a philosophical concept".
Raia Prokhovnik, is Reader in Politics at the Open University's Faculty of Social Sciences, for their Department of Politics and International Studies, and founding editor of the journal Contemporary Political Theory. She is the chair of the OU's interdisciplinary politics module, Living political ideas, and contributed to other modules including Power, dissent, equality: understanding contemporary politics.
The rhetorical presidency is a political communication theory that describes the communication and government style of U.S. presidents in the twentieth century. This theory describes the transition from a presidency that directed rhetoric toward the United States Congress and other government bodies, to one that addresses rhetoric, policy and ideas directly to the public.
Michael Saward, is an Australian and British professor of politics and international studies at the University of Warwick, He was formerly Reader in Politics at Royal Holloway, University of London, and Professor and Head of Department in politics and international studies at the Open University.
Helen Zerlina Margetts, is Professor of Internet and Society at the Oxford Internet Institute (OII), University of Oxford and from 2011 to 2018 was Director of the OII. She is currently Director of the Public Policy Programme at The Alan Turing Institute. She is a political scientist specialising in digital era governance and politics, and has published over a hundred books, journal articles and research reports in this field.
