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New Rhetoric is an interdisciplinary field [1] approaching for the broadening of classical rhetorical canon. [2] [3]
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New Rhetoric is an interdisciplinary field [1] approaching for the broadening of classical rhetorical canon. [2] [3]
The New Rhetoric is a result of various efforts of bringing back rhetorics from the marginal status [1] it attained by its image and negative connotations of "political lies, corporate spin, long list of Greek and Roman terms for patterns of expression no one knowingly uses, purple prose, boiler-plate arrangement schemas, unimaginative reproductions of bullshit and so on" [4] if not to its previous place of a discipline "associated with social and intellectual prestige" [1] then at least to the level of the other contemporary fields in the social, cultural and linguistic studies. Notoriously the field emerged after the work of Chaïm Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca in their book The New Rhetoric (1969) [5] but both the notion and the idea for the need of "new" rhetoric, different from the "old" one can be traced to the works of Kenneth Burke - A Rhetoric of Motives (1950) and Rhetoric - Old and New (1967). [6]
What helped the emergence of New Rhetoric was the ideas of the epistemic status of rhetoric, the notion of a clearly definable rhetorical core, and others. [1] An attempt to apply the New Rhetoric as a social philosophy was made by the Polish philosopher Mieczysław Maneli in his 1994 book Perelman's New Rhetoric as Philosophy and Methodology for the Next Century. [7] Maneli wrote: "The New Rhetoric is modern humanism. The struggle for humanism never ends. The most essential features to a humanistic approach to life are: individuals should be given the chance to develop their personal talents and energies, they should be able to be creative and become happy...Their essence and value are creativity and self-determination...Once the New Rhetoric took as its basic proposition that nothing is absolutely good or sacred except human dignity, one must constantly search for new values, for better forms, and ways of life. There are three specific areas that is especially important for modern humanism: social and individual justice, freedom from oppression with a genuine opportunity for a decent life; and tolerance and privacy." [8]
New Rhetoric attempts to preserve the original field but it also has tense relationship with it. [1] For example, New Rhetoric attempts to break up with the formalistic and logocentric (i.e. patriarchal) Neo-Aristotelian analysis in favour of interplay between text and context, but according to DeGenaro it does not succeed to place itself outside the "Western-patriarchal" tradition with being unable to departure from "elite backgrounds and scopes of study" [3] to a diversity of voices, topics, etc. This probably makes New Rhetoric rather a ground for the postmodern rhetoric [9] which "puts into question the identities of the speaker, the audience, and the messages that pass between them" [10] with evaluating the intersubjective philosophy [11] because of the idea inherently accepted in postmodernistic philosophy that "differences cannot be overcome, in Hegelian fashion, by cancelling them under a higher-order synthesis, but must be eroded or defaced in the course of traversing them". [12]
Postmodern philosophy is a philosophical movement that arose in the second half of the 20th century as a critical response to assumptions allegedly present in modernist philosophical ideas regarding culture, identity, history, or language that were developed during the 18th-century Age of Enlightenment. Postmodernist thinkers developed concepts like différance, repetition, trace, and hyperreality to subvert "grand narratives", univocity of being, and epistemic certainty. Postmodern philosophy questions the importance of power relationships, personalization, and discourse in the "construction" of truth and world views. Many postmodernists appear to deny that an objective reality exists, and appear to deny that there are objective moral values.
Rhetoric is the art of persuasion. It is one of the three ancient arts of discourse (trivium) along with grammar and logic/dialectic. As an academic discipline within the humanities, rhetoric aims to study the techniques that speakers or writers use to inform, persuade, and motivate their audiences. Rhetoric also provides heuristics for understanding, discovering, and developing arguments for particular situations.
Discourse is a generalization of the notion of a conversation to any form of communication. Discourse is a major topic in social theory, with work spanning fields such as sociology, anthropology, continental philosophy, and discourse analysis. Following pioneering work by Michel Foucault, these fields view discourse as a system of thought, knowledge, or communication that constructs our world experience. Since control of discourse amounts to control of how the world is perceived, social theory often studies discourse as a window into power. Within theoretical linguistics, discourse is understood more narrowly as linguistic information exchange and was one of the major motivations for the framework of dynamic semantics. In these expressions, ' denotations are equated with their ability to update a discourse context.
A sophist was a teacher in ancient Greece in the fifth and fourth centuries BCE. 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.
Giambattista Vico was an Italian philosopher, rhetorician, historian, and jurist during the Italian Enlightenment. He criticized the expansion and development of modern rationalism, finding Cartesian analysis and other types of reductionism impractical to human life, and he was an apologist for classical antiquity and the Renaissance humanities, in addition to being the first expositor of the fundamentals of social science and of semiotics. He is recognised as one of the first Counter-Enlightenment figures in history.
Kenneth Duva Burke was an American literary theorist, as well as poet, essayist, and novelist, who wrote on 20th-century philosophy, aesthetics, criticism, and rhetorical theory. As a literary theorist, Burke was best known for his analyses based on the nature of knowledge. Further, he was one of the first individuals to stray from more traditional rhetoric and view literature as "symbolic action."
Ethos is a Greek word meaning 'character' that is used to describe the guiding beliefs or ideals that characterize a community, nation, or ideology; and the balance between caution and passion. The Greeks also used this word to refer to the power of music to influence emotions, behaviors, and even morals. Early Greek stories of Orpheus exhibit this idea in a compelling way. The word's use in rhetoric is closely based on the Greek terminology used by Aristotle in his concept of the three artistic proofs or modes of persuasion alongside pathos and logos. It gives credit to the speaker, or the speaker is taking credit.
Richard Alan Lanham is an American literary scholar. He has written on writing style and rhetoric.
Chaïm Perelman was a Belgian philosopher of Polish-Jewish origin. He was among the most important argumentation theorists of the 20th 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 after a number of similarly oriented topics of research and discussion during the late 20th century, including the sociology of scientific knowledge, history of science, and philosophy of science, but it is practiced most typically by rhetoricians in academic departments of English, speech, and communication.
Richard McKeon was an American philosopher and longtime professor at the University of Chicago. His ideas formed the basis for the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Feminist philosophy is an approach to philosophy from a feminist perspective and also the employment of philosophical methods to feminist topics and questions. Feminist philosophy involves both reinterpreting philosophical texts and methods in order to supplement the feminist movement and attempts to criticise or re-evaluate the ideas of traditional philosophy from within a feminist framework.
Rhetorical reason is the faculty of discovering the crux of the matter. It is a characteristic of rhetorical invention (inventio) and it precedes argumentation.
The rhetorical situation is an event that consists of an issue, an audience, and a set of constraints. A rhetorical situation arises from a given context or exigence. An article by Lloyd Bitzer introduced the model of the rhetorical situation in 1968, which was later challenged and modified by Richard E. Vatz (1973) and Scott Consigny (1974). More recent scholarship has further redefined the model to include more expansive views of rhetorical operations and ecologies.
Modern rhetoric has gone through many changes since the age of ancient Rome and Greece to fit the societal demands of the time. Kenneth Burke, who is largely credited for defining the notion of modern rhetoric, described modern rhetoric as
"rooted in an essential function of language itself, a function that is wholly realistic, and is continually born anew; the use of language as a symbolic means of inducing cooperation in beings that by nature respond to symbols."
Feminist political theory is an area of philosophy that focuses on understanding and critiquing the way political philosophy is usually construed and on articulating how political theory might be reconstructed in a way that advances feminist concerns. Feminist political theory combines aspects of both feminist theory and political theory in order to take a feminist approach to traditional questions within political philosophy.
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".
Identification is a key theme in the works of Kenneth Burke as part of the New Rhetoric movement. Contemporary rhetoric focuses on cultural contexts and general structures of rhetoric structures. Burke was a notable contemporary U.S. rhetorician who made major contributions to the rhetoric of identification. James A. Herrick describes one of Burke's foundational ideas with identification is that “rhetoric makes human unity possible, that language use is symbolic action, and that rhetoric is symbolic inducement.” For Burke, words were Terministic screens through which people see the world and interact with each other. Herrick, further explains that identification in rhetoric is crucial to persuasion, and thus to cooperation, consensus, compromise, and action. Burke believed that the most serious human problem was to be alienated or separated, and rhetoric was to be that problem's only solution. Much of his work was based on bringing people back together. However, Burke argues that “Identification is affirmed with earnestness precisely because there is division; Identification is compensatory to division.” Rhetoric's goal, in regards to identification, is to bring people together of whom have been separated by estrangement or opposition. Those who feel isolated or separate from others may identify joint interests with others or become part of an institution -- "‘Belonging’ in this sense is rhetoric."
Feminist rhetoric emphasizes the narratives of all demographics, including women and other marginalized groups, into the consideration or practice of rhetoric. Feminist rhetoric does not focus exclusively on the rhetoric of women or feminists, but instead prioritizes the feminist principles of inclusivity, community, and equality over the classic, patriarchal model of persuasion that ultimately separates people from their own experience. Seen as the act of producing or the study of feminist discourses, feminist rhetoric emphasizes and supports the lived experiences and histories of all human beings in all manner of experiences. It also redefines traditional delivery sites to include non-traditional locations such as demonstrations, letter writing, and digital processes, and alternative practices such as rhetorical listening and productive silence. According to author and rhetorical feminist Cheryl Glenn in her book Rhetorical Feminism and This Thing Called Hope (2018), "rhetorical feminism is a set of tactics that multiplies rhetorical opportunities in terms of who counts as a rhetor, who can inhabit an audience, and what those audiences can do." Rhetorical feminism is a strategy that counters traditional forms of rhetoric, favoring dialogue over monologue and seeking to redefine the way audiences view rhetorical appeals.
Mieczysław Maneli was a Polish lawyer, diplomat and academic best remembered for his work with the International Control Commission (ICC) during the Vietnam War, especially the 1963 "Maneli Affair". During the Holocaust, he survived the Auschwitz death camp, and then became after the war a prominent academic in Poland, serving as the Dean of Law at University of Warsaw.