Rhetorical Perspective

[Phil Gaines]

Burke speaks to this quite nicely, right?  If we step back to seeing
rhetoric as strategies for persuading/convincing, then naturally the Western
model is only one.  The public discourse focus in the West continues the
ancient tradition of legal, ceremonial, and legislative talk as the sites of
rhetorical analysis and training, but certainly rhetorical (as assumed
above) principles are at work to one degree or another in the whole range of
types of linguistic interaction.  I say linguistic because I think that it
is in language that the full panoply of rhetoric is exercised.  So, although
to say that rhetoric is _only_ concerned with language would be too strong,
it seems that it is mostly concerned with language.


Phil Gaines
Assistant Professor of English
Montana State University

----------
>From: Peter Cramer <pcramer+ at ANDREW.CMU.EDU>
>To: DISCOURS at LINGUIST.LDC.UPENN.EDU
>Subject: Re: Rhetorical Perspective
>Date: Tue, Feb 2, 1999, 2:31 PM
>

>1) Is rhetoric
>only concerned with language?  2) Is rhetoric only concerned with public
>discourse?  3) For a perspective to be considered rhetorical, must it be
>realized in the classical Western model (handbooks, political and legal
>applications)?

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