Rhetoric

The term rhetoric refers both to the persuasive character of discourse and to the long-established tradition of studying oratory. Political speeches, for example, are instances of rhetoric in the first sense because they are communications designed to persuade. Also, political speeches can be studied by the discipline of rhetoric, which will aim to demonstrate how speakers use discursive devices to try to convince their hearers.

The study of rhetoric dates back to ancient times. Aristotle and Cicero, for instance, analyzed the nature of oratory and sought to provide systematic, practical guidance for aspiring public speakers. In Europe during the Middle Ages, rhetoric was one of the three basic subjects of school curriculum, alongside mathematics [Page 973]and grammar. By the time of the Renaissance, rhetoric was becoming the study of written literature, with rhetoricians devoting much effort to coding various figurative uses of language. By the late 19th century, the new disciplines of linguistics, psychology, and sociology were beginning to displace rhetoric from its preeminent place in the study of language and persuasion.

Classical rhetoric was essentially premethodological, for it did not provide analysts with a set of methodological procedures in the modern sense. This was one reason why the rhetorical tradition seemed to be in terminal decline. However, thinkers such as Kenneth Burke and Chaim Perelman were able to revive the traditions of classical rhetoric in the mid-20th century. This new rhetoric has had one very important consequence for the human and social sciences—the new rhetoricians have extended rhetoric from the traditional topics of oratory and literary texts to encompass the study of all discourse, including academic and scientific writing.

In particular, the “rhetoric of inquiry” has sought to show that the sciences and the social sciences are deeply rhetorical enterprises (Nelson, Megill, & McCloskey, 1987). Even disciplines that pride themselves on being “factual” and “scientific” use rhetorical devices in their technical reports. For example, Deirdre McCloskey applied Kenneth Burke’s rhetorical theory to the discipline of economics in her important book The Rhetoric of Economics (originally published in 1986 under the name of Donald McCloskey). She argues that economists habitually use figures of speech such as metaphor and metonymy, and that they employ mathematical formulae as ornamental devices of persuasion. Economists use such devices to convince readers of the factual, scientific nature of their conclusions. Other researchers have examined the rhetorical conventions of psychological, sociological, mathematical, and biological writing.

The rhetoric of inquiry shows how pervasive rhetoric is in human affairs (Billig, 1996). Inevitably, the exposure of rhetoric in academic writing has critical implications for disciplines that officially claim to be factual and thereby supposedly nonrhetorical. Moreover, the rhetoric of inquiry demonstrates that sciences and social sciences do not just comprise methodology and theory. Writing practices are crucial, although these are often treated as natural by practitioners. The extent to which the practices of writing, and thus the particular rhetorics of individual disciplines, influence the content of theory and the practice of methodology is, at present, a matter of debate.

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