A Critical Study of Rhetoric as Function and Intended Human Action

FAIN: FR-10376-78

William F. Nelson
Wichita State University (Wichita, KS 67260-9700)

This study will employ the Platonic method of dialogue for describing rhetoric as function and intended human action. Rhetoric must be viewed as both condition and action. In the first case, rhetoric represents those structures for inventing and communicating knowledge which are available to the species at a particular interval of space/time. In the second case, rhetoric includes those strategies and methods which individuals make available and use for externalizing their own creative potentials, for sharing their meanings, and for building common ideational and social organizations.