Rhetorical Theory

Chaim Perelman argued that there needed to be a new rhetoric. His reasons included that in current rhetoric style is valued over rationality, that logic is valued over argumentation in current rhetoric, and that audience and community aren't sufficiently considered in current rhetoric. For him audience involves reasonable people who must accept the premises in order to understand and agree with argument. Demonstrating truth is not the aim of the argument, but instead to get agreement. He emphasizes the role values play in determining the audience perspective and developing common ground is a fundamental role of interacting with the audience.

John Poulakos looks at how the Sophists were received by Aristotle, Plato and Isocrates. To do this, he uses what is called reception theory which claims that multiple interpretations are possible. He claims that the Sophists had a rhetorical consciousness (and doesn't accept that Plato invented rhetoric) and that you can examine the cultural mileau to understand the Sophists and not just what they wrote.

Nedra Reynolds views ethos as a location in which feminists view as at the margin of discourse. Ethos is essential for establishing the validity of knowledge so feminists need to establish a good place from which to speak from. She examines how certain social conditions prevent women from having a good place to speak from. Ethos isn't always addressed specifically, but location always is considered.

Cheryl Glenn studies how women in antiquity through the Renaissance performed gender identities through rhetorical practices. She also studies the resistance and negotiation that women displayed in order to challenge the social and educational boundaries that constricted women in silence, chastity, and domestic confinement. To do this, Glenn not only looks at how the field of rhetoric excluded women, she attempts to rewrite rhetorical history through the voice of women. Further, she suggests revising historiography practices to allow women to speak. Glenn also shows how rhetoric was used to control and silence women and support social practices that allowed men to control language practices in social contexts until the Enlightenment which served as the end of the one-sex model of rhetoric and reasoning. Her main goal is to integrate women's accomplishments in the timeline of mainstream rhetorical studies.

Heidegger challenged the opposition of the subject and object. He did not view metaphysics as entirely separate from epistemology. To know the essence of a thing was to be aware of its being, and thus phenomenon was the "representation of the world as it is reflected in consciousness." Thus, ontology was connected to the understanding of meaning through phenomenology, or the presence of being of a thing in itself. Existence or being is primary to understanding. This leads to a hermeneutic notion of language practices, in which language is used to make sense of the world or derive the meaning of things. Through Heidegger philosophy and rhetoric intersect through the communication process of understanding and making meaning of the world.