Five Chapters on Rhetoric: Character, Action, Things, Nothing, and Art - Softcover

Kochin, Michael S.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0271034564 ISBN 13: 9780271034560

Publisher: Penn State University Press, 2012

Synopsis

Michael Kochin’s radical exploration of rhetoric is built around five fundamental concepts that illuminate how rhetoric functions in the public sphere. To speak persuasively is to bring new things into existence―to create a political movement out of a crowd, or an army out of a mob.

Five Chapters on Rhetoric explores our path to things through our judgments of character and action. It shows how speech and writing are used to defend the fabric of social life from things or facts. Finally, Kochin shows how the art of rhetoric aids us in clarifying things when we speak to communicate, and helps protect us from their terrible clarity when we speak to maintain our connections to others.

Kochin weaves together rhetorical criticism, classical rhetoric, science studies, public relations, and political communication into a compelling overview both of persuasive strategies in contemporary politics and of the nature and scope of rhetorical studies.

About this title

About the Author

Michael S. Kochin is Senior Lecturer in Political Science at Tel Aviv University and has held visiting appointments at Toronto, Princeton, and Yale. He is the author of Gender and Rhetoric in Plato’s Political Thought (2002), which was named an Outstanding Academic Title by Choice.

Edition details

• Publisher: Penn State University Press
• Publication date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0271034564
• ISBN 13: 9780271034560
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 184