Description
Book SynopsisExamines concepts for persuasive communication. Explores the art of rhetoric and how it aids in clarification when we speak to communicate, but also helps to protect us from clarity when we speak to maintain our connections to others.
Trade Review“Kochin demonstrates the importance of classical rhetoric in making sense of contemporary politics. The book is highly accessible to an audience unfamiliar with rhetorical studies, and the analytic framework will force rhetoricians to rethink their own assumptions about their art and its relationship to truth. The book deserves a wide audience across rhetoric and communication, English, political science, and sociology.”
—James Arnt Aune,Texas A&M University
“Political theory and rhetoric are close cousins, even if neither particularly wants to admit its own paternity. Political theorists ought then to pay close attention to Kochin’s new book. Students of rhetoric will also find themselves enlightened in ways they may not expect. Kochin’s effort is of signal importance for teaching us how to keep the descendants of philosophy sitting down to, if not the same dinner, at least one from the same kitchen.”
—Stephen L. Elkin,University of Maryland
“This is a significant book that cuts, neatly and insightfully, across the various disciplinary literatures around rhetoric and persuasion. The author opens new pathways for social scientists, humanists, and professionals to think together about rhetoric and persuasion. It’s heartening to see a book grounded in a classical perspective on rhetoric incorporate not only the social science persuasion literature, but public relations as well.”
—William Keith,University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
“Is it possible to say something new about one of the oldest topics of political philosophy, the question of rhetoric? Michael Kochin’s penetrating book proves that it is. He does so by taking seriously a whole range of sources on political speech, communication, and persuasion, from Aristotle and Demosthenes to social science on the nature of public opinion to Bruno Latour’s sociology of knowledge, and by reflecting on the topic in unusual depth. His book is original and it has a provocative simplicity.”
—Bryan Garsten Iyyun: The Jerusalem Philosophical Quarterly
Table of ContentsContents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Character
2. Action
3. Things
4. Nothing
5. Art
Postscript: How to Begin to Analyze a Speech
Select Bibliography
Index
