Rhetorical Style: Managing the Richness

Guest Lecture by Professor Jeanne Fahnestock, University of Maryland.

Over its two thousand year history, rhetorical textbooks have compiled hundreds of potentially effective language features at the word, sentence, interactive, and passage levels. This richness is worth an overview, best acquired by looking at examples from each level.

But rhetorical analysis has to go beyond pointing and labeling. Selected language features also require a functional explanation in terms of a text's situation, argument and appeals, as codified in classical or contemporary rhetorical theory.

Comparative analysis across drafts and versions can also help the rhetorical critic solve the problem of deciding what, among the language features in any one text, is worth attention.

Free admission.