Comparative Rhetoric: An Historical and Cross Cultural Introduction - Hardcover

Kennedy, George A.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0195109325 ISBN 13: 9780195109320

Publisher: OUP USA, 1997

Synopsis

This is the first book to offer a cross-cultural overview of rhetoric as a universal feature of expression and communication. The author explores analogies to human rhetoric in animal communication, rhetorical factors in the origin of human speech, and rhetorical conventions in traditionally oral societies around the world. The second part of the book discusses rhetoric as understood and practised in early literate cultures, seeking to identify what is unique or unusual in the western tradition.

About this title

Review

This book is the mature reflection of a highly respected scholar in Graeco-Roman rhetoric ... There is a great deal of useful human knowledge in this book ... The presentation of the argument is admirably clear throughout ... The book is not without humour ... This seems to me a brave book. It is courageous to essay into other cultures, some of them still living, and try to summarise their processes ... K's argument will stimulate interest in comparative rhetoric, as he hopes, and has raised questions to which there will be some very interesting responses. (Vivienne Gray, Prudentia)

About the Author

George A. Kennedy taught classics, comparative literature, and rhetoric at the University of North Carolina for twenty-eight years and now lives in Fort Collins, Colorado. He is the author of many books, and is the renowned translator of Aristotle's On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse (OUP, 1991).

Edition details

• Publisher: OUP USA
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0195109325
• ISBN 13: 9780195109320
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 250