Ancient Greek rhetoric gave rise to and contributed to the (initial) development of many terms that even today attract the interest of philosophers and rhetoricians round the globe. Among those terms is logos, perhaps most characteristically described by Aristotle in his Rhetoric. But Aristotle is not the sole ancient Greek representative of rhetoric who considered the term. In this essay, I explore how selected ancient Greek figures—i.e. the Sophists, Socrates, Plato, and a few others—understood logos in the context of rhetoric. I assert that, despite some differences, they essentially viewed the term similarly, as connected to discourse involving argumentation intended to exert influence for socio-political or philosophical purposes.

This paper argues for the critical need to develop a deepened understanding of rhetoric, particularly ethos, in light of the emergence of sophisticated AI language users as rhetorical agents. It stresses the importance of the human element in rhetorical interpretation and thus introduces the concept of the zero persona to represent the creators and stakeholders behind AI tools. Understanding machine ethos is a pressing issue because questions of trust and reliability are at the forefront of society’s concerns over the use of this technology.

This article examines the notion of “secure-base relationships” in kindergartens. While this concept originally emphasized early emotional bonds between parents and children, recent developments in attachment theory highlight its interconnectedness with social relationships. However, the dichotomy between a secure base and exploration remains prevalent in the literature. Adopting a practice-based approach informed by rhetorical listening, we analyse kindergarten teachers’ descriptions of exploratory processes with children. Examples from two phases of a project on the theme of the universe are discussed in light of the concepts of ethos and habitual places. Findings suggest that secure-base relationships in kindergartens are closely interwoven with exploration, forming a polyvocal and dynamic place that involves choice and risk. Embodied interactions in familiar activities are shown to support relationships, and alternating positions in play emerges as a beneficial pedagogical strategy to support a culture of sharing. Finally, the relevance of a civic notion of ethos for kindergarten communities is underscored.

This paper examines how contemporary theatre reflects and reconfigures the rhetorical condition of disenchantment through the analysis of Leila Buck’s American Dreams and Panayiotis Mentis’s Foreigners. Drawing upon Max Weber’s notion of the disenchantment of the world and Michael McGee’s theory of the ideograph, the study explores how the American Dream has shifted from an aspirational ideology to a disillusioned cultural residue. Both plays dramatize the erosion of persuasion as a form of social cohesion, revealing how national myths lose their force under the weight of contradiction and exclusion. Buck’s interactive satire transforms the process of naturalization into a participatory spectacle that implicates audiences in the mechanisms of granting citizenship as a prize in a live game show, while Mentis’s domestic tragedy stages the ethical aftermath of disillusionment within the Greek immigrant family after they had been granted citizenship in the United States. The analysis proposes that theatre serves as a rhetorical laboratory where the collapse of ideological enchantment is made visible and emotionally intelligible. Disenchantment, far from being the negation of meaning, emerges as a mode of critical awareness that enables new forms of ethical reflection.

The concept of privacy in relation to public figures is linked to the development and ubiquity of mass media. In times before photojournalists, paparazzi and social media, the private and public spheres functioned separately, with no insight provided into various aspects of users' lives. In the age of mediated reality, skilful management of the boundary between the private and the public can be an effective persuasive tool in the realm of ethos. Furthermore, persuasive objectives are evolving, as are the rhetorical principles that govern the development of ethos. In this article, I analyse how leading global politicians use the concept of privacy in public communication. The discussion focuses on types of private information disclosed, the effectiveness of such communication strategies and their impact on achieving persuasive goals, particularly the effective shaping of a positive public image.

The aim of this article is to present an original didactic concept that integrates the classical ideal of vir bonus dicendi peritus with the theory of rhetorical ethos and contemporary positive psychology, represented by the VIA character strengths model. The point of departure is the assumption that the speaker’s ethos – as a rhetorical category – has deep roots in the tradition of virtue ethics, developed from Aristotle through Quintilian to contemporary philosophers such as MacIntyre, Nussbaum, and Hursthouse. The article demonstrates that contemporary psychological tools, such as the VIA test, can serve as practical instruments for cultivating ethos in rhetorical education. The proposed didactic project, implemented within the framework of practical rhetoric classes, is based on an individual analysis of students’ character strengths and their mapping onto various rhetorical genres. The article seeks to build a bridge between rhetorical theory and the ethical and psychological formation of the speaker.

This article explores how Peter Santenello’s Border Series, viewed more than ninety million times on YouTube, depicts U.S. migration in the early 2020s. After years abroad as a travel vlogger, Santenello returned to the United States determined to show the country from the ground up, arguing that mainstream outlets overlook crucial realities. His Border Series is part of this turn. Through close readings of selected episodes, the paper identifies three recurring rhetorical patterns in his coverage of migration to the U.S. First, Santenello’s hand-held camera gains entry to police trucks, farm fields, hotels, and desert contacts to the mainstream representations which are considered to be politically biased. Second, each video functions as a “third space” where roles remain fluid: migrants appear as commodities or humanitarian cases, sheriffs shift from protectors to reluctant aid workers, and viewers assign these labels through real-time debate. Third, Santenello’s civic-traveler style combines storytelling with witnessing; by rejecting the journalist label yet featuring multiple viewpoints, he widens the circle of voices that narrate the border and resists classical media framing. Taken together, these patterns show that digital, personality-driven reporting is remapping migration discourse, turning contested ground into a shared arena for seeing and arguing.

The article analyzes the rhetorical strategy of the public health campaign “Stop udarom” (Stop Strokes), treating it as an example of health communication within the framework of Rhetoric of Health and Medicine (RHM). The aim of the study is to examine how the campaign employs classical persuasive appeals - ethos, logos, and pathos - to guide the audience through three stages of communication: conveying knowledge, eliciting emotion, and motivating action. The analysis shows how various modes of expression, formats, and linguistic devices serve persuasive functions. The study contributes to the growing body of research on the rhetoric of health discourse and may serve as a reference point for the design of future preventive campaigns.

This article reports on an analysis of salient argumentative schemes, rhetorical devices and linguistic choices that are characteristic of, but also problematic for, the public deliberation in Poland on the acceptable degrees and forms of assistance provided to Ukraine and Ukrainians. By identifying the historical origins of anti-Ukrainian sentiment and the current media stereotypes used as premises in deliberation on the Ukraine war, the study traces how arguments are enhanced, sometimes through topoi and fallacies, by communicators that are against supporting Ukraine. The study draws on a multimodal dataset of textual and audio-video materials from 2022-2024. The larger aim is to enhance critical rhetorical literacy through an overview of the rhetorical strategies that render even unsound arguments acceptable and appealing.

While disinformation is often equated with fabricated content, its impact extends beyond falsified information to the way narratives are linguistically constructed. This article explores the role of argumentative structures in disinformation strategies, focusing on how linguistic devices shape the reader’s interpretation of events. By analyzing argumentative operators and connectives in articles published on the Spanish-language pro-Kremlin news portal Sputnik Mundo, the study demonstrates that manipulation is not only a matter of content but also of discourse structure. The research is based on Anscombre and Ducrot’s theory of argumentation within language (1994) and framed within an interdisciplinary perspective, combining linguistic analysis with insights from disinformation studies and military theory, particularly the notion of disinformation as a weapon in hybrid conflict. Through an examination of selected articles covering NATO’s Steadfast Defender exercises in Europe, the study reveals how argumentative mechanisms are used to challenge official Western narratives, delegitimize NATO’s actions, and promote a Kremlin-aligned interpretation of geopolitical events.

The author analyzes two different meanings of the words debate and debating in Polish: as process of collective thinking, searching the best solution of certain problem of community and as a „battle”: confrontation of two opinions. These two faces of debates could be connected with two rhetorical exercises (suasoriae and controversiae), two rhetorical genres (genus deliberativum and genus iuridicum) and two models of modern debates: deliberative debate and Oxford debate. Then two education projects, based on these concepts of debates are presented debates about plastics among pupils of secondary schools in Płock (case study of use the concept of Oxford debate) and Gdańsk Academy of Debate (based on the concept of deliberative debate). Then the author discusses numerous advantages and disadvantages of the use of Oxford debate and deliberative debate as a tools of rhetorical and civil education. Probably these two concepts of using debates in rhetorical education are complementary and should be used together, or a new format of debate, combining „battle” and „brainstorming”, should be invented.

The aim of the article is to analyze ethos and pathos in the rhetoric of the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky. I analyzed 28 speeches delivered before the parliaments and National Assemblies of various countries in the first hundred days of the Russian-Ukrainian war. The results of the study show that Zelensky's rhetoric is geared toward arousing five affects: fear, compassion, anger, shame and sadness. The speaker's credibility, built both in and out of speech, is based on competence, trust and similarity to the recipient.

This paper uses a corpus rhetoric approach to analyze persuasive strategies in competitive debates. The examined strategies are based on inference markers and selected types of systemic means of persuasion. The study is two-fold: the first part is the quantitative and qualitative analyses that characterize competitive debates compared to other persuasive discourses. The second part, the case study, shows the use of particular persuasive strategies related to inference markers and systemic means of persuasion in a specific rhetorical situation. As the quantitative analysis revealed, regardless of the debaters’ experience level, competitive debates are highly saturated with analyzed persuasive strategies. The case study depicts the dynamics of the selected debate; moreover, it illustrates the methodological value of linking macro and micro perspectives in the study of competitive debates as a rhetorical genre and educational activity.

The article analyses the lyrics of selected songs by Lila Downs, paying special attention to the rhetorical appeals of logos, ethos and pathos they contain. The results of the analysis reveal all three types of rhetorical appeals, as well as passages combining two or all three of them. Pathos appeals to emotion, often using specific linguistic means (hyperbole, irony), ethos evokes both historical figures and indigenous people as examples, and logos involves predominantly social criticism.

The aim of the article is to revise views on the parodic nature of Plato’s funeral speech (epitaphios logos) entitled “Menexenus.” By demonstrating Plato’s literary virtuosity in the funeral speech and conveying his opinions regarding the social policies of democratic Athens, the author of the article seeks to challenge previous interpretations of the parodic nature of epitaphios logos in the “Menexenus.” Since Plato was writing during a period of establishing and asserting the authority of literary prose in opposition to the hitherto educative role played by poetry, the article also addresses the question of Plato himself establishing his authority through a symbiosis of philosophy and rhetoric. The author of the article draws attention to Plato’s significant contribution to revising views on the art of rhetoric by discussing it exhaustively and extensively in his dialogues, including the “Menexenus.”

While thoroughly theorized in rhetorical studies, the body primarily is understood as or through text. Following a literature review of the body in rhetorical scholarship, this article argues that the situated, concrete body is integral to ideological identity through its function as doxastic warrant in enthymematical argumentation. The article finally outlines a rhetorical-ethnographic orientation for investigating the points of expression for a doxastic body of a specific field.

This article aims to explore how psychologist Aleksandra Sileńska, known online as Mom Therapist, addresses the mental health of mothers in her Facebook posts. Through content analysis and rhetorical tools, including the categories of topos and the triad of ethos, pathos, and logos, the study examines Sileńska’s communication strategies. The findings reveal that she predominantly employs pathos and ethos in her posts. Additionally, her promotion of the Cared-for Mom model contrasts sharply with the traditional Polish Mother topos, which often overlooks the mental health of mothers.

Reviewer Frederik Appel Olsen takes issue with the approach we present in The Virtues of Green Marketing: A Constructive Take on Corporate Rhetoric (Palgrave Macmillan). In this response, we point out three aspects where Appel Olsen paints a misleading picture of our book. They concern a) the role of history in contemporary thinking, b) the role of Aristotle in our argumentation, and c) the legitimate place of rhetorical criticism. Thus, our response treats fundamental questions for the field of rhetoric.

Autorka proponuje rozważania nad perswazyjną intencją książki Moniki Sznajderman Fałszerze pieprzu. Historia rodzinna. W perspektywie retoryki wspomnienia rodzinnego rozważone zostały zagadnienia niepamięci, traumatycznych białych plami postpamięci jako procesów psychologiczno-społecznych, prowadzących do potrzeby rekonstrukcji własnej tożsamości i dokonania własnych wyborów etycznych. Ramą dla analiz stała się triada retorycznych sposobów przekonywania, czyli lógos, éthos i pathos oraz semantyka i filozofia fotografii.

The aim of this topos analysis is to identify features of argumentation in Swedish parliamentary debates on asylum policy in 2015 and 2016 compared to German debates. Findings include a focus on procedural rather than substantive aspects and an adaptation of government-like argumentation by cooperating opposition parties. These can be attributed to the focus on consensus and cooperation in Sweden, governed by a minority government, and may be typical of minority governments, common in Scandinavia, in general.

The field of argumentation theory is a rich field, with rather deep divisions.In addition to the perhaps most important distinction between formal logic and practical argumentation, that is, between the study of logical-mathematical inferences and how people actually argue within different domains, there are several "schools" that study practical argumentation.One could say (as argumentation theorists like) that the various schools are based on three different perspectives on argumentation in Western thinking, inherited from classical times: logic, dialectic, and rhetoric.The title of this fine anthology, edited by Christian Kock and Marcus Lantz, reveals that it is concerned with a rhetorical look at argumentation.More specifically, the book presents insights into the work on argumentation theory from the Copenhagen milieu in rhetoric.This builds on the seminal work of Merete Jrgensen, Charlotte Onsberg, Christian Kock, and Lone Rrbech, consisting of both a textbook (Jrgensen & Onsberg 1987) and an empirical research project -"Rhetoric that moves votes".These have been the cornerstone of the Copenhagen research into and teaching of argumentation, and the background for their particular rhetorical perspective.How does a rhetorical perspective on argumentation differ from the others, such as informal logic (based in Windsor, Canada) or pragma-dialectics (based in Amsterdam)?The distinctive character, and advantages, of the Copenhagen school are clearly highlighted in the book's introduction: A rhetorical perspective on argumentation takes the functions argumentation has in a democratic society as its starting point -always from a normative angle.What does it take for argumentation to serve (deliberative) democracy?In this sense, the Copenhagen 1.

W artykule dokonano analizy postów Mariusza Szczygła na serwisie Instagram w odniesieniu do cech dyskursu retorycznego. Wykorzystano w tym celu m.in. triadę retorycznych dowodów przekonywania, tj. etos, logos, patos. Charakterystyce poddano sposób prowadzenia konta w nawiązaniu do zmieniającego się środowiska pracy pisarzy/dziennikarzy. Zwrócono uwagę na rolę obrazu w kształtowaniu skutecznego przekazu i transmisji argumentacji. Analiza pokazała, że instadziennik wyraża ciekawość Szczygła wobec świata. Jest też sposobem na uporządkowanie jego własnych rozterek i dylematów. Interakcja z czytelnikami, promocja licznych inicjatyw i projektów związanych z profesją oraz możliwość podzielenia się pasjami i przemyśleniami dotyczącymi różnych sfer życia są spoiwem jego wizerunku, opartego na perswazyjności przekazu.

Artykuł jest opisem realizacji trójkąta retorycznego w komunikacyjnej przestrzeni publicznej. Nadawcy mogą w niej realizować trzy strategie retoryczno-komunikacyjne: komunikację z odbiorcą, komunikację odbiorcy lub komunikację odbiorcą. Charakterystyka tej przestrzeni przez metaforę topograficzną pokazuje, że logos, etos i patos tekstów publicznych zależy od strategii poznawczo-komunikacyjnej nadawców i elastyczności ich języka, co prowadzi albo do perswazji, albo do manipulacji odbiorcami.

Artykuł podejmuje zagadnienie obecności argumentacji typu lógos, éthos i pathos w biznesowych schematach konwersacyjnych. Zaprezentowano metodę Assessment Center/Development Center (AC/DC) jako przykład podejścia do komunikacji w biznesie (na linii przełożony–pracownik), w którym uwzględnia się tę retoryczną triadę. Przykładem obrazującym tę metodę jest schemat rozmowy oceniającej zmierzającej do ewaluacji dotychczasowej pracy oraz zmotywowania pracownika do rozwijania swoich umiejętności i podnoszenia kwalifikacji. Na początku wprowadzono ustalenia terminologiczne odnoszące się do klasycznej triady lógos, éthos, pathos. Następnie omówiono, czym jest komunikacja biznesowa, a czym komunikacja w biznesie. Uwzględniając różnice między komunikacją zewnętrzną oraz wewnętrzną, omówiono metodę AC/DC jako przykład skutecznego kierowania komunikacją wewnętrzną firmy. Przedstawienie schematu rozmowy oceniającej (związanej z udzielaniem konstruktywnych informacji zwrotnych oraz stosowaniem praktyk motywacyjnych, inaczej zwanych wzmacniającymi) pozwoliło wskazać wytyczne, zgodnie z którymi powinna ona przebiegać.

Badany typ dyskursu emancypacyjnego jest wyrazem dążeń środowisk kobiecych do wypracowania własnej przestrzeni w sferze przedsiębiorczości. Instytucjami tego dyskursu są organizacje zachęcające Polki do biznesowego współdziałania. Celem artykułu jest analiza narracji trzech takich instytucji pod kątem typów strategii argumentacyjnych (ethos, pathos, logos) legitymizujących ten dyskurs i ich funkcji. Wyniki badań wskazują na dominującą argumentację etotyczną, która służy m.in. eksponowaniu potrzeby biznesowej samodzielności kobiet oraz akcentowaniu ich wspólnotowości i wzajemnego wsparcia. Praktyki komunikacyjne oparte na pathos cechują jedną z organizacji, której narracja nieco bardziej też zaznacza miejsce jednostki na tle kobiecej wspólnoty. Stylistyka dyskursu wykazuje jego racjonalność i rzeczowość, nie ujawnia radykalnej postawy feminizmu wojującego.

Populism can be treated as an ideological attribute of political parties, but in this study, it is operationalized as a feature of argumentation that allows populists to claim to be the only ones to represent the interests of the nation. Such anti-pluralist arguments could be observed during US midterm elections in 2018 in online discourses of the right-wing political movement Tea Party. This article reports on a mixed-method study of the Tea Party’s official website obtained through scraping the All News feed. The quantitative linguistic analysis of keywords, concordances and couplings in the newsfeed sample is complemented with a qualitative rhetorical analysis of some topoi and argumentative fallacies. The analyses reveal such strategies as: (1) homogenizing the representation of true patriots, (2) polarizing between “good us” and “evil them,” (3) discrediting opponents through analogies, “worst” examples and ad hominem attacks (4) conspiracy theorizing, and (5) mobilizing modes of pathos and ethos in relation to mediatized and historicized cultural imaginaries. The study showcases the advantages of a mixed-method approach to the so-called populist rhetoric.

The paper deals with the visual and verbal modes as well as interrelations between them employed in dominant argumentation on the British and German magazine covers devoted to president Donald J. Trump. Following the concept of multimodality and the notion of enthymemes the author discusses analogy and causality as predominant types of argumentation occurring on the covers of THE ECONOMIST and DER SPIEGEL and illustrates the contribution of the visual image to the (re-)construction of the tacit components of the argumentation.

This article explores timing, kairos, in human interaction by analyzing nonverbal communication. The skill of timing, being able to do “the right thing at the right time,” is important for rhetorical agency. What are the silent processes in human interaction, and how do they influence the possibility for a kairotic moment to occur? Empirical material consisting of theater rehearsals has been analyzed. The findings show that the actio qualities: tempo and energy, as well as phronesis, are important factors for the appearance of a kairotic moment.

Instagram is the fastest rising social medium used by young people in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and therefore constitutes a superb means for companies to advertise their brands. To better inform the selection of the most well-targeted and effective models for advertising products, this research first analyzed UAE-based Instagram posts to explore the types of models used for different types of advertising content on Instagram. Individual interviews were then conducted with Emirati women consumers to determine the criteria they use when reviewing Instagram models in terms of the intention to purchase. Results reveal that there are three archetypal models connected with product ranges relating to (1) beauty, (2) health, and (3) fashion. Four determining factors in purchase decisions emerged, namely, (1) product effect, (2) product display, (3) the modesty of the models, and (4) the pose of the models. These last two, and most notably, the modesty of the model, is perhaps somewhat uniquely relevant to the region given the primacy of female modesty within the Islamic canon. Moreover, the majority of women interviewed stressed that they favor models who exemplify a realistic lifestyle and authentic beauty. While the goal of effortless perfection is a common one, this objective may be more dominant in this socio-cultural region, given the Islamic prescriptions on female modesty. Such a desire for an effortless perfection and authentic deception characterizes the essence of the ethos paradox of Instagram models. The value of this empirical investigation is that it highlights a potential pitfall for advertisers in making the assumption that featuring strong influencers in their advertising is necessarily an enhancement of sales potential. Moreover, it illustrates how Instagram endorsement functions in this geopolitical context and offers guidelines for optimizing Instagram advertising.

The article compares the formats of the final presidential debates in the latest elections in Poland between Andrzej Duda and Bronisław Komorowski (2015) and in the Czech Republic between Jiří Drahoš and Miloš Zeman (2018). The purpose of this comparison based on rhetorical genre criticism was to check whether and how the analyzed media events fit into the genre pattern of the debate. The Polish and the Czech formats were compared with respect to the interaction rules, elements of time and space, as well as the way of moderating and asking questions during the debate. The result of this comparison was the indication of the direction of genre hybridization of pre-election television debates in the last elections in Poland and the Czech Republic.

The concept of black boyhood has always been marked with negative associations. American media usually portray black boys as a potential threat. Rather than focusing on their future, they treat black boyhood as an experience “in the now,” failing to consider the historical context of African American communities. Thus, they create a monolithic picture of young black men, which highlights only their faults. This way of imagining black boyhood has inspired African American authors and illustrators to talk back and join the national debate. Their picture books reject the public rhetoric of crisis and replace it with a new black narrative, which reconstructs the black male identity. The aim of this article is to analyze selected images of black boyhood included in the books, as well as to compare them with the message of today’s media.

A highly visual social media platform such as Instagram is incorporated by many companies in their marketing communications strategies to advertise their products and services employing digital visual rhetoric. The purpose of this study is to extend the current understanding of visual framing strategies, sentiment, and product presentation modality in the multicultural context by examining social media practices of influencers belonging to two cultural backgrounds, namely the United Kingdom of Great Britain and the United Arab Emirates. Using content analysis, this study reveals visual rhetorical strategies practiced by Instagram influencers that can equip digital marketing practitioners with effective devices of persuasion. The study provides a useful contribution to the theory of digital visual rhetoric.

This article explores how rhetorically ambiguous speech acts can work as preventive negotiations of potential confl ict within a political party and how such acts can affect the ethos of the leader. I show how rhetorically ambiguous speech can be a way of performing rhetorical leadership and communicating a democratic ethos while motivating participation in a common action for ends understood differently by different audiences.

Because the goals leaders and organizations seek typically require persistent engagement over time, rhetorical leadership has as a central concern the long-term consequences of the leader’s rhetorical choices. Although traditional rhetorical theory downplayed this long-term perspective in favor of the singular rhetorical engagement (such as a speech), rhetorical theorists have begun considering the rhetorical implications of persuasion wrought over the long-run. This essay applies rhetorical consequentialism, a theoretical perspective developed by the author, to explain the orientation and strategies the rhetorical leader must consider in longterm persuasion. Leaders must be concerned about consistency over time to avoid charges of waffl ing, delusion, lying, hypocrisy, and the like if they are to maintain their ethos and that of their organizations. They also should take positive steps to create the symbolic and material conditions for rhetorical success over the long run. The essay describes „constraint avoidance” strategies that limit inconsistencies over time, as well as „stage-setting” strategies that prepare the symbolic and material ground for future rhetorical success. The essay draws examples from American political rhetoric, especially that of Donald Trump, to illuminate these strategies. The essay concludes by considering the challenges and prospects of such strategies.

This article analyzes the rhetorical strategies involved in the spread of texts created in a digital context. The Internet has initiated a new communicative environment which seeks to shape the contents and circumstances of dissemination of online news and electronic literature. The digital medium affects journalism and literature with a series of rhetorical strategies aimed at persuading the audience to double click (automated interactions, clickbait, trending). These rhetorical strategies are not accepted as valid in conventional media and publishing, however they promote rapid dissemination of digital news, as well as reconfi gure the existing relationships between authors and readers in literary works. Our aim is to explain how the dissemination of these texts can be understood from a rhetorical viewpoint, no matter how much the spread of fake news or the radical change in the electronic literary works can be criticized. We point to the consequences of a communicative context that prioritizes immediacy, anonymity and content democratization. Analyzing selected examples from the Spanish (social) media context will demonstrate how double-click rhetoric relates to fictionalization and backgrounding of ethos.

This article explores the rhetorical dimensions of the structure and selected contents of Amnesty International’s official website. The study is empirical in nature and considers current patterns of textual resources and visual affordances together with color applications and compositional design. It analyzes a sample of news reports, AI mission statement, vision and values together with topical icons, infographics, photographic and video materials. It illustrates the salient multimodal solutions in persuasive communication and evaluates the organization’s online rhetoric with respect to the persuasive potential to mobilize support and remediate its appeals in social media. It also applies the notion of newsworthiness to demonstrate how reports, visuals and posts are represented to arouse emotions (pathos), engender authenticity and appropriateness of actions (logos) and boost credibility (ethos).

If the aim of argumentation is that of increasing acceptance of the orator’s thesis (Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca 1969, 49), then the ultimate goal of counsel, a widespread argumentative practice within the genres of discourse as well as literature, is indeed persuasion. The subject of this essay—that is, the rhetoric of counsel—allows us to observe the interpretative richness of this element of the “new rhetoric” through examples offered by Dante, Giovanni Boccaccio, Lucrezia Borgia and Niccolò Machiavelli, straddling the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, bridging the fi elds of literature and history.

Epideictic rhetoric has been traditionally stigmatized as fl attery or empty show without any practical goal. Where does such attitude towards epideictic come from? To answer this question, we explore the ancient debate about the nature and the function of the epideictic genre. In the second part of this paper, we discuss the recent reappraisal of the epideictic among classical scholars and fi nally focus the attention on a promising fi eld of research: epideictic speeches in honor of women.

This paper sustains that rhetoric can be a fruitful way of practicing philosophy of language. The startingpoint is a suggestion drawn from the work of the Italian philosopher Roberto Esposito. According toEsposito, one of the main characteristics of the Italian thought is the focus on the necessary connectionbetween language and extra-linguistic world. I argue that rhetoric (intended in an Aristotelian sense), thanks to its extra-linguistic aim (persuasion), pays particular attention to this connection. This has important consequences: 1. considering speakers and listeners as essential components of speech and assigning a key position to the listener; 2. including the sphere of emotion in the fi eld of refl ection on language; 3. considering truth as a social practice; 4. considering the agonistic dimension as a constitutive element of the speech.

The purpose of this work is to analyze the persuasion which characterizes therapeutic advice and its collaborative goal. It is observed that this type of advice seems to be more effective when it is not limited to a mere scientific demonstration, but it considers also all the interlocutor’s subjective aspects. The study is supported by examples from a little corpus of transcribed real doctor-patient dialogues, collected and analyzed in a previous research work of the author. The research examines the principal arguments, argumentative figures and silences.

This essay analyzes the argumentative basis of the maternity debate on the main social network sites, in relation to the debate on the draft of Cirinnà bill on gay and lesbian civil partnerships in the Italian Parliament, to evaluate its congruence. The study of suasion (Eco, 1986), defined as a technique of covert persuasion, i.e., concealed and hidden (Mortara Garavelli, 2001), in relation to new media, represents “a new area of rhetoric, which deals almost exclusively with words and the act of writing in largely predetermined contexts” (Marazzini, 2001).

The paper claims that in the online discussions on Facebook concerning veganism – a brand new social food habit in Western societies – one can observe the mixture of traditional moral and revolutionary arguments. The presence of almost-religious extremism impacts a veganism-related verbal and visual argumentation, and even violence against the vegans. From the technical point of view, in the discussions concerning the veganism the probability argument, the argument of going-beyond and the ad sacrificium argument prevail.