In contemporary digital publics, rhetoric and culture intertwine, shaping collective understanding and moral judgement. Taking the public accusations against Katherine Diez as its point of departure, this article explores the rhetorical dynamics of a public accusation through which communities articulate and enforce shared norms while simultaneously reconstituting their own identities. By tracing and mapping how the accusation emerged, circulated, and crystallized across platforms, the article examines how rhetorical participation and cultural meaning-making unfold collaboratively in a networked media ecology. Drawing on theories of narrative rhetoric, accusatory rhetoric and participatory communication, the article demonstrates how a single accusation becomes a site where participants negotiate authority, moral legitimacy, and identity. The article contributes to recent research on accusatory rhetoric and offers a method for delimiting an object of analysis within a networked media ecology.

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 article investigates the motivation informing President Joseph R. Biden, Jr.’s rhetoric regarding America’s lack of a direct military response to Russia’s aggression in Ukraine. Employing Kenneth Burke’s pentad as its analytical lens, this study identifies how the president attempted to shape public opinion through his linguistic choices and selective interpretation of events. Biden’s rhetoric justifying the US’ non-military reaction to the conflict is found to reflect realism, and supports the claim that the US approach regarding the situation in Ukraine is an action policy. Furthermore, the results provide insight into the understanding of the working of the no-use-of-force rhetoric within the context of the still evolving post-Cold War world order.

The following article is a rendering of the opening keynote speech given by Dr. V. Jo Hsu at the 2025 Rhetoric of Health and Medicine (RHM) Symposium that took place in Minneapolis, MN on October 17–18, 2025.

This article revisits the mid-century medical debate over the “treatment” of transsexualism in the U.S., summarily represented in the most cited essays on transsexualism at the time. The article leverages the stasis point of those medical debates—is transsexuality a product of the psyche or the soma?—as a singularly rich site for rhetorical inquiry arguing that this case demonstrates that stasis has both substance and a rhetorical form that determines the limits of what is accepted as a legitimate argument within any debate. The ultimate aim of this essay is twofold: one, to add to the rhetorical history of transsexuality with regard to medicalization and, two, to demonstrate how the decision of medical professionals to not allow sex-change surgery as a legitimate treatment to transsexual patients had much to do with the rhetorical association of site of malady/site of treatment and little to do with scientific evidence.

Existing research has explored the rhetoric surrounding women’s health, fertility, and motherhood, as well as the effect of medical discourse practices on patients’ understanding and decision-making in reproductive and other health contexts. I build on this work to examine the use and impact of common language surrounding pregnancy and miscarriage, especially for older mothers—particularly the terms advanced maternal age, blighted ovum, and expectant management. Drawing from rhetorical and autoethnographic methods, I argue that these terms function constitutively to shape sense-making about processes that otherwise exist only sub-clinically, and do so in ways that reify risk but also clearly demarcate the limitations of medical care. Broadly, this research contributes to our understanding of the ways that medical rhetoric shapes experience and understanding about reproductive health-related issues, and it also provides a foundation to more effectively communicate with pregnant women, and especially older mothers, about their care options.

In this article, the author uses the rhetorical concept of techne, here understood as a repeated engagement involving mind and body, to understand eating disorder recovery. The article relies on posts from the subreddit r/fuckeatingdisorders and personal story to explain how the behaviors and mindsets described by the posts are considered techne, and how recovery itself is an exercise in learning and relearning. This learning and relearning, also seen as the development of techne, is connected to deeper ontological claims about what it means to live in a body and recover in said body.

This article proposes the Canon to Code (C2C) Auditing Framework for evaluating generative (artificial intelligence) AI output through classical rhetoric, arguing that AI's characteristic failures—guessing instead of knowing, politeness instead of credibility, and confidence instead of judgment—revisit problems that rhetoric has addressed since antiquity. Developed using a rulemaking methodology and drawing on classical rhetorical theory, this framework presents 10 auditing rules that operationalize rhetorical principles into evaluation criteria for AI-generated content, focusing on accuracy, transparency, and accountability. It offers content auditors, technical communicators, and compliance professionals a theoretically grounded method for distinguishing AI output that meets audience needs from output that simulates credibility through pattern matching.

Previous research in argumentation has closely examined distortions of the opposition—particularly the straw man—and has recently provided some experimental evidence on their effects on persuasive outcomes. However, comparatively little empirical attention has been given to the inverse practice of faithfully reformulating an opponent’s contribution. The effects of accurate and inaccurate representations on speaker ethos and perceived reasonableness also remain underexplored. This paper addresses these gaps through three pre-registered experimental studies comparing accurate reformulation, misrepresentation, and no reformulation of the opposition. Experiment 1 assesses the impact of these practices on perceived trustworthiness using a six-item, 7-point semantic differential scale. Experiment 2 examines judgments of reasonableness using a scale repeatedly employed in pragma-dialectical effectiveness research. Experiment 3 measures persuasiveness at both the attitudinal and behavioral intention levels. Participants read a series of pre-tested argumentative exchanges between two speakers in a charitable-giving context. Results show that, in the cases examined, misrepresenting the opposition negatively impacted both trustworthiness and reasonableness judgments, addressing concerns that adhering to dialectical standards may diminish rhetorical success.

Abstract Personal attacks, which might convey damaging accusations, can take either an explicit or an implicit form. When they are communicated implicitly, they are referred to as insinuations . Their implicit nature is said to allow speakers to evade responsibility, preserve their public image, or even conceal argumentative weaknesses. In previous studies, we found that insinuated ad hominem arguments supporting disagreement made speakers appear more persuasive and trustworthy than explicit ones. However, further exploratory analyses of our data revealed that the advantage of insinuated over explicit ad hominem arguments was either only present or more pronounced when the personal attack was fallacious. This distinction between explicitness and fallaciousness —and their possible interaction—had not been accounted for in earlier work. To investigate this interaction more systematically, we conducted four preregistered experiments examining the combined effects of explicitness and fallaciousness in ad hominem arguments. Results indicate that there is no significant interaction between fallaciousness and implicitness, regardless of whether the personal attack targets the proponent’s expertise or character. While the often-assumed persuasive benefits of insinuation do not consistently emerge—and may even undermine argumentative support in the context of disagreemen—insinuation confers social advantages, as the speaker is perceived as more trustworthy overall. Moreover, valid arguments are consistently preferred over fallacious ones—not only when it comes to supporting disagreement, but also in shaping how the speaker is perceived. This suggests that while pragmatic subtleties, such as insinuation, can enhance perceived trustworthiness, argumentative soundness remains a central criterion in both rhetorical and interpersonal judgments.

In this article I explain how the ecological perspective, posthumanism, and rhetorical genre studies all coalesce into a theoretical framework from which to approach business communication theory and practice. I use the United States National Security Strategy as a research object to demonstrate this theoretical approach.

User experience (UX) as both a vocation and a skillset is currently in the center of a wicked knot: emerging technologies such as generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) and large language models (LLMs) are (for the moment) widely accessible in unprecedented ways and are already heavily integrated into modern workplace practices and educational spaces. Further, workplace demands have led to a change in perception of the function and value of UX, and the field is facing new obstacles to hiring and research funding. Our article argues that a resituation of UX is needed: we-as instructors and administrators-need to focus on UX as an act of slow, embodied, and multimodal UX composition. To do this work, we offer the strategy of détournement as central to UX curriculum and preparing students for design work in a variety of rhetorical situations, expressed through our example assignments for instructors to implement within the college classroom.

Content personalization or tailoring content as per the needs of users has been a focus of technical communicators’ work since a very long time. Recently, algorithms have helped trace users’ characteristics such as devices they use, platforms they work on, local language spoken, etc. to personalize content through strategies like responsive content, automatic translation and so on. AI tools have extended algorithmic capabilities for personalization, but at the same time increased the randomness of personalized content. That is, algorithms produce different results for the same user at different times or different results for different users at the same time with the same prompt thus shifting the agency of both rhetors (or content creators) and the audience (or content users). While conventional technical communication pedagogy has focused on writing for users, and more recently on writing for algorithms which serve the users, today it is crucial to understand how technologies like AI impact knowledge consumption processes from a user experience perspective? And how can we teach content personalization and adaptive techniques in the increasingly digital spaces of audience interactions? These questions motivated our research. To follow the roles of algorithms and technical communicators closely, we analyzed three different case studies where algorithms are responsible for a high level of personalization beyond the decisions made by technical communicators. Our findings suggest that we must teach students to investigate concepts such as user personas in UX for understanding audiences, several methods of decision-making for content assets, and rhetorical ecology for a holistic view of content production to dissemination.

This study evaluates a “feedback-only,” constrained-generative AI tool designed to support revision without generating or rewriting student text. StoryCoach was developed for a business communication elective and grounded in cognitive apprenticeship with principles of feedback literacy. The tool generated structured feedback: one strength, one opportunity, and one reflective question per submission. Analysis of 57 paired drafts showed significant gains in feature-specific rhetorical execution, with vividness as the primary quantitative indicator (Cohen’s d  = 1.39), supported by independent reader judgments and student reflections. Findings demonstrate that constrained-generative AI can function as a pedagogical partner that strengthens rhetorical awareness and preserves authorship integrity.

This is an accepted article with a DOI pre-assigned that is not yet published.Rhetoricians and bioethicists have analyzed medical assistance in dying (MAiD), sometimes referred to as physician assisted suicide or euthanasia, and suggested that it falls into predictable topoi. To deepen our understanding of public deliberation around medical assistance in dying, we propose a Multi-Methodological, Multiply Ontological (M3O) approach. M3O encourages phronesis through methodological and ontological pivots. Diverging findings from each pivot may surface complexities that only come from putting those findings into conversation. We analyzed public testimony about MAiD bills proposed in Connecticut and Nevada with both framegram and topoi analysis, to discern how pro and anti-MAiD rhetors conceptualized personhood in this discourse. We found that both sides build arguments around intersecting topoi of (1) personhood as a set of ontological traits, (2) personhood as a social practice, (3) questions of autonomy, and (4) issues of vulnerability to suffering. When placed into the context of existing data on MAiD discourse and policy, we found that questions of dignity and personhood may be placed into deeper conversation with an analysis of risk and autonomy to complicate our assumptions about the values implied in this discourse.

This is an accepted article with a DOI pre-assigned that is not yet published.The current definition of post-truth creates an adversarial relationship with rhetorical theory, relying on a positivist stance toward epistemology. Additionally, the most public-facing scholarship concerning post-truth tends to view knowledge in rather concrete ways, failing to account for the nuance of differing types of knowledge and rhetorical situations. As a result, most of the pragmatic approaches to dealing with disingenuous post-truth rhetorical tactics are predicated on positivism (e.g., fact-checking) and post-truth gets either downplayed or only treated theoretically in rhetorical scholarship. This article redefines post-truth in a manner more amendable to rhetorical theory and presents a heuristic predicated on stasis theory as a method for evaluating the epistemic certainty of rhetorical claims. The heuristic is then used to analyze an exchange from an episode of the podcast Armchair Expert to demonstrate how rhetorical discourse can become unproductive and adversarial when interlocutors claim an inappropriate amount of epistemic certainty, in particular by treating value-based claims as facts. Discussions of the post-truth dilemma need to extend beyond the confines of the current definition to include all discursive practices that ascribe the wrong amount of epistemic certainty to particular claims, not just practices that challenge established knowledge and facts.

This article adds to previous literature on writing “wayfinding” by examining how a writer’s religious beliefs and commitments shape their rhetorical choices and influence their writing wayfinding. The 5-year longitudinal study we report here used discourse-based interviews to understand the experiences of student writers who are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Examining texts our study participants wrote in and outside of college classrooms, our analysis highlights moments when they used emotion and affect as rhetorical strategies to accomplish instrumental and relational goals. We found that in these moments, participants’ commitments as Latter-day Saints and their related identities significantly affected their writing decisions and their sense of wayfinding, particularly as they navigated writing contexts outside of familiar academic settings. The article suggests that understanding the challenges and opportunities writers face in the intersections between their rhetorical choices and their commitments as members of an organized church can help writing teachers better support students' writing development.

We invite readers to imagine Graphic RHM as more than a column but a growing community of practice (CoP) and offer two analogies for doing so: 1) a mycelial network with connections branching across the fields of rhetoric, health and medicine, and the graphic arts, and 2) a beehive, where sustained growth comes from intentional contributions and shared effort. The comics featured in Column 2 (https://medicalrhetoric .com /graphicRHM /home /archive/column -2/), including Ann E. Fink’s “The Work of Grief,” reflect the range and depth of work emerging from this CoP.

Survivor’s guilt haunts countless veterans, yet little research examines how veterans rhetorically process this experience. This study analyzes poetry from post-9/11 veterans to identify a distinct rhetorical mode we term reparative ethos.  While existing Mental Health Rhetoric Research (MHRR) has identified and extensively explored recuperative ethos—strategies used to restore credibility in the face of externally imposed stigma—we propose that some veterans may also engage in what we call reparative ethos. Unlike recuperative ethos, which addresses externally imposed stigma through appeals to living audiences, reparative ethos aims to make amends to internalized representations of lost comrades. Drawing on Melanie Klein’s object relations theory and MHRR, we analyze poems from Warrior Writers anthologies that explicitly address survivor’s guilt. Our analysis reveals that veterans engage in narrative acts of reparation directed toward deceased others, addressing both the loss of external relationships and threats to internalized military ethos. This research extends MHRR by demonstrating how trauma can generate inward-facing rhetorical strategies focused on healing rather than persuasion, offering new frameworks for understanding veteran mental healthcare and creative expression.

This article demonstrates the value of sentiment analysis for contextualizing audiences in Rhetoric of Health and Medicine (RHM) by comparing vaccine related newspaper comments to non-vaccine related comments in the New York Times from 2017–2023 (n = 22,330,999). Our results show that while all comments skew negative, following a similar trend line, after the emergence of COVID-19, vaccine related comments decouple from the negative trend of baseline non-vaccine comments, becoming more negative and volatile. These results raise additional questions about the nature of the negativity for vaccine related comments, and we provide a properly sampled dataset for follow-up research to encourage iterative investigation into the public response to vaccine policy. In addition to these findings, this article calls for broader engagement with Natural Language Processing (NLP) and data science in RHM.

This study contributes to the emerging research on generative AI and writing pedagogy by exploring how college writing students make use of GAI when offered instruction in a range of responsible uses and latitude to integrate it into their writing process as they see fit. We analyzed chat log data and papers from participants recruited from six sections in which students were guided in experimenting with ChatGPT Plus and permitted to use it to produce up to 50% of submitted work. Through a combination of AI and human thematic content analysis of student chat logs, we found that in 18.6% of prompts, students asked ChatGPT to write for them. The rest of the prompts involved work leading up to or in support of the writing process. Human thematic content analysis of papers showed that students used ChatGPT to generate 8.2% of the writing they submitted. The most common rhetorical purpose of the AI-generated text they included was discussion/analysis/synthesis. English as a foreign language students (EFLs) in the sample prompted ChatGPT to clarify understanding less often than non-EFLs and integrated less AI-generated text into their papers, with a particularly notable difference in their use of AI-generated summaries. This unexpected finding merits further research, but it suggests that EFLs may use GAI for somewhat different purposes than non-EFL peers.

The Research Excellence Framework (REF) is the U.K. government’s means of allocating funding to universities based on assessments of the research they produce. Conducted every five years, this exercise now includes not only the ‘quality’ of research but also its real-world ‘impact’. This helps determine the £7.16 billion distributed annually to universities and influences the reputations of institutions and academics. Writers are therefore keen to make the most persuasive argument for their work they can in these submissions through the narrative case studies that the submission requires. In this article, we examine all 6,361 case studies from the last exercise in 2021 to explore the rhetorical presentation of impact through an analysis of authorial stance. We found considerable use of self-mention, hedges, and boosters, with the hard science fields containing statistically significantly more markers and applied disciplines being particularly strong users. The study contributes to our understanding of stance in academic writing and the role of rhetorical persuasion in high-stakes assessment genres.

Abstract The use of social media influencers as a rhetorical strategy contributes significantly to reshaping Emmanuel Macron’s public image. Aimed at countering the perception of distance conveyed in his initial Covid-19 speeches, this study explores the strategy’s rhetorical mechanisms, illustrated by a surprising encounter with two Youtubers, presented as a reward. I argue that Macron’s ethos is redefined through a deliberate balance between authority and proximity – both crucial to his image repair. The influencers’ unique format enables the implementation of this dual strategy, but they go even further by functioning as intermediaries who assist the president in adapting his discourse to align with the expectations, language, and values of their followers. In this encounter, ethos serves as both a means and an end. The collaboration between the politician and the influencers raises several critical questions: How is the strategy constructed? Who holds authority, and upon which models of authority does each party construct and articulate their discourse? How does this interaction affect the president’s style and language? What are the characteristics of their interaction? This analysis explores how influencers shape Macron’s communication and reveals distinctive features of his rhetoric within this unique format. In doing so, broader questions emerge about the boundaries between rhetoric, argumentation, and manipulation.

Large Language Models (LLMs) have ignited discourse within the Technical and Professional Communications (TPC) community in relation to authorship and accountability. This article employs a qualitative synthesis of current and theoretical scholarship regarding authorship theory and LLMs. This analysis argues that while LLMs provide assistance to improve human-generated text, LLMs are unable to participate in authorship, as they cannot be held accountable for their outputs, participate in reciprocity, or demonstrate rhetorical awareness regarding audience and context. The analysis urges professors and professionals to consider concrete guidelines surrounding LLM usage to create transparency in the classroom and workplace.

US higher education faces mounting political pressure and censorship, resulting in threats to our institutional missions and challenges to academic freedom. In this article, we trace two moments in disciplinary history that examine (mis)understandings of how censorship functions: efforts to roll back the Guidelines for Nonsexist Use of Language in NCTE Publications (now Statement on Gender and Language ) and Students’ Right to Their Own Language , both approved by NCTE in the mid-1970s. We draw from the feminist theories of Kate Manne and bell hooks to analyze materials from the NCTE and CCCC archives, documenting the rhetorical and logistical moves employed in these rollback efforts. In doing so, we identify how the exploitation of organizational apparatuses contributed to the subversion of a larger and necessary priority: establishing credible disciplinary boundaries to serve as a bulwark against political encroachment into literacy education. In sorting through these case studies, we offer examination of how misguided censorship accusations can threaten our discipline when actual censorship efforts are enacted by governmental entities.

This graduate level assignment requires students analyze rhetorical artifacts through an African American epistemology of rhetorical knowledge. The expectations of the assignment built on the concepts of Kemetic-rooted (Ancient Egyptian) rhetorical traditions that are common to the U.S.’s Black communities. The objective of the assignment was for learners demonstrate foundational declarative and procedural knowledge of the practices and frameworks within an African-American rhetorical tradition that would help them expand their understanding of rhetorical aims throughout the course and beyond. This assignment expanded the perception of the relationship between rhetoric, society, culture, and community both historically and contemporarily. For some students, working with a different rhetorical mindset allowed them to theorize about rhetorical communication in ways they feel they had not been able to articulate in previous courses or contexts.

Typically, one might expect a review to highlight similarities, but here, I choose to place these books side by side for their contrasting perspectives.Before delving into the essence of the comparisons, it is important to recall the mission of the AK Peters Visualization Series.This series aims to capture what visualization is today in all its variety and diversity, giving voice to researchers, practitioners, designers, and enthusiasts.It encompasses books from all subfields of visualization, including visual analytics, information visualization, scientific visualization, data journalism, infographics, and their connection to adjacent areas such as text analysis, digital humanities, data art, or augmented and virtual reality ("AK Peters Visualization Series," n.d.).Both authors are practitioners who bring their expertise in communicating through visualized information and data.Jen Christiansen, who graduated in geology and art, is a senior graphics editor at Scientific American, while Nancy Organ, formally trained in statistics, has experience as a data visualization designer and educator.Each utilizes her unique skills for effective communication.Traditionally, rhetoric is understood as "a discipline concerned with the effective use of language, to persuade, give pleasure, and so on" (Matthews 2007).While this definition seems self-evident, it is essential to note that contemporary rhetoric encompasses all modes of communication.Interestingly, practitioners, educators, and researchers frequently refer to "the language [bold -EM] of data visualization," exploring its grammar, vocabulary, and stylistics (DataVis Lisboa 2020; "Visual Vocabulary," n.d.; Ben-Joseph 2016; Kandogan and Lee 2016).This context invites a closer examination of three key aspects: first, how various authors describe persuasive communication through information and data visualization, or as some call it, data storytelling; second, how to expand our rhetorical framework to include data, numbers, and statistics; and third, a deeper exploration of the audiences-crucial for rhetoricians-of data and information visualizations.As Burns et al. (2020) state.When designers create visualizations for communication, they make choices about encoding and design that they think will accurately and persuasively communicate their interpretation of the data.The ultimate interpretation of a visualization depends on both the designer and the reader. InventioBoth books target distinct audiences, as indicated by their titles.Building Science Graphics serves as both a textbook and a practical reference for anyone looking to convey scientific information through illustrations for articles, poster presentations, and beyond ("AK Peters Visualization Series," n.d.).In contrast, Data Visualization for People of All Ages is more approachable, specifically aimed

The article investigates the factors influencing the formation of rhetorical norms in social media. The case discussed concerns the activity of politicians in an election campaign. The author argues that, in addition to existing norms resulting from law, practice and the situation on the political scene, new conditions of online communication must be taken into account – the significance of technology and the change in the citizen’s position as a participant in the interaction.

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 article addresses the issue of the so-called ‘commonplaces’ of two cultures in relation to comparative genology and generative anthropology. It focuses on three themes particularly important to both civilisations: the birth motif and genre of birthday songs, the ritual and tri-unity of dance, sound, and word, and the approach to battle and death. By comparing the genres and cultural phenomena of the Greeks and Romans with those of the Toltecs and Aztecs, the analysis reveals similarities between the ancient literatures of Mediterranean Europe and Mesoamerican tribes. Research that uses the apparatus of generative anthropology and draws from the interdependence of rhetoric and culture offers new conclusions.

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.