• disciplinarity
• the profession

The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the Language Sciences' entry on rhetoric claims that:

"Today, rhetoric and persuasion have dissipated into a number of associative language-based domains that include composition, word and image studies, philosophy, psychology, communication studies, argumentation analysis, and stylistics. Rhetoric is crucial to freshman composition courses in universities.... it is here that the didactic and pedagogical quality of rhetoric as a skill, in the true Aristotelian sense of techne, to be applied to other subjects rather than a subject in itself, comes to the fore.

"In communication studies, the term rhetoric has all but disappeared, even if what happens there is essentially still rhetoric as the ancients described it. This social scientific approach to modern rhetorical theory tends to focus more on cognition and emotion than on language, more on reception than production..."

The only speech rhetorician cited is Herb Simons, and that is used as evidence for the dispersal and especially for the reception emphasis.

The entry is by Michael Burke, Roosevelt Academy of Utrecht University, whom I've never heard of. The entry is a page long; I have excised all the pre-20th century discussion. But what do you think? Fair?

--db

• syntaxfactory's blog