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SUMMARY

What is the New Rhetoric?
PREFACE
JOHN O. WARD

“Rhetoric” fits with the idea of “discourse” because every unit or individual has one “discourse” or “rhetoric”, but none of them should be privileged. Every discipline has their discourse different from the idea of “absolute disciplinary truth”. From the rhetorical point of view, “truth” is what somebody wants another to believe (modern advertising). Rhetoric (classical Greek) is the art of public speaking. It has belonged to the elite up to the late period in the Roman Imperial. Saint Agustine (354-430 AD)- writer and intellectual- revolutionises rhetorical ideas and teaching emphasizing admiration of biblical heroes and the study of the Bible, and abandoning the old ideas of rhetoric. Although rhetoric has been changing up to now, we all use the ancient techniques of persuasion in marketing and advertising avoiding the ethical and moral imperative of the past since we do not know how familiar our youngsters are to the use of old rhetoric.
Rhetoric should not only be used for marketing because it includes culture, genders, classes and animals. It is necessary to learn its history and its meaning because it is a useful tool of the new technology in regard to the new electronic age: writing, text-hypertext, literacy-orality among others.

INTRODUCTION
SUSAN THOMAS

Rhetoric is informing and influencing academic practices in higher education. It, interdisciplinary, goes through technology, methodology, educational practice, professional communication, and ethics. Art and science rely upon rhetoric going from classical to contemporary communication practices. For fifty years so far, “new rhetoric” has had different theories and movements, and the question is “how it is seen and used in the 21st century.
New rhetoric’s themes are that:
• Classical art of rhetoric is still important.
• It is associated to modern technologies and means of communication.
• It informs methodologies and practices in the contemporary academy.
There are five principles of classical rhetoric:
Inventions,
Arrangements,
Style,
Memory, and
Delivery
which are present in written and oral communication in technological environments.
“Rhetoric” is seen as a negative term when it is associated with media or politics. In academy, it is considered as synonymous with correction. In contremporary university, rhetoric has a deeper role, for example, to a critical understanding of culture. It is linked to theatre and writing studies and it can be used in practical examples of the everyday life, for example responding to students’ work.
Rhetoric is the discipline which erases the cultural and disciplinary borders, in order to improve communication in the classroom or in the chatroom because it is the pillar of ethical and meaningful human communication.