ABSTRACT
Traditionally, language used in this way is associated with rhetoric. The basic modes of rhetoric center on the use of vivid and well-articulated speech or writing for persuasive purposes. The intention behind this is encourage the acceptance of particular beliefs, or the taking of specific actions. Rhetoric is has especially close associations with religious, civic, and political discourse. In Cassirean terms the basic symbolic function is here engaged through the particularities of a particular speech-act, operating in a way that speaks beyond its original circumstances of articulation, so as to illuminate a more universal dimension of meaning that is at issue in them. In order for rhetoric to engage the listener or reader's interest, it makes use of characteristic linguistic devices such as metaphors and metonyms. The effect of metaphor is often especially powerful and has been very widely discussed in all traditions of aesthetics since the Second World War.
