ABSTRACT
No reader of journal articles and miscellaneous publications in rhetoric and public address during the last two decades can have failed to note a mounting interest in something called “rhetorical criticism.” All scholars in the field, it sometimes appears, aspire to the appellation of “critic.” A writer in one of our journals recently proposed a distinction between rhetorical history and rhetorical criticism, and went further to urge that studies of discourse should usually be “either exercises in rhetorical history-writing or critical ventures into interesting problematic, or insightful aspects of discourse.” Central to Wrage’s message was the idea that speeches are mirrors as well as instruments or engines. Because speeches are prepared with listeners in mind, he said, because speeches on vital issues are “vibrant with the immediacy of life, with the sense of interaction between speaker and listeners,” they are admirable indices to social thought.
