ABSTRACT

This paper aims to expand an appreciation of the nature of character assassination as a rhetorical phenomenon and relate its emerging literature to the rich understanding generated by the rhetorical and political communication traditions. This is achieved by explicating a concept directly related to the phenomenon of CA: the ad hominem argument and exploring the rhetorical topoi and communication strategies that the financial crisis and the Economic and Monetary Union regime made available for the party system in crisis-stricken countries like Greece.