ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the activity of constructing a system for organizing categories of rhetorical devices. I review existing categorization systems to abstract their essential characteristics. This produces a list of key properties that a good system of categories should possess (e.g., extensibility, inclusiveness, and generativity). I then demonstrate how a system of categories can be assembled from the ground up, using the example of pictorial layout in print advertisements. Along the way, I address a variety of issues that arise in connection with the activity of systematically linking rhetorical categories. The chapter is conceived as a tutorial aimed at an audience of doctoral students or other beginning scholars, with the purpose of attracting scholars to the enterprise of systematically linking together rhetorical categories that differentiate advertising style.
