ABSTRACT
Since the inception of the study of rhetorical genres, analogies to the study of evolutionary biology have proliferated. Aristotle, the father of rhetorical genres, who was also a noted scientist and taxonomist, advanced the word “species” to describe the types of discourse humans were hardwired to produce and “found” three—epideictic (ceremonial discourse), deliberative (political discourse), and forensic (judicial discourse) (On Rhetoric, trans. L. Cooper, 1932). Campbell and Jamieson (1978), early practitioners of generic criticism, argued that: “Biologists speak of the genetic code inherent in the germ plasm[a] of each species. Although there will be variations, that code is the internal dynamic which determines the biological form of the individual member of the species. The internal dynamic of a genre is similar” (pp. 24–25).
