ABSTRACT
To begin to understand rhetoric as an art of design, we need to examine why rhetoric is generally overlooked as a design art, why it is not likely to be heard in the same breath as arts like architecture, engineering, and graphic design. In this chapter we explore more received assumptions about the placement of rhetoric, either as a liberal or a practical art. In either of the traditional placements, the fit is not all that good. Rhetoric is typically viewed as more practical than the traditional liberal arts and more liberal than the traditional practical arts. We investigate the consequences of these received assumptions and examine their limitations. We finally develop a definition of the design arts that is compatible with the conception of rhetoric as an art of design.
