ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the origins of rhetoric and our modern-day attitudes to it. It identifies some rhetorical approaches to analysis. It describes a practical example of speech-making to explore the relationship between rhetoric and discourse. Charteris-Black follows Wodak's Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA), a type of Critical Discourse Analysis. Critical discourse work is concerned with how language use perpetuates discrimination and power inequalities. Beasley highlights two broad academic traditions within the US that inform contemporary interest in rhetoric and political discourse. The first of these traditions - termed 'public address scholarship' -. is concerned with the inner workings of a speech. The second tradition, largely arising from social science scholarship and referred to by Beasley as 'political communication'. Aristotle's definition of rhetorical skill as 'the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion' reminds that speeches are an art form that is highly dependent on context.
