ABSTRACT
Persuasion occupies a curious place in contemporary society. This chapter offers several core concepts and principles that entertain the globalized rhetoric hypothesis. When the words persuasion, propaganda, and rhetoric are used in references to educators, artists, scientists, and newscasters, they are frequently terms of derision. In early communication models, the message was what was said, as transmitted by a source to a receiver via a channel or medium. The ancient Greeks and Romans devoted an entire division of rhetoric to style and another to the delivery of the message. In situations where people are suspected of concealing or distorting information, observers heed their non-verbals rather than their apparently deliberate verbal messages. Another gray area of communication involves expression games; these are contests over the control, and detection of control, of our expressive behaviors. The chapter considers the globalized rhetoric hypothesis to expand what might be called the conventional view of persuasion.
