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FROM RHETRICKERY TO RHETOROLOGY Wayne Booth. The Rhetoric of Rhetoric: The Quest for Effective Communication. Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 2004. Pp. 206 [US edition $19.95]. Paper.
Wayne C. Booth, Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Chicago, has, over a long and distinguished career, worked to rehabilitate rhetoric in schools and in society. This book, part of the Blackwell Manifestos series, attempts once more this rehabilitation.
Booth opens with a taxonomy of attitudes towards rhetoric, ranging from "rhetrickery," the art of producing misunderstanding and making the worse case appear the better, to "rhetorology," the art of reducing misunderstanding and creating common ground and common understandings. In this first section, he also offers a brief history of the rise, fall, and rise again of rhetoric, with its rebirth in the second half of the twentieth century, including many attempts by authors who never use rhetorical terminology and would not consider themselves rhetorical theorists. The appendix at the end of this discussion shows the breadth of rhetorical studies across the disciplines.
In a chapter called "Judging Rhetoric," Booth offers another taxonomy, this time of three kinds of rhetoric, broken into ten sub-categories according to skill and intendon. The discussion moves from "win-rhetoric" (what most people not working in the discipline would understand to be the entirety of rhetoric) through "bargain rhetoric" (which seeks for truces and...