Rhetoric

Rhetoric is the study and practice of how language and other communicative resources are shaped to affect the conveyance, interpretation, reception, or force of a message. Different linguistic, cultural, and intellectual traditions may define the domain, purposes, mechanisms, and effects of rhetoric differently.

Within the Encyclopedia of Arabic Rhetoric, the terms rhetoric and rhetorical are used as conventional English-language labels for phenomena belonging specifically to the Arabic science al-balāgha.

It should be noted that al-balāgha partly overlaps with, but is distinct from, Greco-Western rhetoric. Within the Encyclopedia of Arabic Rhetoric, al-balāgha is approached as a communicative science concerned broadly with effective communication, whereas persuasion has occupied a particularly prominent position within Greco-Western conceptions of rhetoric.

See Also