Rhetorical Critic's Role and Mission in Communication

Abstract

The Classical Greco-Roman rhetoric is considered to be the humanist basis of the Western cultures. This study aims to highlight the importance of the rhetorical tradition in the study of human communication. Rhetorical criticism of the communication sciences is one of the main approaches to qualitative textual analysis. In a meta-theoretic approach our work tries to establish the specific rhetorical criticism as a qualitative, interpretative and subjective discourse research method in our contemporary communicative society. We argue that the teacher who teaches his students rhetorical criticism provides a range of methodological and educational clues such as: understanding other people, clarification of the values, aesthetic appeal, community consensus and changing of the society. After all, the rhetorical critic's role is to internalize and propose a humanist alternative opposed to the dominant objective paradigm. Rhetorical critic's mission is to come up with his own discursive voice which is meant to communicate about the contemporary social and political challenges. In the spirit of the methodological pluralism we consider that in the field of communication, the practitioners of quantitative and qualitative methods should enjoy recognition and mutual respect.