Rhetorical Ethos: an Attempt at Linguistic Pragmatic Perspective on Classical Rhetoric

Abstract

Category: 1.01 Original scientific paper Language: Original in English (Abstract in English and Slovenian, Summary in Slovenian) Key words: rhetorical ethos, implicit meaning, early Roman rhetoric, authority, argumentation Abstract: The paper explores the possibilities of the interdisciplinary relationship between classical rhetoric and linguistic pragmatics. It presents one of the most popular rhetorical notions (i.e., rhetorical ethos) and its relation to implicit meaning (i.e., another popular notion of pragmatics). The primary objective is to analyze the rhetorical strategy of a speaker's favorable character presentation in the socio-cultural context of early Roman rhetoric. In the analysis, the Aristotelian and the socio-cultural viewpoint on rhetorical ethos is adopted and combined with Verschueren's model of linguistic pragmatics. Rhetorical ethos is further explored in terms of persuasive strategy in the context of different social roles of the orator in ancient Rome with a particular focus on the identification of ethotic strategies, which are related to the notion of authority. A case study based on the notion of types of implicit meaning is presented, focusing on the role of implicitness in the construction of rhetorical ethos in early Roman rhetoric.