An Introduction to Rhetorical Terms

This study guide gives students a handy reference to the background knowledge of rhetorical terms demanded of them by critical and theoretical texts in the humanities.

An important part of the vocabulary of cultural criticism and theory today is in the rhetorical terms we read and write, reason and refute by. These are the means by which we tell and receive the stories that explain the world. This book is divided into three sections, the first dealing with classical and traditional figures (such as simile, metaphor and metonym), the second dealing with non-figures and near-tropes (like signs and symbols), the final section of the book devoted to new figures, and to rhetoric and tropology today. This last section familiarises the reader with many new rhetorical terms employed in post-structural criticism and theory (terms like bricolage, differed and difference). Through the study of rhetoric "old and new" one learns how meaning is made. It is through that kind of understanding one gets to decide what to mean.