The art of persuasion: the relevance of rhetoric today

Abstract

In this article the author reviews the book "Persuading people: an introduction to rhetoric", by Robert and Susan Cockcroft (2005), and discusses the relevance of studying and teaching rhetoric today. The book presents a modern reading of ancient rhetoric, incorporating concepts of literary criticism and linguistics, and applies the techniques of rhetoric to the analysis of a wide corpus which includes literary texts, political speeches, press articles and advertisements. In the article I argue that the approach of the book presents rhetoric as a highly attractive, interdisciplinary field of study, offering an interesting perspective of text analysis for teachers and scholars of literature and linguistics, in particular in the areas of pragmatics and discourse analysis. Furthermore, the book includes a proposal for putting strategies of persuasion into practice, which can be used with students to improve their writing and speaking skills.