Gaining an understanding of rhetorical theory and its practical applications is a critical component to effective and competent communication. The Essential Guide to Rhetoric provides an accessible and balanced overview of the core historical and contemporary theories. It uses concrete, relevant examples and jargon-free language to bring these concepts to life. The guide helps students move from concept to action with discussions of invention, the traditions of trope, argument and speech, among others. This handy guide is an excellent addition to the public speaking class, extending and deepening crucial concepts, and an indispensable supplement to the rhetorical theory class.

The Essential Guide to Visual Communication is a concise introduction to the evolution, theory, and principles of visual communication in contemporary society. This guide helps students develop the skills they need to become critical consumers of visual media by examining images through the lens of visual rhetoric. Students see how images influence and persuade audiences, and how iconic images can be repurposed to communicate particular messages. Images selected and discussed throughout the text highlight examples of visual communication from earlier generations and the current digital environment that students encounter in their everyday lives.

"A Speaker's Guidebook" is the best resource in the classroom, on the job, and in the community. Praised for connecting with students who use and keep it year after year, this tabbed, comb-bound text covers all the topics typically taught in the introductory course and is the easiest-to-use public speaking text available. In every edition, hundreds of instructors have helped us focus on the fundamental challenges of the public speaking classroom. Improving on this tradition, the fifth edition does even more to address these challenges with stronger coverage of overcoming speech anxiety, organizing and outlining, and more. And as the realties of public speaking change, so does "A Speaker's Guidebook"; the new edition also focuses on presentational speaking in a digital world -- from finding credible sources online to delivering presentations in a variety of mediated formats. -- From product description.

Real Communication uses stories from real people and the world around us to present the best and most lively introduction to communication concepts. Professors and students alike have fallen in love with Real Communication’s down-to-earth writing style, its coverage of research, and its wealth of learning and teaching tools. They also appreciate how Real Communication strives to weave the discipline’s different strands together with the CONNECT feature that shows students how concepts work and apply across interpersonal, small group, and public speaking contexts. The Second Edition is even better with a broader array of engaging examples, new coverage of hot topics in the field like Intercultural and mediated communication, plus a public speaking unit honed to provide the essential information students need for this fast-paced course. Whether you want a traditional paperback, an e-Book — online or downloadable to a device — a looseleaf edition, or the book within the new HumanCommClass, Real Communication has an option for you. Read the preface.

Genuine Teachers of This Art examines the technê, or "handbook," tradition—which it controversially suggests began with Isocrates—as the central tradition in ancient rhetoric and a potential model for contemporary rhetoric. From this innovative perspective, Jeffrey Walker offers reconsiderations of rhetorical theories and schoolroom practices from early to late antiquity as the true aim of the philosophical rhetoric of Isocrates and as the distinctive expression of what Cicero called "the genuine teachers of this art." Walker makes a case for considering rhetoric not as an Aristotelian critical-theoretical discipline, but as an Isocratean pedagogical discipline in which the art of rhetoric is neither an art of producing critical theory nor even an art of producing speeches and texts, but an art of producing speakers and writers. He grounds his study in pedagogical theses mined from revealing against-the-grain readings of Cicero, Isocrates, and Dionysius of Halicarnassus. Walker also locates supporting examples from a host of other sources, including Aelius Theon, Aphthonius, the Rhetoric to Alexander, the Rhetoric to Herennius, Quintilian, Hermogenes, Hermagoras, Lucian, Libanius, Apsines, the Anonymous Seguerianus, and fragments of ancient student writing preserved in papyri. Walker's epilogue considers the relevance of the ancient technê tradition for the modern discipline of rhetoric, arguing that rhetoric is defined foremost by its pedagogical enterprise.

"As both professors and scholars, Christian Lundberg and William Keith believe that an understanding of rhetorical theory and its practical applications is a critical component of effective and competent communication. Most importantly, the authors are convinced that an understanding of rhetoric -- and of how persuasive strategies can advance or detract from public life -- is crucial for the future of our democracy."--

This book provides social science majors with a systematic way of learning to write in their fields. It is based on the assumption that such writing is not a mechanical process, but a kind of rhetoric social scientists use to persuade each other of the validity of their research. KEY TOPICS: Features comprehensive coverage of research methods, including how to plan and propose original research, how to gather data or evidence from sources and how to document it. It goes beyond the typical survey of library tools and offers a brief chapter on how to use the Internet as a research tool.