A Rhetorics of the Word is the second volume of a three-part philosophy of Christian life. It approaches Christian life as expressive of a divine calling or vocation. The word Church (ekklesia) and the role of naming in baptism indicate the fundamental place of calling in Christian life. However, ideas of vocation are difficult to access in a world shaped by the experience of disenchantment. The difficulties of articulating vocation are explored with reference to Weber, Heidegger, and Kierkegaard. These are further connected to a general crisis of language, manifesting in the degradation of political discourse (Arendt) and the impact of new communications technology on human discourse. This impact can be seen as reinforcing an occlusion of language in favour of rationality already evidenced in the philosophical tradition and technocratic management. New possibilities for thinking vocation are pursued through the biblical prophets (with emphasis on Buber's and Rosenzweig's reinterpretation of the call of Moses), Saint John, and Russian philosophies of language (Florensky to Bakhtin). Vocation emerges as bound up with the possibility of being name-bearers, enabling a mutuality of call and response. This is then evidenced further in ethics and poetics, where Levinas and Hermann Broch (The Death of Virgil) become major points of reference. In conclusion, the themes of calling and the name are seen to shape the possibility of love-the subject of the final part of the philosophy of Christian life: A Metaphysics of Love.

Rhetoric gives our words the power to inspire. But it's not just for politicians: it's all around us, whether you're buttering up a key client or persuading your children to eat their greens. You have been using rhetoric yourself, all your life. After all, you know what a rhetorical question is, don't you? In this updated edition of his classic guide, Sam Leith traces the art of argument from ancient Greece down to its many modern mutations. He introduces verbal villains from Hitler to Donald Trump - and the three musketeers: ethos, pathos and logos. He explains how rhetoric works in speeches from Cicero to Richard Nixon, and pays tribute to the rhetorical brilliance of AC/DC's "Back In Black". Before you know it, you'll be confident in chiasmus and proud of your panegyrics - because rhetoric is useful, relevant and absolutely nothing to be afraid of.

FITTING WORDS instructs students in the art of Rhetoric, providing them with tools for communication that will equip them for life. Intended for high school aged students and above, Fitting Words is a complete curriculum covering a year of instruction. In this curriculum, students will not only learn about using effective words, they will practice using effective words.

"But the point of Burke's work, and the significance of his achievement, is not that he points out that religion and language affect each other, for this has been said before, but that he proceeds to demonstrate how this is so by reference to a specific symbolic context. After a discussion 'On Words and The Word,' he analysess verbal action in St. Augustine's Confessions. He then discusses the first three chapters of Genesis, and ends with a brilliant and profound 'Prologue in Heaven,' an imaginary dialogue between the Lord and Satan in which he proposes that we begin our study of human motives with complex theories of transcendence,' rather than with terminologies developed in the use of simplified laboratory equipment. . . . Burke now feels, after some forty years of search, that he has created a model of the symbolic act which breaks through the rigidities of the 'sacred-secular' dichotomy, and at the same time shows us how we get from secular and sacred realms of action over the bridge of language. . . . Religious systems are systems of action based on communication in society. They are great social dramas which are played out on earth before an ultimate audience, God. But where theology confronts the developed cosmological drama in the 'grand style,' that is, as a fully developed cosmological drama for its religious content, the 'logologer' can be further studied not directly as knowledge but as anecdotes that help reveal for us the quandaries of human governance." --Hugh Dalziel Duncan from Critical Responses to Kenneth Burke, 1924 - 1966, edited by William H. Rueckert (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1969).

American Indian Rhetorics of Survivance presents an original critical and theoretical analysis of American Indian rhetorical practices in both canonical and previously overlooked texts: autobiographies, memoirs, prophecies, and oral storytelling traditions. Ernest Stromberg assembles essays from a range of academic disciplines that investigate the rhetorical strategies of Native American orators, writers, activists, leaders, and intellectuals.The contributors consider rhetoric in broad terms, ranging from Aristotle's definition of rhetoric as "the faculty . . . of discovering in the particular case what are the available means of persuasion," to the ways in which Native Americans assimilated and revised Western rhetorical concepts and language to form their own discourse with European and American colonists. They relate the power and use of rhetoric in treaty negotiations, written accounts of historic conflicts and events, and ongoing relations between American Indian governments and the United States. This is a groundbreaking collection for readers interested in Native American issues and the study of language. In presenting an examination of past and present Native American rhetoric, it emphasizes the need for an improved understanding of multicultural perspectives.

This title was first published in 2003:This book offers a bold reading of Protestant tradition from a rhetorical and literary perspective. Arguing that Protestant thought is based in a rhetorical performance of authority, Hobson draws on a wide range of modern and postmodern thought to defend this account of rhetorical authority from various charges of authoritarianism. With close readings of Augustine, Luther, Kierkegaard and Barth, this book develops a new 'rhetorical theology of the Word' and also a new critique of secular modernity, with particular reference to modern literature and the thought of Nietzsche. Confronting the related issues of rhetoric and authority, Hobson provides a provocative account of modern theology which offers new perspectives on theology's relationship to literature and postmodern thought.

Ward Farnsworth details the timeless principles of rhetoric from Ancient Greece to the present day, drawing on examples in the English language of consummate masters of prose, such as Lincoln, Churchill, Dickens, Melville, and Burke.