User:Cc3531/Rhetoric

Hi Dr. Vetter, I'd like to receive your input before I revise this section on Comparative Rhetoric any further. Thank you! Cc3531 (talk) 23:54, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

Excellent work - this is ready to go with a few edits to the first paragraph. DarthVetter (talk) 18:08, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

Comparative Rhetoric
Comparative rhetoric is a practice and methodology that developed in the late twentieth century to broaden the study of rhetoric beyond the dominant rhetorical tradition that has been constructed and shaped in western Europe and the U.S. As a research practice, comparative rhetoric studies past and present cultures across the globe to reveal diversity in the uses of rhetoric and to uncover rhetorical perspectives, practices, and traditions that have been historically underrepresented or dismissed. As a methodology, comparative rhetoric constructs a culture's rhetorical perspectives, practices, and traditions on their own terms, in their own contexts, as opposed to using European or American theories, terminology, or framing.

Comparative rhetoric is comparative in that it illuminates how rhetorical traditions relate to one another, while seeking to avoid binary depictions or value judgments. These relationalities can reveal issues of power within and between cultures as well as new or under-recognized ways of thinking, doing, and being that challenge or enrich the Western tradition and provide a fuller account of rhetorical studies.

Robert T. Oliver is credited as the first scholar who recognized the need to study non-Western rhetorics in his 1971 publication Communication and Culture in Ancient India and China. George A. Kennedy has also been credited for publishing the first cross-cultural overview of rhetoric in his 1998 publication Comparative Rhetoric: An Historical and Cross-cultural Introduction. Though Oliver's and Kennedy's works contributed to the birth of comparative rhetoric, given the newness of the field, they both used Western terms and theories to interpret non-Western cultures' practices.

LuMing Mao has published extensively on comparative rhetoric, helping to shape and define the field. In 2015, Mao and several other composition and rhetoric scholars published an article in Rhetoric Review titled “Manifesting a Future for Comparative Rhetoric.” Their article includes a manifesto with the first collective effort to identify comparative rhetoric's definition, goals and methodologies. The tenets of this manifesto are engaged in many later works that study or utilize comparative rhetoric.