Rhetoric and Argumentation. Approaching journalism as a rhetorical performance

Abstract

This paper is aimed to describe all the texts of journalism as rhetorical performances in a general theoretic frame. According to the author’s point of view, all types of articles published in printed as well as online media can be reconstructed and explained by the devices of rhetoric. For first we go through chronologically the different explanations of rhetoric, getting to the postmodern era with “nethoric”. After describing the properties of the latter, we observe the impact of rhetoric on professional and civic journalism. Underlining the main arguments of the paper, we will show a Hungarian case study on the attitudes and rhetorical evaluation towards a particular speech. In the end, we summarize the most used informal (non-categorical) argumentative devices and tools in rhetoric and argumentation.