From Corax and Tisias to Cyber-Rhetoric: About the historical,

contemporary and always renewed

communicative strength of Rhetoric

Tomás Albaladejo (*)

(Universidad Autónoma de Madrid)

[Address delivered in the Plenary Session of Founders and former Presidents of the
I.S.H.R. at the 16th Biennial Conference of the I.S.H.R.,
Strasbourg, 24th-28th July, 2007]

Monsieur le Président de la Société Internationale d’Histoire de

la Rhétorique, Monsieur le Président de la session, chers Collègues,
Mesdames et Messieurs, bonjour.
I thank very much the Organising Committee of the 16th
Biennial Conference of the International Society for the History of
Rhetoric, the President Laurent Pernot and the Université Marc Bloch
Strasbourg II for the invitation to participate in this session with the
Founders and Former presidents of the I.S.H.R. to commemorate the
thirtieth anniversary of its foundation in Zürich in 1977 by Marc
Fumaroli, Anton Leeman, Alain Michel, James Murphy, Heinrich
Plett and Brian Vickers. Congratulations for the organisation of the

(*)
President of the I.S.H.R. in 2001-2003.

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Conference. Congratulations and long life to the International Society
for the History of Rhetoric.
Sine historia, Rhetorica non est. Historia sermonis et historia
sermonis scientiae Rhetoricam faciunt in hoc tempore. Geschichte is
Zukunft. La Rhétorique est un système historique. Conoscere la sua
storia è conoscere le sue possibilità di sviluppo. La esencia de la
Retórica de ayer, hoy y mañana nos es dada por su historia.
Since its birth and along its history, Rhetoric has enlarged
continuously the field of its space of practice and study without going
out from any former space. As it is well known, Rhetoric was born in
Sicily as a tool of communication that persuaded the hearers in order
that they could decide in such a way that the proposals done by the
orator were accepted. Discourse delivered in courts was the original
object and practice of Rhetoric.
The original communicative field of Rhetoric is orality, where it
began its career and where it developed a complex and complete
instrument for discursive production and for face-to-face delivery.
Many items of Rhetoric system were created for a direct and
immediate communication to the hearers, and consequently the have
given Rhetoric an oral basis that provides a shape that is present even
in non-oral uses of Rhetoric.
Rhetoric was established as a system that is the result of an
explicit systematisation of human power to communicate by means of
discourse. Many of the rhetorical resources are a consequence of the
transformation into communicative rules of practical hints based in

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common sense. It is the case, for example, of the notion of taedium as
an effect that must be avoided by means of doing that discourse is
pleasant and not too long innecessarily.
Undoubtedly, Rhetoric is the most powerful tool for oral
communication since its origins up to now. However, the conditions
of oral communication have changed since the early and classical
developments of Rhetoric. Political conditions have changed in Greek
cultural space since the peak of success of Rhetoric until its
transferring to Rome. The evolution of Roman Rhetoric arrives to a
stage where it has not political usefulness, but it maintains a high
cultural and educational weight, and it is an important part of the
programme of formation of Roman citizens. Rhetoric adapts itself to
new circumstances, and it continues to be a system of knowledge for
communication and life in society, since courts do not lack Rhetoric.
The figure of Quintilian, who wrote his systematic treatise Institutio
oratoria when conditions for Rhetoric in political life were not the
best ones, is a keynote for the value and validity of Rhetoric beyond
the concrete circumstances. Of course, the full implication of Rhetoric
in life-together is achieved when political and social freedom is the
ground of the context of production and delivery of discourses.
Orality has accompanied Rhetoric since its origins until now and
shows one of the most social aspects of the art of persuasion. Orality
is connected to immediateness and directness in communication, as
well as to public sessions. The orality of Rhetoric is a collaborating
constituent of law and justice: trials could not be carried out without

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orality, because of the necessity of communication in public sessions,
with public questions, answers, witnesses, proofs and speeches.
Therefore, orality is one of the main original features of Rhetoric, with
an essential role in its practice, and it remains as one of its main
contemporary and valid features. Today, we can hear oral discourses
like Greeks and Romans heard them in courts, in political chambers,
and other public places.
However, the orality of today’s Rhetoric presents some
differences with respect to its former orality. Nowadays, orality of
rhetorical discourse is supported by technical means which allow
discourse to reach more and more hearers. Electronic devices like
microphones or media like radio and television are communicative
prostheses of rhetorical discourse and they aid communication by
offering it to hearers that otherwise could not hear, receive and
interpret it. The technique of microphones have changed practice of
discourse in parliaments and courts, where oral communication is not
done only with the own orator’s voice, because his/her voice is aided
by this technique. Radio and television can broadcast discourses
everywhere, making it possible that hearers who are not present in the
place of delivery can hear them. The role of magnetic register of voice
or image is similar to that of these media.
But Rhetoric has not developed only the practice and theory of
the oral channel. It expanded to the written channel by transferring its
notions and components to writing. Let us think of the case of the
artes dictaminis in the Middle Ages, which constitutes the assumption

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of foundations and master lines of oral rhetorical discourse to a
canonical kind of written discourse. But the conquering of new areas
of communication by Rhetoric does not stop in written discourse:
Rhetoric not only has also extended to different kinds of written
discourse, journalistic texts, but it has continued its extending in other
fields, like those of visual and plastic communication, media and
digital communication.
The forensic kind of discourse was the original discursive space
of rhetorical practice, but it extended soon to deliberative and
demonstrative or epideictic kinds of discourse. Early Rhetoric began
to explore all the possible occurrence of public oral discourse, and
thus deliberative discourse became an important space for political life
and for the organisation and running of society, while epideictic
discourse contributed to the cohesion and civic consciousness of it.
The connection to literary text is one of the historical links of
Rhetoric. The constitution of the system of figures and tropes in the
realm of Rhetoric was undoubtedly an opportunity for approaching the
two classical disciplines of discourse: Rhetoric and Poetics. The
adoption by Poetics of the rhetorical figures and tropes established an
open and permanent way of connection and interchange between it
and Rhetoric. In addition to this, the constitution of the demonstrative
or epideictic kind of discourse offered an area of approach and even of
common interests for Rhetoric and Poetics. As it is well known,
epideictic discourse is the most neighbouring of all rhetorical
discourses to literature, to the fields of Poetics.

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 The birth of journalism provided an adaptation of Rhetoric to the
characteristics of this new kind of written communication that
welcame new forms of discourse. In its turn, oral and image media
required to Rhetoric to pay attention to them. But Rhetoric of
journalism, Rhetoric of radio and Rhetoric of television, as well as
Rhetoric of advertising are only adaptations of Rhetoric, and they
maintains the master lines and the essential constitution of Rhetoric.
They are not realisation of Rhetoric different from the foundations of
Rhetoric. The historical and systematic communicative strength of
Rhetoric enables it to deal with new forms of discourses, since they
have the essential components of rhetorical discourse. This is possible
because of the rhetorical pregnancy of language as proposed by
Gerardo Ramírez Vidal or the rhetorical nature of language as
proposed by Antonio López Eire. I call rhetoricalness this feature of
language and communication. All linguistic constructions have
rhetoricalness, but it is fully present in those which have discursive
dimensions and persuasive aim, which are the space of rhetorical
practice and rhetorical theory.
Cyber-Rhetoric could be considered one of the last steps in the
evolution of Rhetoric. Digital discourse is a complex construction
consisting of linguistic, visual and aural components, which has as a
whole a rhetorical foundation and manifestation. The rhetorical
operations or partes artis are the master lines of this multimedial kind
of discourse. Inventio, dispositio, elocutio and actio/pronuntiatio, and
of course also intellectio, are processes of the production and

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delivering of web pages and web sites. In addition to this rhetorical
shape of digital discourse, one must also take it into account the
rhetorical construction of all written and oral texts contained in webs,
as well as the rhetorical discourses lodged in them, for example,
Martin Luther King’s discourse I have a dream, that can be read,
heard and seen in different web sites.
Nevertheless, Cyber-Rhetoric is not another thing than Rhetoric.
Cyber-Rhetoric is Rhetoric, like the Rhetoric of written discourse is
Rhetoric, and the Rhetoric of journalism is Rhetoric, and the New
Rhetoric is Rhetoric. The different prefixes, adjectives and nominal
complements that we add to the noun Rhetoric are precisions within
the wide field of Rhetoric, and they must not be understood to be a
way of proposing or promoting single rhetorics different from
Rhetoric as a comprehensive system historically founded and
developed, but a way of enriching Rhetoric by stressing its plurality
and suitability for the different fields of discourse and the different
ways of achieving communication.
One of the characteristics of the development and evolution of
Rhetoric is the extending of its area of practice and study within the
great field of communication, together with the fact that Rhetoric
never has withdrawn the spaces where it has work. Thus, today we can
hear oral rhetorical discourses, like those delivered in courts and
parliaments, read written rhetorical discourses, like editorials or
leading articles in newspapers, and see, hear and read digital rhetorical
discourses. Rhetoric has carried to new communicative areas the

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experience that it has obtained in the areas where it has worked
formerly. In this way Rhetoric has enriched itself and has provided
tested and renewed tools for the practice and the study of discursive
and persuasive communication. The adaptation to the needs put by
communication in its evolution and change has ever been a challenge
for Rhetoric, and it is the key of the usefulness of Rhetoric in the
practice and study of new forms of persuasive discourse. This
adaptation of Rhetoric has been possible because of the presence of
basic notions and components in the rhetorical system, like the
rhetorical operations or partes artis, the rhetorical genres or kinds of
rhetorical discourse, the parts of rhetorical discourse or partes
orationis, the quadripertita ratio, the concepts of kairós, aptum, ordo
naturalis, ordo artificialis, the figures, the tropes, etc., and mainly the
idea of discourse as a whole with inside and outside coherence and
consistence.
Rhetoric only can be understood and explained historically. Each
of the stages of the evolution of Rhetoric must be taken into account
within a diachronic perspective because it is the result of former steps,
of precedent abstractions from the concrete reality of discourses.
Therefore, the present stage of Rhetoric, contemporary Rhetoric,
needs to be seen as the result of a long history and as a formation get
from the experience of different kinds of discourses, of different ways
and means of communicating. The history of Rhetoric is not an
accessory part or dimension of Rhetoric, but an essential part of
Rhetoric. Rhetoric could not exist without its history because this has

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built Rhetoric. Most of keys and tools of contemporary Rhetoric
cannot be understood nor explained not used if we lack their
embedding in rhetorical system as an historical construction where
they have sense and they can be placed in the complex structure of a
science and technique of constructing life-together in society by
means of word and language in discourse, as parts of the
communicative, social, political and legal project that Rhetoric is.
We are used to find and see nowadays some rhetorical
approaches to discourse and public communication which do not take
it into account the history of Rhetoric, and so we are used to realise
that many notions and concepts are proposed lacking of a necessary
rhetorical feedback, that would allow them to be more consistent and
to find their places in the system of discursive and persuasive
communication. If we are not aware of the historical base and keys of
Rhetoric, we can run the risk of discovering the Mediterranean Sea,
that, as you know, was discovered many Centuries ago.
A projection of the history of Rhetoric in the study and practice
of contemporary Rhetoric is required if our aim is to deal with
Rhetoric without lack of perspectives. The recovery of historical
thought as proposed by Antonio García Berrio constitutes a
programmatic view and plan for a textual general Rhetoric where the
contributions made by Classical and Linguistic Poetics and Text
Linguistics are connected with those of Rhetoric.
I have called Rhetorica recepta the historical system of Rhetoric,
mainly built by Greek and Roman contributions together with their

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idea of Rhetoric as a civil tool, that we, like the precedent generations,
have received from former rhetoricians, and that we interpret in our
time without losing the rich and indispensable perspective given by
the history of Rhetoric.
To work in Rhetoric of communication, in Rhetoric of legal
argumentation, in Rhetoric of economy, in Rhetoric of digital
communication or Cyber-Rhetoric is really to do Rhetoric if the
history of Rhetoric is taken into account and projected onto the
reflection on concrete views and problems of rhetorical
communication in those and other fields. Rhetoric has a practical
strength for communication that has been transmitted historically from
production and delivery of discourses, but it has also a theoretical
strength provided by its continuous effort for obtaining system from
reality. This double strength goes through all stages in the historical
evolution of Rhetoric up to contemporary Rhetoric. It is a strength that
has been renewed by the application of the essential principles of
Rhetoric to different forms of communication in a transforming
reality.
The foundation of the International Society for the History of
Rhetoric in 1977 meant an explicit acknowledgement of the role and
importance of the history of Rhetoric in Rhetoric, in rhetorical
communication and in rhetorical studies. Without the existence and
activities of the I.S.H.R., many rhetorical scholars maybe would not
have been aware of the necessity of history for every research in
Rhetoric. Our Society has succeeded in stressing the importance of

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history for a discipline that is a historical system. The biennial
conferences of the I.S.H.R. have been and continue to be a meeting
point of rhetorical scholars not only from different countries, but also
from different fields of knowledge, which talk and exchange ideas and
opinions in a multidirectional and deep dialogue, that often continues
in the pages of the journal Rhetorica. I am sure that the next thirty
years of the I.S.H.R. will be another period of fruitful research and
study in the history of the practice of Rhetoric, in the history of the
reflection on Rhetoric, in the history of the history of Rhetoric, and,
therefore, in Rhetoric.
Thank you very much for your attention.

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