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.

Understanding Rhetoric: A Guide to Critical Reading and Argumentation is a composition textbook that outlines three essential skills – rhetoric, argument, and source-based writing – geared towards newcomers and advanced students alike. Though comprehensive in its coverage, the book’s focus is a simple one: how to move beyond a "gut reaction" while reading to an articulation of what is effective and what is not, while explicitly answering the most important question of "Why?" This text gets at this central concern in two fundamental ways. First, the text teaches composition as a cumulative process, coaching you how to question, challenge, and expand on not just the readings you hold in your hands, but also how to interrogate the internal processes of writing and thinking. The book's blend of composition methods detail the cross-point of product and process to turn reading and writing from a matter of coming up with answers to questions to learning what type of questions need to be asked in the first place. The "right" questions, the text argues, are fundamentally rhetorical in nature. Second, the content of the practice-based chapters is framed into a larger mesh of intellectual history to show how the writing and thinking you are doing today is continuous with a long history of writing instruction that goes back to the ancient world. This book provides equal representation from classical and contemporary theory with the recognition that theory cannot be fully grasped without practice, and practice cannot be fully understood without its theoretical antecedent. After all, you can’t write "outside the box" until you know where the box is and what it looks like.

This book strikes at the heart of musical performance with a study of the relationship between music and rhetoric which was much remarked upon during the Renaissance and Baroque periods. The ideas of the classical rhetoric books are traced through the Tudor classroom to the late eighteenth century. Concentrating on performance techniques that aid the communication of musical ideas to an audience, historical source material is used to demonstrate how to hold the attention of the listener and at the same time move and delight them. Quotations from the rhetoric manuals, Shakespeare and the Bible are complemented by over one hundred musical examples, drawn mainly from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, illustrating the connection between speaking and playing in the rhetorical style.

'Moral character, so to say, constitutes the most effective means of proof.' In ancient Greece, rhetoric was at the centre of public life. Many writers attempted to provide manuals to help improve debating skills, but it was not until Aristotle produced The Art of Rhetoric in the 4th century bc that the subject had a true masterpiece. As he considered the role of emotion, reason, and morality in speech, Aristotle created essential guidelines for argument and prose style that would influence writers for more than two millennia. Brilliantly explained and carefully reasoned, The Art of Rhetoric remains as relevant today as it was in the assemblies of ancient Athens.

Rhetoric is often seen as a synonym for shallow, deceptive language, and therefore as something negative. But if we view rhetoric in more neutral terms, as the 'art of persuasion', it is clear that we are all forced to engage with it at some level, if only because we are constantly exposed to the rhetoric of others. In this Very Short Introduction, Richard Toye explores the purpose of rhetoric. Rather than presenting a defence of it, he considers it as the foundation-stone of civil society, and an essential part of any democratic process. Using wide-ranging examples from Ancient Greece, medieval Islamic preaching, and modern cinema, Toye considers why we should all have an appreciation of the art of rhetoric. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

"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.

Communication expert and popular speaker Quentin Schultze offers a practical, accessible, and inspiring guide to public speaking, showing readers how to serve their audiences with faith, skill, and virtue. This thoroughly rewritten and expanded four-color edition has been tested and revised with input from Christian undergraduates and contains new chapters on timely topics, such as speaking for video, conducting group presentations, and engaging society civilly. A complete public speaking textbook for Christian universities, it includes helpful sidebars, tips, and appendixes. Additional resources for students and professors are available through Textbook eSources.