Decorum

Appropriateness is the key to persuasion: a speech can only be convincing when it takes into account the opinions of the audience and the concrete situation. But how can rhetorical theory'¬ ; which like any other theory has to abstract'¬ ; grasp appropriateness as a phenomenon? What concepts did it develop in order to achieve this? The central thesis of the volume is that although it has hardly been analysed in the past, appropriateness always plays a central role in rhetoric.