Rhetorical criticism

Rhetorical criticism is an approach to criticism that is at least as old as Plato. In the Phaedrus, Plato has Socrates examine a speech by Lysias to determine whether or not it is praiseworthy. Rhetorical criticism analyzes symbolic artifacts (including words, phrases, images, gestures, performances, texts, films, and "discourse" in general) to discover how, and how well, they work: how they instruct, inform, entertain, move, arouse, perform, convince and, in general, persuade their audience, including whether and how they might improve their audience. In short, rhetorical criticism seeks to understand how symbols act on people.

“[C]riticism is an art, not a science. It is not a scientific method; it uses subjective methods of argument; it exists on its own, not in conjunction with other methods of generating knowledge (i.e., social scientific or scientific)." The end goals of such criticism is greater understanding and appreciation: “By improving understanding and appreciation, the critic can offer new and potentially exciting ways for others to see the world. Through understanding we also produce knowledge about human communication; in theory this should help us to better govern our interactions with others.”

Rhetorical analysis

See also: Critical theory

What is called "rhetorical criticism" in the Speech Communication discipline is often called "rhetorical analysis" in English. A wide range of conceptual and lexical tools have been developed to assist in the process of rhetorical criticism. Such tools explore everything from the effects of individual word-choice to the range of ideological assumptions that undergird and shape a pattern of cultural expression.^{[citation needed]}

Major approaches include narrative, metaphoric, genre, pentadic, cluster, and ideographic (or ideological) criticism.