Rhetoric from the standpoint of the Lifeworld

Abstract

In spite of earlier mentions, the marriage between rhetoric and semiotics was consummated by Groupe μ, also making it productive for visual semiotics. Yet there are several problems with the Groupe’s approach, the first being the reduction of rhetoric to elocutio, i.e. to the meaning produced by means of transgression, when the larger ancient sense of rhetoric as a general theory of communication has been renovated by Perelman and his followers. The second problem involves the rather arbitrary way of dividing up the rhetorical figures, when a more systematic approach can be taken starting out from mereology, i.e. the theory of parts and wholes. The present article tries to make advances in both these respects.