Presents an account of rhetoric that presumes and incorporates theoretical approaches, offering a collection of principles assembled in the heat and trials of public practice. The essays are inspired by the capacious conception of rhetoric put forth by historian of rhetoric Jeffrey Walker, best known for stressing rhetoric’s educational mission.
When it was first published in 1982, "A Rhetoric of Argument "developed a ground-breaking new approach to teaching argument. The "stasis approach" pioneered by Fahnestock and Secor distinguished among the four basic questions that arguments are written to answer: What is it? (Definition arguments)How did it get that way? (Causal arguments)Is it good or bad? (Evaluation arguments)What should we do about it? (Proposal arguments) These four questions, now standard in many argument texts, give students a constructive, engaging way to analyze readings by other writers and to construct their own arguments.