Abstract: The article reviews some theoretical approaches to comparative rhetoric, used or professed in publications from the past 20 years where it is demonstrated that leading authorities in the field have shaped this emerging discipline in a postmodernist fashion as predominantly critical and neo-sophistic. With a number of exceptions these theorists do not engage in actual comparative studies of the rhetorical practices in different cultures. An alternative approach based on historical “descriptive” methodology and analytical apparatus from the theory of rhetorical argumentation is proposed.

Keywords: comparative rhetoric, history of rhetoric, rhetoric, ethos, postmodernism, neo-sophistic, systematic approach.

Rhetoric and Communications E-journal, Issue 20, November 2015, rhetoric.bg/, journal.rhetoric.bg, ISSN 1314-4464

Read the original of the text (in Bulgarian)