Rhetoric and Stylistics in Social/Cultural Anthropology

Abstract

This entry portrays the study of rhetoric and stylistics within the field of social/cultural anthropology. First, some general considerations concerning the relevance of rhetoric and stylistics for social/cultural anthropology as a discipline are made and the universality of rhetorical issues is discussed. Second, the historical development of social/cultural anthropology and the re-discovery of rhetorical topics during its theoretical sophistication are presented. Third, the most salient findings of social/cultural anthropology in the domain of rhetoric and stylistics are exposed. Among the main characteristics of Non-European rhetoric and stylistics are prosodic variation, repetition, parallelism, rhetorical questions, metaphor, and ambiguity. All of these recurrent features are illustrated by examples. Finally, the entry describes the most fruitful findings of rhetorical and stylistic studies in the field of social/cultural anthropology that have been made mainly in the domains of social organization, ritual, politeness, art and symbolism, emotion, argumentation, person, and gender.