Introduction to Rhetorics of Inquiry

The rhetoric of inquiry is interested in the connections between discourses-in particular, between discourses that don't seem connected, at least not at first glance, and not in a narrow, disciplinary way.

Like other rhetoricians, rhetoricians of inquiry examine the time-honored devices of narrative, ethos, pathos, eros, logos, topos, mythos, and tropos.  Where we differ, what interests us especially, again, is the nontraditional, the surprising and emergent.  That's where new connections are most likely to spring up, both in the texts we read and in our thinking, speaking, and writing.  And from such novel connections come insightful judgment of cases, better interpretations, more powerful theories.