The inexhaustible rhetoric. Social practice and semiotic process

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to present two thesis about the Rhetoric. In the first, we state that Rhetoric can be understood as “practice” –in the sense given by Louis Althusser– and as a “semiotic process” –in the terms of Charles S. Peirce’s semiotics. The paper takes up the proposals of the Group μ to re-elaborate them from these notions. The second thesis proposes that rhetorical practice operates in the three aspects of a social formation: theoretical, material and political, which will allow to discuss rhetorical theoretical practice –related to the development of concepts, “figures”, etc.–, material one –related to the selection, exclusion and circulation of discourses– and political one –related to the performative effects of discourses. The paper shows how each of these aspects has a specific efficiency within the social practice of Rhetoric, while articulates with the other to form a complex unit. Finally, we will propose an integration of these developments into a model with a logical-semiotic basis named Semiotic Nonagon. It permitted to deploy in the plane different notions, display their relations and propose new ones.