Comparative rhetoric: an historical and cross-cultural introduction

This is the first book to offer a cross-cultural overview of rhetoric as a universal feature of expression and communication. The author explores analogies to human rhetoric in animal communication, rhetorical factors in the origin of human speech, and rhetorical conventions in traditionally oral societies around the world. The second part of the book discusses rhetoric as understood and practised in early literate cultures, seeking to identify what is unique or unusual in the western tradition.