BMET 24A04 - Rhetoric Today: The Choice of Words, The Choice of Themes

Rhetoric has bad press these days. Often understood as being at odds with both logic and truth, the discipline has been despised by most major philosophers since Plato. Yet Chaim Perelman has already shown that this rejection was based on a mistake: we tend to forget that all our linguistic choices are somehow rhetorical.

In this class, we will study a few elements from the history of classical rhetoric, theories of argumentation, then we will analyse cognitive biases, fallacies, and other elements of political psychology and discourse analysis. At the same time, students will be invited to present on various themes related to the topic: you can already start to dig into the discourses of your favourite politicians to start thinking of what you will work on!

The class will be given entirely in English.

A presentation in class + a critical assessment of a scientific paper