Toward Wave Rhetorics for Scholarly Communications in Human Sciences

ABSTRACTTraditionally, rhetoric is defined as the study and practice of persuasion, which is, according to Richards, “the theory of the battle of words and has always been itself dominated by the combative impulse”. This seems to have remained true. Foss/Foss even say that conquest rhetoric and conversion rhetoric have become almost “default modes of communication”. Scholarly communications do not seem to operate differently. Nonetheless, we can observe the emergence of diverse wave rhetorics, community oriented, in contrast with traditional “particle rhetorics”, individual centered. In this search toward wave rhetorics, recent Asian communication studies are not to be omitted. To deepen the research on these wave rhetorics, we need to reconsider the problem of language and misunderstanding, which is a main cause for communicational conflicts. This is a long and difficult process, which demands much imagination, creativity, and endeavor, but which is also well worth it.