Explanation
Deeper explanation: Rhetoricality shifts attention from “Which figure is present?” to “How, and to what extent, does this representation operate rhetorically?” Analysis may address selection, arrangement, audience design, metaphor, the production of evidence, speaker position and medial staging. A narrow reading treats rhetoricality as an examinable property of concrete procedures. A strong reading claims that language, knowledge or reality is rhetorical through and through. The Atlas keeps both readings visible but admits only explicitly operationalised criteria and comparative formulations into scientific analysis. Scientific use case: A study of abstracts can operationalise rhetoricality by coding claim strength, evidential markers, hedges, metaphors and order. Comparison with data and full texts can then distinguish forms that merely compress information from those that shift the asserted degree of certainty.
Example
Two reports describe the same uncertainty. One presents it as a limitation in the opening sentence; the other places it in an appendix and opens with a decisive result. The data remain unchanged, while arrangement and audience design alter perceived certainty.
Counterexample
Not every difference of linguistic form is rhetorically relevant. A claim of rhetoricality must identify audience design, selection, form, situation and an observable or well-grounded reconstructed effect, preferably against a less rhetorically organised alternative. Finding a metaphor in a scientific text proves neither that its result is false nor that science is nothing but rhetoric. “Everything is rhetorical” is not a sufficient analysis.
Distinction
Performativity asks what reality is brought forth, Multimodality how modes interact, Scientific language how disciplines communicate, and Hypertext rhetoric supplies a concrete digital case. Rhetoricality examines their possible persuasive or attention-ordering formation. A blanket star network to all rhetorical figures is expressly rejected. No link is canonical before the gate.
Effect on thought and perception
Rhetoricality makes the formative work of representation visible without reducing its object to mere effect.
Resonance
A finding never reaches an audience without form. Rhetoricality describes how its linguistic and medial body changes the field of possible responses.
Provenance
HWRh, Bd. 8, Artikel Rhetorizität, Sp. 213–220; independent source, terminology and relation review dated 14 September 2026
Cite this entry
Reich, Michael (Hrsg./ed.): „Rhetoricality“. Atlas der Sprache, AT-HWRH-0004. ATLAS 251, data model 1.6.0. https://atlasoflanguage.com/concept/AT-HWRH-0004The address remains stable; editorial content may evolve. A verified modification date per entry is not yet available. Include your access date for precise references.