The Importance of Linguistics and Rhetoric for the Understanding and Creation of the Social World
The Importance of Linguistics and Rhetoric for the Understanding and Creation of the Social World

Summary/Abstract: This paper aims to underline the practical importance of Linguistics as a social science and Rhetoric as a specific field of study, stating that they not only represent an invaluable way to understand the world, but they also contribute to creating the social world. I will on the studies of Bakhtin on the dialogical nature of society and social actions, the research made by Holliday on the Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) as a tool of rhetorical investigation of the world, and the study of Blackledge on the use of CDA to understand power in society. The core idea is that Rhetoric, as the study of discursive strategies in use within a social environment, is fundamental to understand the social world. This paper also purports the idea that researchers take part in the social creation of the world because of scientific writing, a tool which is not free of rhetoric. Researchers must be aware of the impact that they have on reality and that social sciences do make a difference in the world.

• Details
• Contents