Reverence and Rhetorology: How Harmonizing Paul Woodruff's Reverence and Wayne Booth's Rhetorology Can Foster Understanding Within Communities

• Main Author: Ogden, Jonathan D.
• Format: Others
• Published: BYU ScholarsArchive 2010
• Subjects: reverence; rhetorology; Wayne Booth; Paul Woodruff; civility; English Language and Literature
• Online Access: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/2297; https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3296&context=etd

Wayne Booth's neologism rhetorology, introduced in 1981, hasn't caught on in rhetorical scholarship. Nevertheless, in this essay I hope to revive rhetorology by harmonizing it with Paul Woodruff's work on reverence. I show how harmonizing these terms makes each more comprehensible. In order to illustrate how reverence and rhetorology might be made more practical I also analyze two arguments in the health care debate leading up to the passing of the Affordable Health Care for America Act in early 2010. Ultimately I hope to show that rhetorology is a reverent rhetorical practice, one that can help us restore a needed sense of communal reverence in contemporary democracy.