Advocacy— Fürsprache : The situation of rhetorical speech and the history of rhetoric

Abstract This essay examines rhetoric from the standpoint of “ Fürsprache ” or advocacy speech. This perspective brings into focus the interconnections between rhetoric's legal institution, its form of speech and overarching objectives, and its particular linguistic procedures. Rhetoric thus appears as part of the larger history of the communicative function of discourse and the situations in which speech and other forms of linguistic utterance occur. First, the essay contrasts two fundamental types of speech situation in the European tradition: rhetorical speech and the situation of mutual—or contractual—exchange. On this basis, it then reconstructs the possibility of a history of rhetoric that begins with the shift from the former to the latter of the two types.