Rhetorical sensitivity and social interaction

Abstract

Contemporary attitudes toward communication can be viewed as two‐dimensional—expressive and instrumental. The argument of this article is that the instrumental, or as we would label it, the rhetorical approach, best promises to facilitate human understanding and to effect social cohesion. Five characteristics of rhetorical sensitivity are described. These are features which, if incorporated and operationalized in discourse, can help men make the most of social interactions. The rhetorically sensitive person (a) tries to accept role‐taking as part of the human condition, (b) attempts to avoid stylized verbal behavior, (c) is characteristically willing to undergo the strain of adaptation, (d) seeks to distinguish between all information and that information acceptable for communication, and (e) tries to understand that an idea can be rendered in multi‐form ways.