For the Sake of Argument: Towards an Understanding of Rhetoric as Process

This paper seeks to respond to two particular aspects of Legge's work, her development of the concept of rhetoric and her commitment to the educative process. Legge has been drawing attention to the concept of rhetoric for a long time (e.g. Gowler and Legge, 1981, 1996 [originally 1983]; Legge, 1989, 1995a). However, despite its popularity as an epithet, the "process" of rhetoric remains largely unexplored. Locating rhetoric within a poststructuralist view of language, this paper utilizes and explores the contribution of 'The New Rhetoric' to such an understanding, focusing on issues of style and context. This is used to illustrate a characterization of rhetoric which emphasizes its quality as a closed system with an important role in maintaining the status quo of 'managerialism'. Highlighting the key concept within 'The New Rhetoric' of "audience", we suggest that to achieve change it is necessary to intervene in the closed cycle of the relationship between producers and consumers of management knowledge. Copyright Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2004.