Rhetorical criticism is an approach to criticism that is at least as old as Plato

Plato

Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...

. In the Phaedrus, Plato has Socrates examine a speech by Lysias to determine whether or not it is praiseworthy. Rhetorical criticism analyzes symbolic artifacts (including words, phrases, images, gestures, performances, texts, films, and "discourse" in general) to discover how, and how well, they work: how they instruct, inform, entertain, move, arouse, perform, convince and, in general, persuade their audience, including whether and how they might improve their audience. In short, rhetorical criticism seeks to understand how symbols act on people.

“[C]riticism is an art, not a science. It is not a scientific method; it uses subjective methods of argument; it exists on its own, not in conjunction with other methods of generating knowledge (i.e., social scientific or scientific)." The end goals of such criticism is greater understanding and appreciation: “By improving understanding and appreciation, the critic can offer new and potentially exciting ways for others to see the world. Through understanding we also produce knowledge about human communication; in theory this should help us to better govern our interactions with others.”

Rhetorical analysis

What is called "rhetorical criticism" in the Speech Communication discipline is often called "rhetorical analysis" in English. A wide range of conceptual and lexical tools have been developed to assist in the process of rhetorical criticism. Such tools explore everything from the effects of individual word-choice to the range of ideological assumptions that undergird and shape a pattern of cultural expression.

Major approaches include narrative

Narrative criticism

Narrative criticism focuses on the stories a speaker or a writer tells to understand how they help us make meaning out of our daily human experiences. Narrative theory is a means by which we can comprehend how we impose order on our experiences and actions by giving them a narrative form...

, metaphoric

Metaphoric criticism

Metaphoric criticism is one school of rhetorical analysis used in English and speech communication studies. Scholars employing metaphoric criticism analyze texts by locating metaphors within texts and evaluating those metaphors in an effort to better understand ways in which authors appeal to their...

, genre

Genre criticism

Genre criticism is a method within rhetorical criticism for analysing speeches and writing according to the symbolic artifacts they contain. In rhetoric, the theory of genre provides a means to classify and compare artifacts of communication and to assess their effectiveness and/or contribution to...

, pentadic

Dramatistic Pentad

The dramatistic pentad forms the core structure of dramatism, a method for examining motivations that the renowned literary critic Kenneth Burke developed. Dramatism recommends the use of a metalinguistic approach to fiction that investigates the roles and uses of five rhetorical elements common...

, cluster

Cluster criticism

Cluster criticism is a method of rhetorical criticism in which a critic examines the structural relations and associative meanings between certain main ideas, concepts, or subjects present in a text.-Method:...

, and ideographic (or ideological

Ideological criticism

Ideological criticism is a form of rhetorical criticism concerned with critiquing rhetorical artifacts for the dominant ideology they express while silencing opposing or contrary ideologies...

) criticism.