Politeness: a strategy or beginnings of virtue?

“If a Nazi is polite, does that change anything about Nazism or the horrors of Nazism? No. It changes nothing, and this nothing is the very hallmark of politeness. …A show of virtue, its appearance and nothing more.”                                                                     From reading the quote from Andre Comte-Sponville1 above, we can safely deduce that if a gangster is […]

A Rhetorical Approach to Persuasion: An Overview

We live and work in a world where persuasion is an essential skill for almost all of us. It is a feature not only of our professional and business lives, but of our domestic ones, as well. It can range from ordinary situations like trying to convince your partner to see a particular movie, to […]