The persuasive expansion

rhetoric, information architecture, and conceptual structure

Per V. Hasle

pp. 2-21

in: Pascal Hitzler, Peter Øhrstrøm (eds), Conceptual structures: inspiration and application, Berlin, Springer, 2006

Abstract

Conceptual structures are, as a rule, approached from logical perspectives in a broad sense. However, since Antiquity there has been another approach to conceptual structures in thought and language, namely the rhetorical tradition. The relationship between these two grand traditions of Western Thought, Logic and Rhetoric, is complicated and sometimes uneasy – and yet, both are indispensable, as it would seem. Certainly, a (supposedly) practical field such as Information Architecture bears witness to the fact that for those who actually strive to work out IT systems conceptually congenial to human users, rhetorical and logical considerations intertwine in an almost inextricable manner.