This feature addresses three questions: (1) How do we understand the nature of presidential rhetoric and its effects? (2) What does presidential rhetoric do? (3) How do we know? From the perspective of the humanities, rhetoric is a complex transaction among speakers or writers, texts or performance, audiences, and critics. Effects are better understood as invitations to respond. A key function of presidential rhetoric is to define social reality. Eight case studies explore how presidents from George Washington to George W. Bush have relied on rhetorical definition.

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Persuasive definitions -those that convey an attitude in the act of namingare frequently employed in discourse and are a form of strategic maneuvering. The dynamics of persuasive definition are explored through brief case studies and an extended analysis of the use of the ''war'' metaphor in responding to terrorism after September 11, 2001. Examining persuasive definitions enables us to notice similarities and differences between strategic maneuvering in dialectical and in rhetorical argument, as well as differences between the role of strategic maneuvering in normatively ideal argument and in actually existing argument. This will avoid the double standard of comparing ideal dialectic with actual rhetoric, or vice versa. The results of the analysis suggest possibilities for a rapprochement between dialectical and rhetorical approaches to argumentation.The current landscape of argumentation studies is complicated. Much of the 20th century was spent in a revolt against applied formalism, the belief that formal deductive logic should be the model for all cases of argumentation. In response, strong traditions of dialectical and rhetorical argument were rediscovered and revitalized, while formal logic extended its reach by developing models of ordinary argumentation. Now it is safe to say that there are three general approaches to studying argumentation, each of them deriving from a different intellectual tradition. Logic is concerned with matters of form and the relationships among statements in an argument. Dialectic deals with procedures of critical questioning between interlocutors in order to resolve disagreements between them. And rhetoric concerns itself with the relationship between claims and audiences, examining both the pragmatic influence of claims and the philosophical question of how audiences validate arguments in everyday life. One focuses on validity, one on intersubjective agreement, and one on persuasiveness.