Rhetorical hermeneutics argues that any explanatory attempt must embed the act of interpretation first in its most relevant critical debates (and there may be several); then the act and its participation in ongoing arguments must be situated in the rhetorical traditions within relevant institutional discourses; and then the interpretive act, its arguments, and its framing institutions must be placed within the cultural conversations, relevant social practices, and constraining material circumstances of its historical moment. And of course this moment has its specific temporal history and geographical location within a culture’s evolving social, political, and economic formations.

Steven Mailloux, Rhetorical Power, page 134 (1989)

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