Linguistics and Micro-Rhetoric A Twenty-First Century Encounter

Increasingly linguists look to usage for explanations of how patterns of forms come to acquire grammatical status. This search leads linguistics closer to the realm of inquiry traditionally occupied by rhetoric, the study of the effective uses of language. It is proposed here that a view of language as temporal brings these two disciplines closer, and that, in fact, (usage-based) linguistics is nothing other than the “micro” end of rhetoric. As an example of the kind of rethinking of linguistic structure necessary to accommodate this proposal, it is argued that the unfolding of discourse in time proceeds by a progressive delivery of prepackaged formulas that are either juxtaposed or linked by apo koinou . Implications of these ideas for the academic organization of linguistics are discussed.