During the 20th century, rhetoric came to mean more than just “the art of persuasion.” which of following definitions correctly describes rethoric’s broader meaning

a. any medium used to modify the audience’s view

b. any communication used to modify the perspectives of others

c. any persuasion used to convince the audience of the authors’ rightness

d. any manipulation used to convince the audience of the author’s rightness

The right answer is: A) Any medium(...)audience view. In principle, rhetoric dealt with spoken language, but its knowledge transcended written discourse and strongly influenced literature when the written word gained prestige in the imperial regime in Rome, although the written discourse is usually considered as a limited transcription or a close imitation of oral discourse. At present, rhetoric has experienced a great resurgence and its teachings are used in advertising, academia, politics, as well in the defense of points of view during civil trials. On the other hands, thanks to new audiovisual technologies we can speak of a rhetoric of the image, since through an image or video we can talk about something using rhetorical figures (metaphor, metonymy, prosopopeia, personification, and other language expressions).