In 2005, the Egyptian rhetorician Dr. Emad Abdel Latif published a study entitled “Arabic Rhetoric from the Production of Authoritarian Discourse to Its Resistance,” in which he presented a proposal to establish a rhetorical approach that he called at the time “the rhetoric of the addressee,” which later evolved to be known as “the rhetoric of the public.” Dr. Imad Abdel Latif tells how the idea of ​​”public rhetoric” arose, saying:

In 2003, I wrote a doctoral thesis – in the Department of Arabic Language, Faculty of Arts, Cairo University – on Sadat’s political rhetoric, motivated by an ideal dream: to save some humans from the dominance of misleading language, and from the traps of lies. I imagined then, and still am, that scientific research Struggle, and that knowledge is a weapon of liberation. And I believed, and I still believe, that tyranny and ignorance are the disease, and that knowledge is both a medicine. And I knew that the highest thing that could be done was to devote the rest of my life to serving the weak and deceived. Who sided without account with the interests of the rich; he was most of his supporters from the poor, and this needed a lot of understanding and explanation.

Less than a year and a half after experiencing Sadat’s speeches, the idea of ​​public rhetoric was born out of wonder and questioning. While listening to recordings of Sadat’s speeches, I had endless questions about the audience’s applause for phrases or sayings that I thought called for responses that were far from applause! At that time, I thought of the science of rhetoric as a tool to serve those in power, enabling them to control the response of the masses, equal to that of those who possess the power of oppression, or the power to manipulate and deceive. I thought about the possibility of establishing a “new rhetoric”, which presents an antidote to the dominant rhetoric, a new science for addressees/audiences, enabling them to distinguish between manipulative and liberating discourses, and enabling them to control their responses; To serve their noble causes.

Currently, “public rhetoric” is one of the trends that attract the most attention of researchers in the Arab world. It includes “public rhetoric”, as a field of knowledge, an unlimited amount of research material, and an infinite number of its topics. This field includes all phenomena associated with persuasion and influence in responses produced by the public in public spaces. The growing role of the masses in the public space is one of the most important features of the era in which we live. In one of his books, Dr. Abdel-Latif called the era of mass responses; To refer to one of the most important features that he believes characterize our current world. Of course, the public discourses represent one of the audience’s strengths and rhetoric, but the openness of the discussion spaces will remain limited in effect, if the critical awareness of the ordinary citizen, which constitutes the main component of the public, does not develop, and this confirms, according to Dr. Abdel Latif, “the central role of education, Education and awareness, without which the public will reproduce the discourses of oppression, authoritarianism, superstition, and division.” Here, the importance or necessity of public eloquence appears.

The “public rhetoric” can be described as a branch of science that studies the relationships between discourse construction and performance on the one hand, and the responses of the audience it receives on the other hand. Audience rhetoric aims to enable the audience to produce eloquent responses, through which it can detect forms of abuse of speech such as racism, hatred, manipulation, discrimination, oppression, and subjugation, and to resist these abuses, thus prompting speakers, individuals or institutions, to monitor and rationalize their speeches. And make it more upright, noble and humane. The goal of public rhetoric is to provide individuals with skills that make them effective in public communication, in the hope that this will lead to humane, credible and honest communication. To this end, public rhetoric provides theoretical knowledge, analysis tools, and guidelines that enable the public to produce eloquent responses that support the noble of discourses, and resist manipulation of them.

Audience rhetoric is concerned with studying public responses in the public space from a rhetorical perspective. These responses may be linguistic, such as viewers’ comments on a YouTube clip, or readers’ comments on a story in an online newspaper. It may be non-verbal, such as applause, cheering, symbolic formations of crowds in public space, and others. This research material is characterized by virginity, greatness, and richness of signs. They constitute an interesting subject for rhetorical research. Dr. Abdel-Latif was keen to define the theoretical and methodological foundations of the public’s rhetoric in the previously mentioned article, “The Rhetoric of the Addressee: Arabic Rhetoric from the Production of Authoritarian Discourse to Its Resistance” published in 2005. Then was the book “Why Egyptians Clap? The Rhetoric of Manipulating the Masses in Politics” Al-Fan, published by Dar Al-Ain in Cairo in 2009, is a turning point in the public rhetoric project; It was entirely dedicated to this project. In it, Dr. Abdel Latif presented an analysis of the phenomenon of applause in public discourse, and in a blog of contemporary political speeches in particular. During the last five years, the circle of work in the rhetoric of the public has expanded, and researchers from Morocco, Algeria, Iraq, and Egypt have published studies in and about it. It is hoped that the coming years will witness increased prosperity; The importance of the public in the public space in the Arab world has become.
Thus, the rhetoric of the masses seeks to transfer the center of rhetoric from the speaker to the addressee, thus opening the way for the fulfillment of the moral functions of rhetoric; Rhetoric links freedom from manipulation, racism, discrimination, domination, and tyranny. Rhetoric becomes truly liberating knowledge, which gives strength to the weaker party (the addressee), and reduces the power of the stronger (the speaker). The eloquence of the audience from this angle is a tool for striking a balance between the power of the speakers and the power of the addressees. And if we want a narrative or narrative equivalent to what the audience’s rhetoric is trying to accomplish in terms of functions, then I invoke the character of the honorable thief, who robs the rich of some of their looted wealth, to return it to the looted poor. All its purpose is to return rights to their owners, and what is the eloquence of the public?