W stronę retorycznej teorii kultury. O założeniach teoretyczno- -metodologicznych antropologii retorycznej

The author discusses rhetorical anthropology, a contemporary methodological trend, against the background of the International Rhetoric Culture Project. The discussion is focused on the issues that are relevant from the point of view of the theory and methodology of anthropology. In this paper, the emphasis is particularly placed on: 1. critique of methodology developed by dialogical anthropology, ethnoscience, multi-sited anthropology and generative grammar – rhetorical anthropology is viewed as a remedy for the cognitive limitations of these trends; 2. processual model of discourse, which was presented by Stephen Tyler in The Said and the Unsaid, and the rhetorical theory of symbolization developed by Ivo Strecker in his book The Social Practice of Symbolization – these concepts constitute the intellectual origins of the International Rhetoric Culture Project; 3. metaphor of the “return to the rhetoric”, which expresses the connection between rhetorical anthropology and the humanistic stance called as rhetorical turn; 4. rhetorical theory of culture and the concept of human as homo rhetoricus – a combination of these concepts forms theoretical and methodological foundations of rhetorical anthropology.