Some Philosophical Underpinnings for Communication: Western and Eastern Foundations as seen in Commonplace Principles  

This paper focuses on one area of Western and Eastern philosophical underpinnings for communication, namely, the use of Commonplaces. However, it needs to be pointed out that we mainly focus on the Western tradition, while making some preliminary references to the Chinese rhetorical tradition since Chinese culture has very rich sources of foundation of rhetoric and communication. However, to our knowledge, ‘Commonplaces’ is a research topic that has been embarked on because of its rich traditions. In particular, we visit this singular concept of Commonplaces in two cultures: First, a brief view of the Western rhetorical tradition relating to definition/theory behind the use of Commonplaces as used in the Classical, Medieval, and the Renaissance world as the basis for communicating either orally or in written form. Second, we will briefly trace some Chinese rhetorical underpinnings of using Commonplaces, philosophies, points of view that mankind could use to communicate better, get along with people in order to achieve both informative and persuasive ends.

Hildebrandt, Herbert and Yunxia Zhu. Association for Business Communication (2007). Articles>Education>Communication>International