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This is a book about how we experience rhetoric. It is about how communication works to effect change in ourselves, in others, and in society and how one may analyze this communication. Above all, it is about the historical and cultural context--what the author calls "configuration"--in which human communication takes place.The author offers a way of looking at rhetoric that is more comprehensive, more realistic, and more rewarding than current views. He explains why some persuasion works, why it makes a difference, and why it changes the course of events while other persuasion is merely "sound and fury, signifying nothing." In addition, he provides a method for estimating how well a communicator exploits the available means of persuasion, shows how the method is rooted in understandings of human symbol-using, and gives a model of the method at work.