Rhetoric has always been both a teaching and a practice of art, both a social practice and its theory. Until the 17th century, a differentiation was made between rhetorica or rhetorica docens as a term for theory ("oratory") on the one hand, and oratoria, eloquentia or rhetorica utens for practice ("eloquence") on the other. In the 20th century, the terminological distinction between General Rhetoric (for theory) and Applied Rhetoric (for practice) became established in the German-speaking academic field. Rhetoric trainers and guidebook authors, however, largely ignore this.
This "double character of rhetoric", which generally contributes to the confusion of terms, was summarized by Richard Albrecht by explaining that rhetoric is understood as "on the one hand and in general the intention and proposition of speech action as a linguistic phenomenon, on the other hand and specifically the science of public speech (art)".
Applied rhetoric is understood as the discipline of practical speech. In doing so, someone consciously or unconsciously makes use of the rules and techniques formulated in the historically developed system of general rhetoric. As a concrete guide to verbal as well as written communication, it includes the training and practice of effect-oriented speaking, behavior and writing. Today, it incorporates the findings of speech science and speech training as well as the findings of psychology and linguistics (language teaching). Applied rhetoric refers above all to the practice of speaking in business, politics and in court; however, therapeutic conversation or private controversy are also influenced by it. Since it refers not only to the monologue, but also to the dialogue, it also deals with dialectics (in the Socratic sense) and is sometimes referred to as conversational rhetoric (see speaker education).
