本书包括十章内容。第一章介绍修辞学的定义。第二章介绍西方修辞学的发展简史。第三章专门介绍写作修辞学的起源与发展。第四章介绍写作风格与修辞手段。第五章是修辞三诉诸(逻辑、情感和人格诉诸)。第六章介绍几个著名的写作理论，如Toulmin的论证模式、Van Eemeren的论证结构、修辞结构理论以及其他劝说论证结构。第七章是对比修辞学，介绍其定义、起源、发展和争议。第八章介绍跨文化修辞学与超语言写作。第九章是比较修辞学，主要介绍这种新修辞学的理念和研究方法，以及处于两种文化中的语言使用者们的修辞特点及困境。第十章关于第二语言写作研究中的主要议题，涉及认知观、社会观等。

刘东虹，华中师范大学外语学院教授、博士生导师、外国语言学与应用语言学研究所副所长、“国际修辞传播学会”会长。主要从事“修辞学与写作”、“二语习得”、“语用学”研究。2007年获复旦大学英语语言文学博士学位。2009年至2010年在美国宾夕法尼亚州立大学进行访问研究。主持并顺利完成国家社科项目、湖北省社科项目、教育部及校级科研项目12项，出版学术专著4部，主编教材1本。在《外语教学与研究》、《现代外语》、《外语教学》、《当代修辞学》、《外语学刊》等CSSSI期刊，以及其他国内外专业学术期刊上发表论文40余篇。

Chapter 1 Introduction
1. What is rhetoric
2. Composition-Rhetoric
3. Differences between ancient and modern thought
3.1 Attitude to factual proof
3.2 Attitude to opinion
3.3 Attitude to rhetorical situation
3.4 Attitude to language
4. Great ideas in western rhetoric
4.1 Invention
4.2 Disposition
4.3 Style
4.4 Memory
4.5 Delivery
5. Why do we study rhetoric
6. Questions and exercises
7. Further reading
Chapter 2 History of rhetoric
1. Aristotle and Plato times
2. Roman times and middle ages
3. Renaissance and Enlightenment
4. Modern times
4.1 Kenneth Burke
4.2 Chaim Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca
4.3 Other scholars who contributed to modern rhetorical practices
5. Further reading
Chapter 3 History of Composition-Rhetoric
1. Overview
2. Background: changes in understanding of children and of the nature
of writing
3. The "literacy crisis" of the 1970s and emerging schools of thought
4. Writing as ideological
5. Basic composition theory
5.1 Pre-writing
5.2 Writing
5.3 Revision
5.4 Editing
6. Ideologies and the writing process
7. Teaching composition
8. Reading for discussion
9. Questions and exercises
10. Further reading
Chapter 4 Style and figures of speech
1. Style
1.1 Scope of style
1.2 Five virtues of style
1.3 Diction
1.4 Sentences
1.5 Tone
1.6 Ways to achieve good style
2. Figures of speech
2.1 Definition and classifications
2.2 Schemes
2.3 Tropes
3. Reading for discussion
4. Questions and exercises
5. Further reading
Chapter 5 Three appeals
1. Logical appeal
1.1 Aristotle's syllogism
1.2 Deduction and induction in modern writing
1.3 Other ways to realize logical appeal
2. Emotional appeal
2.1 What is emotional appeal
2.2 How to appeal to emotion
3. Ethical appeal
3.1 Components of ethos
3.2 Ways to establish ethos
3.3 Invented ethos and failed ethos
4. Fallacies
4.1 Formal logical fallacies
4.2 Informal logical fallacies
5. Reading for discussion
6. Questions and exercises
7. Further reading
Chapter 6 Theories on discourse structure
1. Toulmin's rhetoric of argumentation
1.1 Toulmin model
1.2 Comparison and application
1.3 Comments on Toulmin model
2. Van Eemeren's argumentation structure
3. Rhetorical structure theory
3.1 Main idea
3.2 Application of RST
4. Other structures in argumentative/ persuasive writing
5. Reading for discussion
6. Questions and exercises
7. Further reading
Chapter 7 Contrastive rhetoric
1. What is contrastive rhetoric
2. Origin of contrastive rhetoric
3. Model of contrastive rhetoric
4. Text analysis used by Kaplan
5. Methods of analysis in contrastive rhetoric
6. Comments on contrastive rhetoric
7. Critical contrastive rhetoric
8. Conflicting ideas
9. Questions and exercises
10. Further reading
Chapter 8 Intercultural rhetoric and translingual writing
1. Intercultural rhetoric
1.1 What is intercultural rhetoric
1.2 Connor's three maps
1.3 Research methods in intercultural rhetoric
2. What is translingualism?
3. Translingual view of errors caused by L1 transfer
4. Comments on translingualism
5. Reading for discussion
6. Questions and exercises
7. Further reading
Chapter 9 Comparative rhetoric
1. Comparative rhetoric
2. Major practices to do comparative rhetoric
3. Comparative rhetoric studies of Chinese argumentation
4. Comparative rhetorical perspective of Chinese face
5. Reading for discussion
6. Questions and exercises
7. Further reading
Chapter 10 Conceptions in composition research and instruction
1. Introducti