چکیده (انگلیسی):

Widely misunderstood and often maligned, rhetoric in the simplest sense is the effective use of
language in speech orwriting. Much as law and medicinehave well considered standards of
conduct, so too does the field of communication. Experts in this area look at “patterns” of discourse
in relation to specific kinds of events – tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, fires, airline or mining
disasters, for example. Close study of such phenomenon reveals which communication approaches
to crisis are successful and which are not. As a profession, rhetoricians study the structure and
consequences of communication events. Applying rhetorical analysis to situations as significant in
scope as Katrina allows us to determine what business, media, and government can learn from that
unprecedented day in the Summer of 2005. This paper concludes with a practical communication
model, (R.E.S.P.O.N.D.), which can be applied inany crisis situation real or anticipated.