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Rhetoric is broadly referred to as the theory and practice of suasory communication enabling humans to participate actively in public. Although traditionally viewed as strongly tied with exclusively verbal persuasion, rhetoric has always extended beyond this limitation. Semiforgotten elements of the ancient faculty prove that rhetoric requires creative visual imagination from both parties (orator and audience) and that the practice emanates from and embeds in visuospatial, sensual experiences. These visual features are combined with the verbal in rhetorical practice resulting in a multidimensional—hybrid—discourse, the main function of which is persuasion. In this hybridity of codes and modes, the primary movement in the persuasive act is connection. This connection relates the person to the world, human imagination to articulation, thoughts to images, and words to pictures. By means of this connection persuasion becomes identification, a constitutive act enhancing the unity of different entities (either human or material). The present essay conceives of rhetoric, and especially visual rhetoric, as a suitable framework to interpret visual hybrids. Here, visual hybrids are understood to be entities that enact the internal rhetorical interplay between difference and unity represented by visual elements and motifs. The article first investigates the concept of ingenium and multimodality to introduce general rhetoric as a holistic framework of human experience and expression that is inherently visual and sensual. Then the paradigms of visual rhetoric are outlined to propose a possible classification of visual hybrids, illustrated by contemporary examples from art and advertising. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mass media research on the portrayal of older people has primarily focused on television series and advertisements. News programmes on television have received little attention. We argue that viewers perceive characters on the news as more direct and more accurate representations of social reality than fictional characters, and therefore portrayals on the news are more likely to be integrated in viewers' stereotypes about elderly people or used as standards of comparison. In order to explore potential differences in the representation of senior men and women, we conducted a quantitative content analysis on a sample of 754 elderly people who appeared on the evening news programmes of four major Hungarian television channels with high viewership. Each character was coded in terms of 115 qualitative variables. Our results indicate that older men are portrayed significantly more often than women as affluent, elegant, knowledgeable, powerful and actively working. By contrast, women are more commonly shown as kind, family-oriented, in ordinary roles (e.g. as the 'woman in the street') and engaged in less-productive activities such as shopping. Based on previous research on the role of mass media in the socialisation process as well as social comparison theory, we discuss how these imbalances in the representation of older men and women may affect viewers of different age groups, genders and social status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a new, multidisciplinary concept called "Social Futuring" and introduces an index based on this concept, entitled the "Social Futuring Index". Settled into the intersection of philosophy, psychology, sociology, political theory and geopolitics among many other fields of social sciences social futuring and its application as an index addresses both academia and policymakers. In the present article the concept is explained and then placed in the broader context of social sciences. We highlight that the most unique characteristic of social futuring is its fixed normative, analytical and discursive framework, the center of which is "a good life in a unity of order". Finally, we present the key elements of the index that are currently under construction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rhetorical education faces significant challenges of the virtual knowledge society. Classroomteaching in skill-development still seems inevitable, however, the face-to-face experience has to gain more momentum and improve quality. It is especially important in Central European contexts where the history of teaching rhetoric has not been without fractures after World War II. The present paper is an approach that conceptualizes new aims of teaching rhetoric and suggests ways to reform the educational program of rhetoric at the secondary level. It sets of from the assumption that rhetoric should no longer be conceived and taught of as a toolkit to formulate texts, but rather as a behaviour and sensitivity to human affairs. Thus, rhetorical education should facilitate not so much the production of speeches but the birth of the rhetorical citizen. The education serving this aim does not the eliminate the classical roots of rhetorical literacy. On the contrary, it exploits the dynamic capacities of the two-millenniaold faculty. The paper introduces a detailed, three-phased educational process with which rhetorical sensitivity can be bred in the classroom, while improving rhetoric as a subject matter itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main focus of our research is to identify the factors that impact childbirth experience positively and negatively, with special attention to the case of caesarean sections. Drawing on a telephone survey conducted over four years between 2021 and 2018, we use data on 2000 Hungarian mothers and assessed a total of 4266 births. According to the regression analysis, there is a significant association between childbirth experience and settlement type, marital status, financial situation and factors measuring social support, as well as between high-risk pregnancy and informal patient payments. Significant results relating to caesarean sections indicate that the proportion of this mode of birth is higher among women who are older, completed a higher level of education and who live in settlements of a larger type. Based on regression analysis, we can conclude that the likelihood of opting for a caesarean section increases with the mother having a degree or diploma, giving birth with support from an obstetrician of her own choice, experiencing high-risk pregnancy or being older. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]