Abstract: The tasks of rhetoric history research are to look into, describe, deal with the development and change of rhetorical phenomena and sum up the laws of their gradual progress. The research meets the needs of improving the linguistic and cultural accomplishments of the nationals, for the Chinese linguistic culture to go globewide, as well as of constructing the subject of rhetoric and of its new start. But in recent a hundred years the research proceeds slowly, so the process of exploration should be accelerated.

Key words: rhetoric, rhetorical phenomena, history of rhetoric, Chinese rhetoric history research