Vincent Descombes's definition of the notion of 'rhetorical country'

Where is the character at home? The question bears less on a geographical territory than a rhetorical territory (rhetorical in the classical sense, as defined by the rhetorical acts: plea, accusation, eulogy, censure, recommendation,warning and so on). The character is at home when he is at east in the rhetoric of the people with whom he shares life. The sign of being at home is the ability to make oneself understood without too much difficulty, and to follow the reasoning of others without any need for long explanations. The rhetorical country of a character ends where his interlocutors no longer understand the reasons he gives for his deeds and actions, the criticisms he makes or the enthusiasms he displays. A disturbance of rhetorical communication marks the crossing of a frontier, which should of course be envisaged as a border zone, a marchland, rather than a clearly drawn line. (p.179)

In the world of supermodernity people are always, and never, at home: the frontier zones of 'marchlands' are no longer open on to totally foreign worlds. Supermodernity finds its full expression in non-places, therefore supermodernity cannot aspire to the same ambition as modernity. The spectator of modernity sees the interweaving of old and new, the spectator of supermodernity makes the old (history, exoticsim, local particularity) into a specific spectacle.(advertisement) These spectacles play no part in any synthesis, they simply bear witness, during a journey, to the coexistence of distinct individualities, perceived as equivalent and unconnected.

(Auge p.20)