Our research project of cognitive rhetoric aims at systematically exploring a cognitive mechanism underlying the relationship between stylistic techniques of rhetoric, interpretations or meanings and its effects, and also developing a computational methodology of artistic work generation. This paper introduces the project of cognitive rhetoric and discusses its purposes and goals, related disciplines, and methodology. This paper then reviews, as case studies of cognitive rhetoric, our ongoing studies on “the cognitive mechanism of metaphor comprehension and appreciation” and “non-story type film rhetoric and its composition system”.