What is Rhetoric and Why Should I Care?

"Rhetoric" has become a slam term, meaning hot air or manipulative language,

but that's a recent phenomenon. For most of its 26 century history, it was

a term of highest praise. In fact the word "barbarian" means babbler, since

what the Romans thought differentiated savage from civilized people was the ability to speak

Latin. As with most things Roman, rhetoric originated in Greece (well, ok technically

in Sicily, but it was a Greek province). A tyrant had been overthrown and

everybody wanted the land back that he'd stolen, but there were no records.

Someone had the brilliant and amazingly civilized idea that everyone would

make a speech establishing his claim, and no one could speak for you (in

modern terms, no lawyers ;).

The idea caught on, so a fellow called Corax (literally, "The Crow") started giving lessons on how

to give speeches. Then in the capital of Athens, rhetoric became one of only

four fields taught to advanced students. The most cultivated people would

even have people give speeches at social gatherings. The Sophists, for example (trashed by Plato,

we don't have many of their own writings, so it's hard to know if he was being fair), could give a

brilliant speech on either side of an issue, which might have started the reputation of rhetoric

as being dishonest, but really they were just exercising the kind of

relativism we take pretty much for granted these days (quick overview). Despite Plato's

skepticism (though he was clearly a brilliant rhetor himself), his student

Aristotle wrote an entire book on rhetoric, from which we still get our

fundamental ideas of ethos, pathos and logos (in the twentieth century the

three were bumped up to six and called the communications triangle, with not much

increase in explanatory power).

Rhetoric thrived when Rome was a democracy, in fact no one with

aspirations to be a leader could hope to be successful without studying it.

A great teacher and practitioner of rhetoric, Cicero, was so dangerous to

another dictator who wanted to seize power and kill the republic that this tyrant

assassinated Cicero and had his dismembered arms nailed over the doors of the

senate as a warning. During the Dark Ages there wasn't much call for

democratic discourse, but rhetoric survived in the monastery schools. St.

Augustine in fact studied rhetoric in his youth.

Democracy makes something of a comeback in the Renaissance, which in part

was fueled by the frantic search for Greek and Latin books, so rhetoric does as well.  Generally

only fragments of Aristotle's rhetoric were available, so the more complete Cicero

was the hot seller, though it was not as good.  Rhetoric always morphs to

fit the times, so at different periods different parts get emphasized

(invention, delivery, wit, memory etc).  In the Renaissance, more than any

time before or since, intelligence was judged by wit and style, so theory

and catalogues of metaphor were developed.   Then when the scientific

revolution began, Ramus divorced invention from rhetoric and assigned it to

logic (boo!), so rhetoric became a sort of sugarcoating on ideas that had

already been created (though we now know that rhetoric, metaphor and

language are central to generating ideas). The new scientists were very

suspicious of any classical authors, since they had been taken as gospel for

a long time and thus people hadn't tried to establish truth through

experimentation (Actually, Aristotle in fact was big on experimentation; his student

Alexander the Great sent him animals to study from all the lands he conquered for

study, but his work was pretty old by this time). What's really funny is

that scientists tried to outlaw metaphor (literally, and Act of Parliament

was proposed) because it made them crazy that one word could have more than

one meaning. But of course they used metaphor even when attacking it

(painted whore was a favorite, referring to the ancient goddess/muse of

eloquence).

Nevertheless, rhetoric remains popular (maybe because the rising middle

class was tired of getting put down as hicks because of the way they spoke,

even though their clothes, houses and carriages are just as good as the aristocrats; at any rate,

that's why the first English grammars show up about now).

In America, rhetoric is desired, but there aren't any teachers except at

places like Harvard, so rhetoric often gets watered down to textbooks with diagrams of how

to stand and gesture when delivering a dramatic speech, or to delivery/

speaking properly (your grandparents or great grandparents probably had

elocution lessons, especially if they had some bucks).

In the twentieth century, rhetoric makes a comeback, at first limited to its

classical scope as the study of persuasive language, but the great

self-taught genius (and my personal hero) Kenneth Burke, building on Aristotle, expands it to the

study of symbol systems, which "make our bodies hop in unnatural ways."

Perhaps one reason why rhetoric became so important was that in this century

propaganda has reached unprecedented power, as we saw with the rise of the

Nazis (in fact Burke writes a brilliant expose/analysis of how Hitler uses

language before WWII, republished in Philosophy of Literary Form 1941 McHenry PN511.B795 1974 ).

How We Can Use Rhetoric

By understanding the basics of Aristotle's rhetoric, we can defend ourselves

from underhanded propaganda. Every situation has a speaker, a message and

an audience. An appeal to pure ethos (speaker) asks us to believe something

just because of who says it (Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan are so

accomplished, and so likeable it's easy to forget that they have no real

expertise on batteries or cars or whatever). Sometimes a message will rely

primarily on logic and facts, or what we are supposed to take as facts

(logos), examples: textbook or a report. Much more often, an emotional

appeal, or whatever is being advocated is linked to our values (if you

believe in ___, then you must ___). By looking at these associations and

evidence carefully, you can keep from being conned.

But of course you can also use your knowledge of rhetoric for good. To really understand how

important an understanding of rhetoric is, have a look at this typical freshman essay.

Generally you'd want a balance of credibility/likeability, good facts, and

touching people's hearts/consciences, since even when the facts are there,

people generally won't act unless their hearts and heads are both involved.

Sometimes, however, the situation will demand that you shift your

proportions. If the audience is hostile to you, you can try to show that

you are a good person who has a good deal in common with them, but your best

bet is to use facts, since they won't let you move them emotionally if they

don't trust you. A very friendly audience, on the other hand, does not need

much help in liking/believing you, and they may already be familiar with the

facts, so you'd concentrate on their feelings and values.

Here's some possible sources for logos: personal observation or witnesses (can be powerful, but

watch for counter-arguments about bias/emotion), empirical evidence, precedents, examples,

analogies, definition, authorities, comparisons, consequences.

Ethos: show yourself to be reasonable, honest and with the greater good (if not your audience's)

at heart.

Pathos: shared values and goals (freedom, justice etc), powerful sensory images, metaphor

(see Lunsford handout for more, as well as more on structure).

Here's how you could structure an argument, but be careful to think of this more like cooking or

dancing than filling in slots, like in the five paragraph essay.

Introduction: get the attention of your audience, and let them know what your topic is. Establish

common ground and goodwill. (Then tell them up front what you think unless your views are

SO different that they will walk out).

Body: consider opposing points of view to establish fairness (picking a weak "straw man"

argument to knock down won't do it).   Establish grounds for your claims (underlying

assumptions and evidence).  In the conclusion, call for a specific action, explaining exactly how

your audience can accomplish it.  End with a strong emotional appeal that is appropriate to your

audience.

You can also use rhetoric to understand what makes a message effective or not, nd thus improve your ability to get your ideas accepted, and to know when and how to disbelieve (and debunk for others) ideas that do not deserve your belief (see conclusion of How to be Brilliant handout)

Another (more scholarly) overview of rhetoric

back to course website home

back to course handouts