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What is Rhetoric?
Objectives
 To understand Rhetoric more broadly as a theory of
communication and critical thinking rather than
merely a device or vehicle for language transmission
and analysis.
 To understand the first rhetorical canon of Invention
and its significance for communication and critical
thinking, particularly in the Digital Age.
 To challenge the popular assumption that rhetoric is
something that happens after critical thinking.
 http://hsc.csu.edu.au/english/advanced/critical/2471/
Rhetoric.html
Outline
 Exploration of Classical and New Rhetorical Theories,
with an Emphasis on Invention
 Application of these theories to syllabus speeches
Classical Rhetoric
Aristotle
Disagreeing with his teacher Plato, Aristotle:
 rejected the notion of absolute Truth, maintaining
instead that truth lay in the realm of the contingent.
 believed the determining motive of human life and
political existence is man’s (sic) desire for happiness
 believed that effective arguments must feature a
precise, seamless blend of logos, pathos and ethos,
determined by the context and/or occasion.
 paid particular attention to the role and function of
the audience
Aristotle
 was perhaps the first to recognise rhetoric ‘as an art of
communication’ that ‘was morally neutral’, and as the
one ‘that could be used for either good or ill’. (on
Rhetoric)
The Rhetorical Triangle
5 Canons of Classical Rhetoric
 Invention or Discovery (creating topics,
arguments, etc.)
 Arrangement or Organization (of speeches,
writing, presentations)
 Style (Good writers leave their personal ‘stamp’ on
their writing)
 Memory (Memorizing Speeches, as in classical,
oratorical rhetoric)
 Delivery (written, spoken, computer-mediated,
etc.)
Three Branches of Classical Rhetoric
as designed by Aristotle and elaborated on by Cicero and Quintilian
 Forensic (or Judicial): concerned with past action and
witnessed mostly in legal domain
 Deliberative: concerned with future action and
witnessed mostly in political domain
 Epideictic: Concerned with the present, with
attributing praise and blame and witnessed mostly at
ceremonial occasions such as weddings, funerals,
dedications, graduations etc.
Expansion of Rhetoric Beyond Persuasion
 Later rhetoricians included sermons, letters, and
eventually all forms of discourse (even conversation)
that could be seen as persuasive in intent. (Bizzell)
 This expansion gave rise to the New Rhetoric, which
focuses more on communication, albeit sometimes as
a means of persuasion.
 Key New Rhetorical theorists: Kenneth Burke and
Chäim Perelman
Rhetorical Approaches Post-1960
Objective Rhetoric
 Based on positivistic epistemology.
 Arose out of influence of behaviorist psychology.
Subjective Rhetoric
 reality is a personal and private construct
 truth is always discovered within, through an internal glimpse, an examination
of the private, inner world.
 The material world is only a lifeless matter.
 The social world is even more suspect b/c it attempts to coerce individuals into
engaging in thoughtless conformity.
 Solitary activity is always promising; group activity always dangerous.
Transactional Rhetoric
 locates reality in the interaction of the rhetorical process itself—in the
interaction of material reality, writer, audience and language—not in sensory
impression or the quantifiable (objective) or within ideas and visions
(subjective/expressionistic).
Three transactional rhetorics:
Classical
 distinguished by its commitment to rationality. Classical rhetoric as
found in Aristotle treated all the elements of the rhetorical situation:
interlocutor, audience, reality, and language.
Cognitive
 distinguished by its assertion that the mind is composed of a set of
structures that develop in chronological sequence. The ways people
construct meaning independently as they read and write.
Epistemic:
 distinguished by its belief that rhetoric is a serious philosophical
subject that involves not only the transmission, but also the generation
of knowledge.
 holds that rhetoric exists not merely so that truth may be
communicated, but that truth may be discovered.
 Maintains rhetoric is epistemic because knowledge itself is a rhetorical
construct.
Kenneth Burke
 Kenneth Burke: "The most characteristic concern of
rhetoric [is] the manipulation of men's [sic] beliefs for
political ends....the basic function of rhetoric [is] the
use of words by human agents to form attitudes or to
induce actions in other human agents.”
 Burke’s theory of Identification through symbols is a
further dimension of the Aristotelian triad of Ethos,
Pathos and Logos.
 Rhetoric encourage others to understand other
perspectives based on a common set of symbols.
 Theory of symbols particularly relevant in Digital Age,
with its proliferation of visual arguments.
Visual Rhetoric
Visual Rhetoric is the process we use to interpret what we see
before applying it, to make judgments, decisions, etc.
 We normally see before we understand.
 To what extent does our personal context shape how we see
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things?
How does experience effect our perceptions?
How we are persuaded by the things we see?
What makes something or someone seem credible?
How do we determine what or whom to trust?
How do we evaluate quality, goodness, virtue?
By which system(s) do we assign value?
To what extent are we persuaded by appearances?
Burke’s Dramatistic Pentad
 Act: What purposeful act has taken place?
 Agent: Who took this action?
 Agency: How or with what did they do it?
 Scene: Where, when and in what context did the act
take place?
 Purpose: Why did they do it? What was their intent?
 Burke later added a sixth element, “attitude,” making a
hexad.
When applying this model to a situation, typically the
purpose will be determined from an examination of the
other four elements.
Chäim Perelman
 Perelman's theory of Rhetoric is a theory of
Argumentation rather than one that is based on
logic/demonstration
 All argumentation must be related to the audience.
 Facts are what the audience believes to be true
(Aristotle’s notion of the realm of the contingent).
 Argumentation is a meeting of the minds that requires
people to share a frame of reference. the use of
rhetorical commonplaces helps to achieve this.
Chäim Perelman on Audience
 The orator must pay attention to the audience, considering
both the audience at hand and the universal audience. All
audiences are partly or mostly incommensurate with the
universal audience and with each other.
 One should not assume a perfectly rational audience.
Nevertheless one should assume some commonality of
values and adherence to common sense among the
audiences and with the orator.
 One may either persuade or convince a local audience, but
to be valid for the universal audience an argument must be
convincing.
The New Rhetoric, 1969
Particular and Universal Audiences
(Perelman)
 The particular audience is the group to be influenced, not
merely the group physically present.
 The universal audience consists of any number all
reasonable and competent people.
 May be all of humanity.
 May be the mental concept of what the speaker constructs.
 The universal audience serves two purposes.
 It serves as an aid in the choice of arguments and appeals.
 It serves as a norm or a standard for differentiating good and
bad arguments.
Invention as a Social Act, 1987
Karen Burke LeFevre maintains that as a social act, invention has
four aspects:
 Invention is social even when the agent is a single individual
since the inventing self is socially influenced.
 Human agents always act dialectically in their interconnections
with others and the socio-culture.
 Although invention is initiated by an agent, the inventor always
requires the presence of an “other”—either the rhetor as
internalized other or a perceived audience of actual others.
 Classical precedents, including the three types of Aristotelian
appeals and the concept of ethos, which arises from the
relationship between the individual and the community
LeFevre offers four perspectives on
Invention:
 The Platonic Perspective, based on Plato’s myth of the soul—
innate knowledge/cognitive structures to be projected onto the
world.
 The Internal Dialogic Perspective, based on Freud’s model of the
psyche—inner dialogue with inner self, with superego acting as
monitor/bridge for rest of world
 The Collaborative Perspective, based on George Herbert Mead’s
contention that meaning is constructed by symbolic gestures
that call for a response in others.
 Social Collective Perspective, based on Emile Durkheim’s theory
that a collective force or “mind” permeates society and acts, often
through established institutions and conventions, to influence
the attitudes, behaviors, and inventions of social groups.
Contemporary Rhetoric Research Areas
 Digital/Visual Rhetoric: The Internet, Email, Social Media,
Multimedia applications, SMS, etc.
 the study of electronic writing environments (as ‘scenes’ of
writing) continues to grow. As a result, the rhetorical
canons of ‘memory’ and ‘delivery’ have returned to
prominence, as complements to strategies of invention.
 The Global Turn in Rhetorical Studies has underscored
multilingualism, multiculturalism, multidisciplinarity, and
multimodalism.
 Ciceronian ‘civic Rhetoric’ and social implications of
language and writing have become major areas