Download What is Rhetoric? - Arvin High School

Building our Own definitions
You need to convince one of your parents to allow you to do
something they normally would NEVER let you do. Take a
few minutes to jot down some strategies. What would you
try first? If that didn’t work what would be your back up?
 Literature
 A vehicle of communication
 A means of interaction between the writer and the
audience.
 Basic theory of all rhetoric:
 If there is a message and no messenger or no one to read
or hear the message there is no communication.
 Rhetorical analysis helps to give us order and to
understand what we are reading
 Aristotle
 All available means of persuasion
 Finding
 Cataloguing
 Describing
 Eventually analyzing
 The language used to accomplish those means
 3 Branches to rhetoric
 1. Invention: Generating ideas
 2. style
 3. arrangement
 Rhetoric originally dealt with only the law, so it was
required to be arranged in a certain order:





1. Introduction
2. statement of facts
3. proof
4. discrediting the opponents viewpoints
5. conclusion
 Persuasive discourse: manipulation of words
 The process (how the writer got there) is more
important than the product.
 persuasive= efffective
 Identification is the heart of persuasion
 Only when a reader identifies with the writer can
persuasion take place.
 The role of the reader is SO important
 Now, write your own definition for rhetoric. This
should be in your own words and don’t worry about
quoting anybody.
 Then, write a definition for rhetorical criticism.