RH 103

Working Definitions of Rhetoric

  • Purposeful/Planned

    • Ex. politician’s speech, polemic, activist group, advocate for money from school board, writers and manifestos, student paper

  • Dedicated to an audience

    • Ex. politican speaking to members of own party vs. a news network of those opposite of his

  • Responsive

    • Don’t have to be original, impossible to because everything has been talked about

    • Dialogic: goes back and forth

    • They say/I say: what they say vs. what you think

    • Ethos: credibility when making an argument

  • Contingent Issues

    • So much that is important, what should be talked about

  • Motives

    • Human motives (psychology)

  • Seeks affirmation

    • An audience that will agree


  1. Planned

  2. Motives

  3. Assent

  4. Audience

  5. Contingent

  6. Situated


Context: the circumstances and conditions surrounding the communication event, social influences, relevant events or situations, time, place

Rhetor: speaker or writer presenting the message, deliver in way that effectively persuades/informs the audiences

Audience: group of people, intended recipients of rhetor’s message

Text: the content of message being communicated


Rhetoric as a social force

  • Testing Ground for Ideas

    • Argue back and forth in the sense of academia, exchange of views, rhetor needs to be well-informed but so does the audience

    • Want somebody to question you, willing to disagree with you but anticipate rejections

    • Devil’s advocate, deliberately takes on role of disagreement

  • Assist in advocacy

    • Convinces people to get on your side

    • Ex. trial lawyer, entrepreneurs

  • Distribute power

    • No alternatives other than coercion and force

  • Discover facts and to feed truths

    • Epistemology: branch of philosophy that studies knowledge

    • Make sure to arrive at an important truth

  • Shaping of knowledge

    • The way you frame things makes a difference in the way you know something

  • Build community

    • Fosters sense of unity among groups of people

    • Ex. MLK Jr.


Misc. Terms to Know

  • Retrickery: manipulation, dishonesty, ways to fool people

  • Socratic irony: playing stupid and pretending to not know something you do know

  • Inventio: the initial stage of creating rhetoric

  • Topoi: prompting

  • Phatic: statements meant to get the audience on your side, not intellectual or argumentative content

    • Ex: making references to something you share with someone

  • Elenchic: arguing by contradiction, generally good motive, answer legit questions

  • Eristic: stronger, nasty overtones, also means contradicting and gainsaying but only for sake of winning an argument

  • Didactic: teaching

    • Good: lessons to remind or take to heart

    • Bad: guilt-tripping

  • Epistemology: branch of philosophy that studies knowledge

  • Phronesis: practical stuff

  • Kairos: doing right thing at any given time

  • Pedagogy: teaching, not only performed but taught students technique

  • Doxa: sound judgment, opinions

    • Lives on in orthodox, heterodox

  • Episteme: exact knowledge

  • Progymnasmata: ​​handbooks of preliminary rhetorical exercises that introduce students to basic rhetorical concepts and strategies. Also called the gymnasma.


Greek Rhetoric and Rhetoricians

  • Sophists

    • Pedagogy: teaching, not only performed but taught students technique

    • Made students pay large fees, idea of taking fee suspect, moral gray area

    • Important people thought they had something valuable

    • Corax, Tisias

      • Offended people in lawsuits when people tried to hang onto their land

      • Developed reputation

      • Not from Athens

      • Gorgias: taught by Corax

      • Famous teacher for arguments people could make in open area for trials and assembly

      • Corax could make case for someone or could tutor them on how to defend themselves

      • What order, how to say, when to say, etc.

    • Thought to teach retrickery

    • Teach students to argue for both sides and understand how to make appeals

    • Sophistry: false arguments, liar, manipulator

    • Sophisticated: generally positive word

    • Soph-: wisdom, philosophy

    • Teaching a variety of people regardless of background perceived as threatening

    • Logographers wrote speeches for other people but did NOT teach, makes them somewhat similar

      • Logos: word

      • Graph: writing

    • Gave birth to rhetoric as a distinct field of theory, practice, pedagogy

    • Mixed/divided attitude towards them overall


  • Socrates

    • Taught in socratic style of back and forth questioning and answering rhetoric

    • Did not write anything as he did not believe in it as he thought it contributed to memory fade

    • Mostly known through Plato’s dialogue (Xenophon and Aristotle too)

    • Tried and executed for corrupting youth of Athens

    • Acted arrogantly and was not liked


  • Plato

    • Pupil of Socrates and wrote in dialogue format, used character of Socrates as his own

    • Not liked by Socrates because he did not like writing

    • Idealist, “world we experience through our senses is not reality,” form is ideal version of something

    • The Academy: the school that he began

    • Generally suspicious of rhetoric but was very good at using it himself

    • Active writer

    • More of a sure knowledge episteme guy


  • Aristotle

    • Pupil of Plato, taught in his school, conducted own Peripatetic school in Athens

      • Peri: walk under, walking around

    • More practical, pragmatic, earthbound compared to Plato

    • No public role as a rhetorician, no written speeches

    • All around philosopher, man of science, “academic” thinker

    • The Lyceum: associated with groves, public gymnasiums

    • Author of the first extant full length treatise on rhetoric

    • Began making Rhetoric as a tutor to Alexander the Great, stopped ~330 BC

    • Did not agonize over good/bad uses of rhetoric unlike Isocrates and Plato

    • Defines rhetoric as art of discovering means of persuasion available for any occasion

      • Can recognize when someone is manipulating you if studying it

      • Rhetor investigates systematically both situation presented and own inner resources

      • Three branches

    • Rhetoric (book): process of speech composition

      • First 2 books focus on rhetor’s attempts to organize what is known and structure, arguments guided by heuristics, common topic (topi), places to look for arguments

      • Consider audience, cultural predilections/individual emotions, age, social class

      • Book 3 which argument to make first, gesture, dress, non-verbal means

    • Rhetoric counterpart of dialectic, not enemies

    • Does not discuss Sophists much, warns to stay away from deceiving, “fancy-talk”

    • Logos, ethos, pathos

    • Optimistic at end: good on your side attracts more people

  • Isocrates

    • Realizes a lot of life is related to doxa and that episteme is essentially not worth it

    • Turns opinions from doxa into firmly gotten or well-judged opinions

    • Distanced himself from Sophistry because of its reputation for persuading rather than exposing the truth

    • Focuses on real-world issues in philosophy to cultivate judgment

    • Anyone could be Greek if they adopted Greek values

    • Suffered dismissal because he wrote speeches instead of speaking


Branches of Rhetoric

  • Legislative: assemblies, law-making bodies, parliament

  • Judicial/Forensic: courts of law, trials, look back on something that has happened

  • Epideictic/Ceremonial

    • Encomium: praise, alluding someone/something

      • Ex. funeral eulogy

    • Invective/diatribe/vituperation: opposite, degrading something


Progymnasta

  • Enduring Value

    • Present sequence of reading, writing, speaking assignments that increase in difficulty

    • Effective in developing verbal skills

    • Potential indoctrination

    • Emphasizes refutation, balanced debate and critical thinking

  • Sequenced Exercises

    • Simple paraphrases and culminating in complex rhetoric

    • Builds on the previous

    • I.e Milo of Croton: lifted calf daily until it became a bull

  • Rhetorical Situation

    • Classroom audience to public audiences like law courts

    • Single viewpoint to examining multiple perspectives

    • Topoi called for, like exemplification, definition, comparison

    • Freedom to select their subjects, expand, then assume role or persona

  • Method and Content

    • Systematic and flexible tool

    • Freedom of expression