THIS IS ALL TESTABLE CONTENT

Rhetoric: the faculty of discerning in any given case the available means of persuasion

• Annotate this in the reading

• This is what AP lang is about + how to become a savvy critical reader when someone is trying to persuade you 

Trivium (foundational stuff)

• Rhetoric

  • How to persuade

• Grammar

  • How to say things effectively

• Logic

  • Used in the courtroom

Quadrivium (all about numbers)

• Astronomy (number in space)

• Mathematics

• Geometry (number in shapes)

• Music (number in time)

Rhetorical Situation: When someone is trying to persuade you

Exigence: (importance and timeliness of the argument) f.g. Why do we care, what is its importance, and why does it matter now?

• Intrinsic Exigence: More personal to the rhetor, and you have to build importance. Developing it in the piece

  • You find something that you found important, but faculty and administration isn't aware of it. The rhetor has to establish 

• Extrinsic Exigence: What makes the argument important is out there in the world that the audience is going to be aware of. The audience knows about it, and you don’t have to make them think it's important. Something that you are responding to out there, going to make a case about it. The rhetor is inspired by 

  • F.g. if homecoming got canceled

• Exigence: “Kairos” - Why is now the right time 

Rhetorical triangle!!!!

Rhetorical appeals are NOT the same thing as strategies.

• Appeals are modes of persuasion: determining what is the best angle to use to persuade. Think of general approaches, or ask yourself. “How is the rhetor arguing here? By character? By logic, or by emotion?”

  • Explain what is it in the sentence that makes up that appeal

• Strategies are the concrete choices the rhetor makes, or the devices they use, once they’ve chosen that angle. These can be rather broad (like narrating a story or anecdote) or specific (particular metaphors or word choice)

(Canon as in essential component of)

Canons of Rhetoric: Think of these as the essential elements of any argument. Every argument can be broken down into these five constituent parts 

• Invention

  • Generating an argument: finding ideas that already exist (not creating from nothing)

• Arrangement

  • The order in which you present your material can have a significant impact on the success or failure of your argument

  • Not just as structure (body of to a building), but as the order which you progress through your building

• Style

  • Expression: the complexity of language offers innumerable possibilities for expressing your argument to your specific audience in a particular situation

  • Matters of seriousness vs levity (humor, lightheartedness)

  • Metaphors you use

  • Stories

  • Simple vs complex language

  • Rhetorical devices you use

• Memory

  • Techniques used to remember a speech: “mind palace” approach, e.g. 

• Delivery

  • Oral delivery techniques: volume, speed, tone, emphasis: but also think of visual presentation modes

  • Paper vs Powerpoint vs Poster

  • Walking around

  • Eye contact

  • Pitch in your voice

Plato (TRUTH, NOT ARTIFICE [fakeness, false creation, superficial appearance of])

• Then rhetoric, it would appear, is the artificer of a persuasion which creates belief about the just and unjust but gives no instruction about them?

  • Rhetoric is a way to persuade people to believe something about right and wrong, but it doesn't teach what is truly right or wrong.

Aristotle (THE ART OF PERSUASIVE ORATORY)

• Rhetoric may be defined as the faculty of discerning in any given case the available means of persuasion

Cierco (FIVE CANONS OF RHETORIC [Invention, Arrangement, Style, Memory, & Delivery] )

• GOALS

  1. Stimulate audience’s emotion

  2. Change its opinion

  3. Get it to act

• Perfect audience: receptive, attentive, and well disposed towards you

• Virtue, Practical Wisdom, Disinterest (Cause, Craft, Caring)

  1. Virtue: Audience believes you share their values

  2. Practical Wisdom: You appear to know the right thing to do on every occasion

  3. Disinterest: Lack of bias; you seem to be impartial, caring only about the audience’s interest rather than your own

Quintillian (ONLY A GOOD MAN CAN BE AN ORATOR)

• “For the orator’s aim is to carry conviction, and we trust those only whom we know to be worthy of our trust”

Heinrich quick notes:

• The most productive arguments use choice as their central issue. Don’t let a debate swerve headlessly into values or guilt. Keep it focused on choices that solve a problem to your audience’s (and your) advantage

• “Rhetoric helped create the first democracies”

• Consensus ≠ Agreement ≠ Compromise

• Example of cheat in logic for persuasion: fallacy

• You fight to win; you argue to achieve agreement

• Set your personal goal and a goal for your audience

• Deliberative arguments can use facts, but not limit itself to them…. Weighing one choice against the other

• Never debate the undebatable. Morals are inarguable in deliberative rhetoric

• Logos

  • Logical tactic: Concession, using the opponent’s argument to your own advantage

• Pathos

  • Most important pathetic tactic: Sympathy, registering concern for your audience’s emotions and then changing the mood to suit your argument

• Ethos

  • Most important appeal of all

  • Decorum: Argument by character starts with your audience’s love. You earn it through decorum (the audience finds you agreeable if you meet their expectations), which Cierco listed first among ethical tactics

  • Virtue: Rhetorical virtue is the appearance of virtue. You adapt to the values of your audience

    • Brag

    • Get a witness to brag for you

    • Reveal a tactical flaw

    • Switch sides: when you know you will lose, preempt your opponent by taking his side. 

  • Values: The word “values” takes on a different meaning in rhetoric as well. Rhetorical values do not necessarily represent honor, faith, steadfastness (loyalty), money, toys. Support your audience’s values, and you earn the temporary trustworthiness that rhetoric calls virtue

Reading the World quick notes:

• Plato suspicious about rhetoric - thought it sacrifice truth

• Gorgias: sophist

  • Truth of situation depends on one’s perspective

  • Rhetoric can be helpful or harmful depending on its use 

  • Only belief form of persuasion (w/o knowledge) is used in court of law

• Plato: Truthist

  • Uses Socrates for his arguments, then turns characters such as Gorgias into strawman for his own rhetorical ends

  • Perspective: focus on the mind and the world of ideal forms

• Aristotle

  • Descriptive: focus on tangible realities of the external world

  • Rhetoric and dialectic are counterparts, both are faculties for providing argument

  • Optimistic about rhetoric

• Wayne Booth

  • It is difficult, but possible to teach persuasion

  • The pedant stance: ignores audience, focuses on facts

  • The advertiser stance: overvalues effects, more dangerous than pedant’s stance

  • Seek a balance

How should I annotate?

Here are five suggested types of annotations to use consistently. That doesn’t mean all five on every single, but a good mix throughout the reading will demonstrate your critical reading skills and intellectual curiosity

1. New and unfamiliar terminology (if your understanding depends on it)

2. Main idea/ purpose/ argument (at the end, write a Precis)

3. Style--rhetorical strategies / choices and their effects (identify AND evaluate)

4. Summarize or paraphrase (“gloss”) the major & minor claims or ideas supporting the primary argument

5. Comment, question, react, and connect! (Confirm, refute, or bridge)

   1. Most of your annotations shouldn’t be this…
      
      Rhetoric: the art of public speaking, ability to see what will persuade

Dialectic: philosophical argument & inquiry into truth (via logic)

“Modes of Discourse”: more easily understood as genres of writing and speech (not all about persuasion, but can be used in persuasion as one of the appeals)

• Narration

  • Storytelling

  • Used in tandem with others in rhetorical strategies or as the dominant mode

  • Chronological (principle of arrangement: time)

• Description

  • Sense perception, imagery

  • Spatial (principal of arrangement: space)

• Exposition (scientific paper)

  • Example

  • Process analysis

  • Division/classification

  • Comparison/contrast

  • Definition

  • Cause/effect 

• Persuasion

  • Argument

Rhetorical Discourse:

• Aristotle identified three kinds of rhetorical discourse (persuasive arguments)

  • Forensic

  • Epideictic

  • Deliberative 

Forensic: 

• Judicial

• Issues of blame, justice

• Tense: Past

Epideictic (or demonstrative):

• Ceremonial

• Values: Virtues & Vices

• Tense: Present

Deliberative: 

• Legislative

• Policy, choice

• Tense: Future

Logical Reasoning (Syllogisms & Enthymemes) 

• Syllogism: A syllogism is a statement of logical reasoning consisting of a major premise, a minor premise, and a conclusion. (Syllogism is the basic unit of deductive argument)

  • Major Premise: All men are mortal

  • Minor Premise: Socrates is a man

  • Conclusion: Therefore, Socrates is mortal

• Fallacies Within Syllogism

1. In deductive reasoning, we deduce the conclusion from the premises. If the major premise and the minor premise are true, then the conclusion must be as well

2. Something can be a formal fallacy if one of the promises is not true. For example, “Some men are immortal” would be a faulty major premise.

   1. Pattern of reasoning invalid by a flaw in its logical structure

• Inductive Reasoning

  • Inductive reasoning, involves arguing from particulars to universals. While in the realm of logic, it isn't 100% provable. Inductive reasoning is open to fallacies, so watch out. But that doesn’t mean inductive arguments aren’t viable; it just means they don’t rise to the level of logical proof. 

• Enthymemes (basic unit of an argument)

  • Aristotle points out that all three parts of an argument are rarely expressed in informal or public situations. An enthymeme is a two-part argument, where one or more premises is left unstated

    • F.g. “Let’s see the Rear Window. It was directed by Hitchcock”. Missing premise: Hitchcock is a great director

  • Why are enthymemes effective?

    • “The fact that the audience must, in a sense, participate in completing a two-part argument by supplying the third part is an advantage to this form. Because audience members have to draw on or construct the beliefs that will round off the argument, they are participants in their own persuasion.”