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RHETORIC REVIEW: KEY TERMS

rhetoric

"Not just a means of producing effective communication ... [but] also a way of understanding communication."

- Faigley & Seltzer, p. 11

"The faculty of discovering in any particular case all of the available means of persuasion."

- Aristotle

"The process of using language to organize experience and communicate it to others. It is also the study of how people use language to organize and communicate experience. The word denotes both distinctive human activity and the "science" concerned with understanding that activity."

- C. H. Knoblauch

"A mode of altering reality, not by the direct application of energy to objects, but by the creation of discourse which changes reality through the mediation of thought and action."

- Lloyd Bitzer

"The duty and office of rhetoric is to apply reason to imagination for the better moving of the will."

- Francis Bacon

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rhetorical analysis

"The effort to understand how people attempt to influence others through language and more broadly through every kind of symbolic action."

- Faigley & Seltzer, p. 11

"[A form of critical reading that] involves stuying carefully any kind of persuasive action in order to understand it better and to appreciate the tactics that it uses."

- Faigley & Seltzer, p. 11

Textual analysis: "concentrate[s] more on texts than on contexts ... typically use[s] rhetorical concepts and terminlogies to analyze the features of texts."

- Faigley & Seltzer, p. 12

Contextual analysis: "emphasize[s] context over text ... focus[es] on reconstructing the cultural environment, or context, that existed when a particular rhetorical event took place. That reconstruction provides clues about the persuasive tactics and appeals ... [and] regards particular rhetorical acts as parts of larger communicative chains, or 'conversations.'"

- Faigley & Seltzer, p. 12

rhetorical context

AUDIENCE

"According to the concept of decorum, or 'appropriateness,' everything wihtin an effective persuasive act -- everything from content choices through minor stylistic matters -- develops from a central rhetorical goal that governs consistent choices that are based on occasion and audience."

- Faigley & Seltzer, p. 12

"All rhetorically oriented discourse is composed in light of those who will hear or read that discourse. Or, in other words, rhetorical analysis always takes into account how an audience shapes the composition of a text or responds to it ... All topics of invention appeal to an audience by means of reason (logos) or by establishing crediblity with the audience (ethos)."

- Silva Rhetoricae, "audience"

PURPOSE

"What do you want your readers to know, to believe, or to do when they have read your document? When you answer that question about your audience, you have determined the primary purpose, or objective, or your document."

 

"The writer's primary purpose is often more complex than simply 'to explain' something ... You need to ask yourself not only why you are writing the document but also what made you want to influence your reader to believe or do after reading it."

- Alred, Brusaw, & Oliu, p. 36

PERSUASIVE APPEALS

Logos: "good reasons that emerge from intellectual reasoning."

- Faigley & Seltzer, p. 12

Logos: "the consistency and clarity of an argument as well as the logic of evidence and reasons."

- Writing Commons, "Rhetorical Appeals"

Ethos: "the trustworthiness and credibility of the writer or speaker."

- Faigley & Seltzer, p. 12

Ethos: "related to 'ethics,' or the moral principles of the writer: ethos is the author's way of establishing trust with his or her reader."

- Writing Commons, "Rhetorical Appeals"

Pathos: "persuasive good reasons in an argument that derive from a community's mostly deeply held values."

- Faigley & Seltzer, p.12

Pathos: "empathy, which pertains to the experience of or sensitivity toward emotion."

- Writing Commons, "Rhetorical Appeals"

ARRANGEMENT | ORGANIZATION

"Development that suits your subject, your audience, and your purpose ... [The] following are the most common methods of developing any document:"

 

  • cause and effect

  • chronological 

  • comparison

  • division

  • classification

  • general and specific

  • order of importance

  • sequential

  • spatial

- Alred, Brusaw, & Oliu, pp. 20-21

STYLE

Style concerns the artful expression of ideas ... how this will be said. From a rhetorical perspective style is not incidental, superficial, or supplementary: style names how ideas are embodied in language and customized to communicative contexts."

 

"Style is often aligned with pathos, since its figures of speech are often employed to persuade through emotional appeals. However, style has just as much to do with ethos, for one's style often establishes or mitigates one's authority and credibility. But it should not be assumed, either, that style simply adds on a pathetic or ethical appeal to the core, logical content. Style is very much part of the appeal throughlogos, especially considering the fact that schemes of repetition serve to produce coherence and clarity, obvious attributes of the appeal to reason."

 

"Style is not an optional aspect of discourse, although those who take issue with rhetorical excesses maintain the fiction that there is a "plain" method of speech. Style is essential to rhetoric in that its guiding assumption is that the form or linguistic means in which something is communicated is as much part of the message as is the content."

- Silva Rhetoricae, "style"

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