Rhetoric

Rhetoric is the art of persuasion. Rhetoric persuades audiences to believe something or to take some action. Everything is rhetorical. Your essays are rhetorical (they are trying to convince me of your argument). An e-mail to your mother is rhetorical (perhaps you are trying to convince her that you are doing well in college and to send you some cash). A novel or a film is rhetorical even if it's only trying to convince you to keep on reading or watching. Because rhetoric is such a fundamental part of language, it makes no sense to say "so-and-so uses rhetoric." Rhetoric is so fundamental to language you might as well say that "so-and-so's sentences have nouns and verbs." Of course he does.

The Greek philosopher, Aristotle (pictured above) defined three central means of rhetorical persuasion:
Ethos, which refers to the character of the speaker of author;
Logos, which refers to the logical structure of the argument or text; and
Pathos, which refers to the emotional impact on the audience or reader.

Just as all language and images are rhetorical, its important to point out that all language carries some sense of ethos, logos, and pathos. Notice how these terms all center around the figure of the rhetorical speaker (the rhetor) and the effect that he or she produces on an audience. This focus is no accident, since rhetoricians developed their art for use in oral argumentation in the public sphere. As writers in this class, you will not have access to what an audience thinks or feels. After all, if rhetoric was 100 percent effective you would buy every product you saw advertised. Rather, your goal in this class when discussing rhetoric is to determine how the rhetor attempts to appeal to his or her audience.

While rhetoric is a part of all language, it does have a history of study and development. Roman rhetoricians such as Cicero extended Aristotle's system of ethos, logos, and pathos to define rhetorical success by a speaker's command of five elements:

Invention
Arrangement
Style
Delivery
Memory

Again, much like the rhetoricians of Ancient Greece, Roman rhetoricians conceptualized rhetoric in terms of public speaking. Hence, their emphasis on memory. However, many of these elements play a role in how your own essays preform. For instance, I evaluate your papers in terms of their originality, or their invention. I also look at the structure of your papers, or their arrangement. Similarly, I am interested in reading essays that effectively use sophisticated sentences, or in other words, that have an effective style.

In the twentieth century, Kenneth Burke further developed the concept of rhetoric by focusing on the entire rhetorical situation. In order to discuss rhetoric in more detail, he developed Burke's Pentad. The Pentad consists of five elements:

Agent [WHO IS SPEAKING]
Act [WHAT ARE THEY DOING?]
Scene, or the time and place in which a rhetorical act happens [WHEN and WHERE]
Agency, or the means of persuasion (among other elements, this would also refer to the use of ethos, logos, and pathos) [HOW ARE THEY ATTEMPTING TO PERSUADE?]
Purpose [WHY ARE THEY SPEAKING?]

Audience and Purpose are the crucial dimensions of the "how" and "why" of a rhetorical situation. But as Burke shows us here, we cannot fully understand the rhetorical effects of a speaker or author (an Agent) without a careful analysis of the complete rhetorical context, the conditions of Act, Scene, and Agency. As in a drama, with this rhetorical context the Agent performs a version of him- or herself.

In performing a rhetorical analysis, you must be able to accurately define all elements of Burke's Pentad and define the rhetor's audience.



(adapted from "recognizing rhetorical context" by Elizabeth Losh)