Tuesday, January 13, 2015
Tuesday, January 6, 2015
Classical Rhetoric Overview Reading Assignment (for October 16th)
Classical Rhetoric: an Introduction and Overview
Rhetoric: the art of using language effectively to
persuade, convince, or affect an
audience.
Why are some writers or speakers so memorable or, in
many cases, forgettable?
Effective language comes down to choice: what choices
does an author or speaker
make and how do those choices affect the audience?
Make people your slave with
language!
Res-verba: what is said and how it being said
Three branches of rhetoric:
I. Deliberative (legislative: to exhort/persuade or
dissuade)
II. Judicial (forensic: to accuse or defend)
III. Epideictic or Panegyric (ceremonial: to praise or
blame)
Aristotle, father of classical rhetoric:
Rhetoric falls into three divisions, determined by the
three classes
of listeners to speeches. For of the three elements in
speech-making
– speaker, subject, and person addressed – it is the
last one, the
hearer, that determines the speech’s end and object.
The hearer
must be either be a judge, with a decision to make
about things past
or future, or an observer. A member of the assembly
decides about
future events, a juryman about past events: while
those who merely
decide on the orator’s skill are observers. From this
it follows that
there are three divisions of oratory – (1) political,
(2) forensic, (3) the
ceremonial oratory of display. (Rhetoric, I 1358a)
Five main principles or tenets of classical rhetoric:
I. Inventio (invention, discovery, modes of appeal
(logos, pathos, and ethos),
topics)
II. Dispositio (disposition/arrangement/structure)
III. Elocutio (elocution, stylistic devices, schemes
and tropes)
IV. Memoria (memorization, preparation, knowledge of
topic)
V. Pronunciatio (pronunciation, delivery of
information, presentation)
General terms derived from the Greeks. Cicero wrote
about the importance of
oration, too:
…since all the activity and ability of an orator falls
into five
divisions,…he must first hit upon what to say; then
manage and
marshal his discoveries, not merely in orderly
fashion, but with a
discriminating eye for the exact weight as it were of
each argument;
next go on to array them in the adornments of style;
after that keep
them guarded in his memory; and in the end deliver
them with effect
and charm. (De oratore, I.xxxi. 142-143)
Really, though, all of these terms go back to our
original term: res-verba, that is
what is said and how it is being said. We must think
of the choices that each author
makes and how those choices affect the overall message
and effectiveness of the
message to the audience.
Inventio
Invention deals with proof, topics, and modes of
appeal. How will you discuss your
topic? How will you prove it? What will your thesis
be? How will you appeal to
your reader? As you can see, these questions all
center, once again, around choice.
Proof (based on Aristotle’s model)
1. Inartificial proof: sworn testimony, documents,
scientific analysis, laws
2. Artificial proof through modes of appeal:
a. Ethos:
establishing the persuader’s good character and credibility
through ethics. (“Hi there, friends. I’m Morgan Freeman.
I’ve played
God in many movies, but I would never play God with my
health
insurance. I trust Blue Cross Blue Shield, and so
should you.” – plays
on his celebrity and credibility to sell insurance)
b. Pathos:
Putting the audience in an appropriate mood, by playing
on it’s feelings or emotions (“Should we allocate our
national budget
to send more of our young men to die on the
battlefields in foreign
lands, when we have children starving at home? No! We
shall not!” –
playing on people’s emotions to get reduced defense
spending in the
budget)
c. Logos:
Proving, or seeming to prove, the case through rational
argument or logic. (“We are dependent on foreign oil
for the majority
of our energy. Doesn’t it just make sense to explore
other, alternative
forms of energy? Solar, wind, thermal: there are so
many options!” –
playing on people’s sense of logic and rationality)
Truth vs. Validity vs. Effectiveness
Types of logical proof:
1. Deductive (moving from the general to the
specific): everyone has this, and
so this particular person does, too.
a. If the premises are scientifically demonstrated or
valid, then the
conclusion is proven. This is called a Syllogism.
b. If the premises are only probably true, the term
for this argument is
called an Enthymeme.
2. Inductive (moving from the specific to the
general): if it can happen in this
one instance, it can happen in many instances.
a. If all instances of a phenomenon are proven, then
the proof is
scientific.
b. If only some instances of a phenomenon are proven, then
the
argument is from example (most common form of
rhetoric).
These sound perhaps a bit confusing, but it will
perhaps make more sense with
an example. Let’s use a syllogism, which in the
traditional sense employs two
premises and a conclusion. If you prove the premises,
then the conclusion holds
true. Through all of this discussion of logic, we want
to look at the premises, that
is the claim being made. We must always distinguish
between truth, validity, and
effectiveness. Just because something seems valid
doesn’t mean that it’s true, but
that doesn’t necessarily affect the effectiveness of
that claim. For instance, examine
this syllogism:
Premise One: All frogs are green.
Premise Two: I have a frog.
Conclusion: Therefore, my frog is green.
This syllogism seems like a true statement, and it’s
certainly valid from a logical
standpoint, but is it, in fact, true? If all frogs are
green, and you have a frog, then
it seems logical that your frog is green, right?
What’s wrong with this claim? Are
all frogs green? It’s a valid statement, but is it
true? If it’s valid but not true, it’s an
Enthymeme. This argument is an enthymeme.
What if we tried a similar syllogism?
P1: All men are human.
P2: I am a man.
C: Therefore, I am human.
Is this valid and/or true? All men are, in fact,
human, and if you’re a man, then you
are human. This syllogism is valid and true. This
argument is a syllogism.
Just because the form of the argument works and is
valid, though, it doesn’t mean
that it’s true. The frog example proved that. How
about if we substituted “green”
for “human” for this second example? Is it still valid
and true?
P1: All men are green.
P2: I am a man.
C: Therefore, I am green.
It’s not very true anymore, is it? Therefore, it’s an
enthymeme.
The idea with syllogisms, or enthymemes, or with any
argument for that matter, is
to examine the argument, the claim. In this case, if
we look at that first premise, “All
men are green,” we see that the first premise isn’t
true. If one of the two premises
isn’t true, the conclusion isn’t true. It’s that
simple.
When you examine any argument that someone makes, you
should look for the truth
and validity of the claims. How about if we move on to
something more normal,
something you might see on t.v.?
P1: Everywhere you look, kids are killing other kids
with guns.
P2: Senator Smith wants to lower the age to own a gun.
C: Therefore, more kids will die from gun-related
deaths.
It’s not frogs or green men, but it’s the same thing,
essentially. Look at the premises
and then evaluate the validity and truth of the
conclusion. Is Premise One true or
valid? It’s very much a generalization, isn’t it? Have
we looked at the statistics?
Do we know if there’s been an increase in gun-related
deaths among children? Do
we know why? Premise Two may be true, and let’s assume
it is. Ultimately, the
conclusion is not necessarily valid or true, because
one of the premises isn’t true.
Does this mean that it’s not effective, though? We’ll
see later that sometimes, even
though something isn’t true or valid, it can still be
effective. If you have an effective
speaker, they can be pretty convincing, even if what
they’re saying is total hooey.
Most rhetoric and argument is based around enthymemes,
that is, trying to convince
an audience of something that cannot definitively be
proven.
Saturday, January 3, 2015
Figures of Speech
Figures of Speech
Excerpts taken from:
Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student by Edward J. Corbett (3rd ed.)
“Make people your slave with language”
“Artful deviation from the ordinary mode of speaking or writing”
Schemes: deviation from regular pattern or arrangement of words (change in order)
Tropes: deviation from regular and principal signification of a word (change in meaning)
Schemes
• Schemes of construction
o Schemes of balance
Parallelism: similarity of structure in a pair or series of related words,
phrases, or clauses.
• “government of the people, by the people, and for the people”
• “blood, toil, tears, and sweat”
Isocolon: similar in structure and length (parallelism with similarity in
length, as well).
Antithesis: juxtaposition of contrasting ideas.
• “small step for man, giant leap for mankind”
• “best of times, worst of times”
o Schemes of word order
Anastrophe: inversion of word order (Yoda-speak).
• “A uniform does not a soldier make”
• “Of health food and sprouts, she knew little”
Parenthesis: insertion of a verbal unit that interrupts the normal flow.
• “She said -- though I heartily disagree -- that chocolate cannot be
good for you.”
Apposition: side by side two coordinate elements, the second of which
explains or modifies the first (to explain or expand).
• “The Chelsea Garden Show, a Mecca to all serious gardeners,
opens in May.”
o Schemes of omission
Ellipsis: deliberate omission of a word or word implied by the context (to
gain economy smoothly)
• “There wasn’t a figure on earth, nor fish, nor fowl.”
• “Every little pebble was distinct, every speckled trout, every
hand’s-breadth of sand.” Mark Twain
• “Rape is the sexual sinof the mob, adultery of the bourgeoisie,
and incest of the aristocracy.” John Updike
Asyndeton: omission of conjunctions
• “I came, I saw, I conquered.”
Polysyndeton: use of many conjunctions (hurried prose)
• “and…and…and…” Sandra Cisneros, “Barbie-Q”
o Schemes of repetition
Alliteration: repetition of initial consonants in two or more adjacent words
• “She sells seashells on the seashore.”
Assonance: repetition of similar vowel sounds
• “how now brown cow”
• “The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain”
Anaphora: repetition of the same words or group of words at the
beginnings of clauses.
• “I have a dream” MLK
• “We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds,
we shall fight in the fields…” Winston Churchill
Epistrophe: repetition of the same words or clauses at the end of
successive clauses.
• “…and yet I heard it.” Tell-Tale Heart
• “Yes, we can.” Barack Obama
Epanalepsis: repetition at the end of a clause with the word that began
the clause.
• “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust”
• “He was the flesh of my flesh, the blood of my blood…”
• “Love begets love, and hate begets hate.”
Anadiplosis: repetition of the last word to the beginning of the next
clause (shows process)
• “leg bone connected to the knee bone”
• “Having power makes it…isolated; isolation breeds insecurity;
insecurity breeds suspicion and fear; suspicion and fear breed
violence.” Zbigniew Brzezinski
Climax: arrangement of incremental importance (when it includes
repetition, it can be anadiplosis)
Antimetabole: repetition of words in successive clauses in reverse
grammatical order.
• “You can take the boy out of the country, but you can’t take the
country out of the boy.”
• “One should eat to live, not live to eat.” Moliere
• “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do
for your country.” JFK
Chiasmus: reversal of grammatical structures in successive phrases.
• “Now a Mayor, in time a President”
• “By day, a mild-mannered accountant, but by night, he’s Super
Tax Guy!”
• “Exalts his enemies, his friends destroys.” John Dryden
Polyptoton: repetition of words derived from the same root word.
• “To dream the undreamable dream, to right the unrightable
wrong…”
• “…the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” FDR
Tropes
• Metaphor and Simile
o Metaphor: implied comparison between two things of unlike nature with a
commonality.
“On the final exam, several students went down in flames.”
“She is the wind beneath my wings.”
o Simile: direct comparison with “like” or “as.”
“hungry like the wolf”
“sweet as a rose”
“She likes you like a fat boy likes cake”
o Allegory: metaphorical device that tells a story to show implicit comparison
Plato’s The Cave
o Parable: anecdotal narrative designed to teach a moral lesson
An Appointment in Samara
o Synecdoche: figure of speech in which a part stands for the whole
Genus for species: vessel for ship
Species for genus: bread for food
Part for whole: roots for flowers
Matter for what its made of: silver for money
o Metonymy: substitution of attributive or suggestive word for what is meant
“crown” for royalty
• Puns
o Antanaclasis: repetition of a word in different senses.
“If we don’t hang together, we’ll hang separately.” Benjamin Franklin
o Paronomasia: use of words alike in sound but different in meaning.
Casting asparaguses on someone (casting aspersions on someone)
o Syllepsis: use of a word understood differently in relation to two or more words,
which it modifies
“Take my wife – please!” or any Henny Youngman
o Anthimeria: substitution of one part of speech for another.
Faxing, FedExing, disrespecting, texting
o Periphrasis: subsititution of a descriptive word or phrase or a proper name for a
quality associated with the name.
“She’s pretty, but she’s no Scarlett Johannsen.”
o Personification: investing abstractions or inanimate objects with human qualities.
“The wind cried Mary”
“The lighting stretched its fingers across the stormy sky.”
o Hyperbole: extreme exaggeration
“My new SUV has a trunk the size of Montana!”
o Litotes: deliberate understatement for effect
“This mere man, this humble man…” when talking about someone
heroic.
• Erotema: asking a question to assert or deny something
o “Shall we wait another day, let our sons and daughters die in a foreign war, and
yet do nothing? No! We shall fight!”
• Irony: use of a word in a way which conveys the opposite meaning or incongruouity or
discordance between what is expected and what occurs (verbal, dramatic, and situational
irony)
o “What a fabulous day!” when it’s pouring buckets.
o Oedipus marrying his mother
o Romeo and Juliet (the end)
o O.Henry’s “Gift of the Magi”
• Onomatopoeia: word whose sound echoes the sense of the word.
o “Splash”
o “Squish”
o “Clatter”
o “Boom”
• Oxymoron: yoking together of two contradictory terms.
o “jumbo shrimp”
o “government intelligence”
o “controlled chaos”
• Paradox: opposites which speak truth
o “I am only guilty of being innocent.”
o “…ugliness is the thing that will always make it beautiful.” Gertrude Stein
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