Lecture Notes:
I've posted these personal lecture notes as a way for you to review the text, discussion, and my own presentation.  Be aware that they are not a complete review of course content, but serve only as a general guide and reference for your own notes.

 

 

Herrick: 1 – 24 An Overview of Rhetoric

 

“anti” Rhetoric

Gorgias (Plato)

Essay on Human Understanding

 
Wayne Booth:  All verbal pursuits are  rhetoric -- philosophy,  logic, grammar . . .

McKeon:  Rhet is architechtonic, a master discipline by which all others are generated and maintained – foundational

Lanham :  We  need to return to rhetorical studies to be prepared for the impact of computer-based tech nology on our approach  to reading and writing


Rhetorical studies depict a return to primary western thought

 

What is rhetoric?  Simply persuasion?  Me:  It is the symbolic structure of motive and means to achieve parity with one’s other – however, if used immorally, it is a means to a primary end.  Either way, rhetoric is the alignment of symbolic ideation toward a specific end.

 

McCloskey and the nature of persuasion in Economics

 

We are all, essentially, rhetors.  Rhetoric is the study of human nature because to be human is to be “languaged.”

 

Note Kennedy’s definition of rhet (5)

Definition of Symbol: “Any mark, sign, sound, or gesture that communicates meaning based on social agreement”

 

. . . achieving clarity through the structured use of symbols . . . (7)

 

The ART of RHETORIC will achieve persuasion, clarity, beauty, and mutual understanding. Persuasion is not the ONLY aim of rhetoric

 

Rhetorical discourse (7)

·        Five distinguishing charateristics:

  1. planned - Cicero's inventio, dispositio, elocutio
  2. adapted to an audience
    1. enthymeme – argument built on values and desires held common by the audience
    2. forges links between rhetor and audience
    3. note KB's identification/consubstantiation
  3. shaped by human motives
    1. KB’s Grammar of Motives
    2. Alignment to build consensus
  4. responsive to a situation (also response inviting)
    1. rhet is situated i.e., crafted in response to certain set of circumstances – location, problem, audience, etc.  Note Bitzer’s rhetorical situation
  5. persuasion seeking
    1. Argument (logos) Reason
    2. Appeal (pathos) Emotions/Convictions  (Ethos can work here to)
    3. Arrangement (dispositio) Planning, Order of events, inductive, deductive, etc
    4. Aesthetics – elements of form, beauty, and force within symbolic expression – metaphor, allusion, rhythm, tone . . .

 

Social functions of rhetoric:  (15

Note that rhet can be exploited when the general public does not have a hand in its own political “becoming”  (Note Freire here)  In order for rhetoric to fulfill its own potential, the audience must have rhetorical capabilities too – a sort of rhetorical listening that will allow them to enter the conversation as equals.  Quintillian’s view of orator as teacher (and vise versa) will have large implications here.  Rhetoric should always be ethical

 

Ethical rhetoric’s six functions:  (the art of effective advocacy)

  1. tests ideas
    1. quality of audience determines the quality of rhetoric in a social venue (Perleman).  Note the implication of sound and efficient public education here – esp in our present political situation.
    2. dialogic give and take strengthens ideas – revision through collaboration, dialectic
    3. Moral rhetoric calls for both sides of a dialogue/argument to reassess and build re the rhetorical interface
  2. assists advocacy
    1. The movement of private belief to public statement: helps make private ideas public and to promote them in the public sphere.
    2. draws attention to ideas
    3. helps promote social change
  3. distributes power (rhet as a source of power)
    1. who is allowed to speak in a society?  How did they gain/maintain this voice?
    2. THREE LEVELS OF RHETORICAL POWER

                                                               i.      personal power – ability to advance self through language

                                                             ii.      psychological power – power to shape the thinking of others, i.e., advertising, framing, etc.

                                                            iii.      political power   Owned by those whom a society lets speak.  The keepers of ideology . . .  We must beware of ideological concealment, the blockage of honest argument/dialogue so that power is not confined within an area so rigid that ideology remains unexamined.

                                                           iv.      note definition of ideology: a system of belief, or framework, for interpreting the world

  1. discovers facts (doing your homework!)
    1. active research/investigation – “support group”
    2. invention – the compositional process – creating the message
    3. “critical research” refines (and often re-defines) facts
  2. shapes knowledge
    1. art of rhetoric influences social values, i.e., justice, morality, education, etc.
    2. Rhet plays a big role in what we se as truth
    3. Rhet is epistemic – knowledge-building
  3. builds communities