RHETORIC

RHETORIC
1. The study and practice of effective COMMUNICATION.

2. The art of persuasion
.
3. An insincere eloquence intended to win points and get people what they want. All three senses have run side by side for more than 2,000 years. In the late 20c, rhetoric has an explicit and an implicit aspect. Explicitly, many 20c language professionals refer to rhetoric as archaic and irrelevant, while for some philosophers of communication and for many teachers of writing it is a significant and lively issue. In the latter circles, there is discussion of a ‘new rhetoric’ that blends the best of the old with current insights into the nature of communication. It is, however, an ironic measure of the centuries-old strength of rhetoric that many of its principles, concepts, and devices are taken as given by educated users of languages like English, French, and German. Terms like ANALOGY, ANTITHESIS, dialectic, and METAPHOR had their beginning among the rhetoricians of ancient Greece, as did many of the techniques of court-room argument, public speaking, advertising, marketing, and publicity.

Origins

In ancient societies with no awareness of writing, the ability to speak informatively, cohesively, and memorably was essential and admired. In such societies, chiefs, bards, and seers used a variety of techniques to gain attention and ensure retention of information (in their own as well as their listeners' minds). Linguistic techniques included: RHYTHM; REPETITION; formulaic lists and descriptions; kinds of EMPHASIS; balance and antithesis; ELLIPSIS; and words and devices to evoke mental images. In the course of time, such techniques were organized into bodies of received knowledge. In some societies, they were largely a part of religious ritual, as in India; in others, such as Greece, they were part of the craft of speaking which in the 5c BC became the foundation of education in city states like Athens and Sparta.

Greek rhetoric

The story is told of exiles who returned to Syracuse, a Greek colony in Sicily, after the overthrow of a tyrant. Because they needed to organize their claims to appropriate land, they hired teachers to help them argue their cases, and, as a result, the craft of rhetoric emerged through pleading in the Syracusan court. Itinerant teachers known as sophists (wise ones) then taught this forensic art alongside logic, a subject which was associated with the new craft of writing. Rhetoric's foremost exponents and analysts were Gorgias, Isocrates, Plato (all 5–4c BC), and Aristotle (4c BC). Of their rhetorical works, however, only Plato's Phaedrus and Aristotle's Rhetoric have survived. As writing became commoner, elements of the oral craft were transferred to prose composition and efforts were made to harmonize the rules of speech and writing with those of logic. The devices of rhetoric, however, did not lose their links with poetry or their practical ties with the law. As a result, rhetoric came to be viewed in two ways: as the high moral and philosophical art of speech and writing, and as a low art of winning arguments and impressing the gullible.

The five canons

Many manuals were compiled on the subject, such as the Latin treatise Rhetorica ad Herennium (‘Oratory for Herennius’: anonymous, 1c BC). These works usually listed five canons or offices of rhetoric, concerned with gathering, arranging, and presenting one's material:

1. Greek heúresis, Latin inventio.

Finding or researching one's material. The speaker or writer assesses an issue and assembles the necessary material.

2. Greek táxis, Latin dispositio.

Arranging or organizing one's material. Here, the orator puts the parts of the discourse in order, starting with the exordium or formal opening, then proceeding with the narration, including the division into various points of view, with proofs and refutations, and closing with the conclusion.

3. Greek léxis, Latin elocutio or educatio.

The fitting of language to audience and context, through any of three styles: the high-and-grand, the medium, and the low-and-plain. Included in this ‘style’ section are the traditional rhetorical devices and figures of speech.

4. Greek hupókrisis, Latin pronuntiatio or actio.

Performance, including the arsenal of techniques to be used in proclaiming, narrating, or in effect acting. This aspect was concerned with live audiences but also covered work on papyrus and parchment.

5. Greek mnḗmē, Latin memoria.

Training of the mind, to ensure accurate recall and performance in public assembly or court of law.

In all such discourse, the speaker could appeal to páthos (the emotions, the heart), to lógos (reason; the head), and/or to êthos (character; morality).

Roman rhetoric

Republican Rome shared the Greek interest in debate and legal argument, and therefore considered rhetoric essential to public life. Classics like Aristotle's Rhetoric were augmented by the lawyer Cicero (2–1c BC), who produced among other works the De inventione (On Making your Case) and the De oratore (On Being a Public Speaker), and by Quintilian (1c AD), author of the Institutio oratoria or Institutiones oratoriae (Foundations of Oratory). The systematization of rhetoric served the Empire well, helping to develop Latin as a language of literacy throughout the dominions. Imperial Rome, however, generally discouraged free and democratic debate, with the result that style and effect became more important than integrity.

Medieval and Renaissance rhetoric

Aristotle and Cicero had a profound influence on education in medieval Christendom. Through the works of Martianus Capella (5c), Cassiodorus (5–6c), and St Isidore of Seville (6–7c), their principles became part of Scholasticism, leading to the trivium (the three ways) of grammar, rhetoric, and logic-cum-dialectic, studied by aspirants to Latin learning and clerical orders. The trivium was the foundation for the quadrivium (the four ways) of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music-cum-harmony. Together, these made up ‘the seven liberal arts’, the core programme of theocratic and general education. Cicero had been the first to use the phrase artes liberales (liberal arts), the model not only for medieval and Renaissance scholarly debate but for contemporary liberal arts colleges and degrees and the education they seek to provide. When the complete text of Quintilian was rediscovered in a Swiss monastery in 1416, it helped animate the revival of classical learning known as the Renaissance. Scholars like Peter Ramus (16c), however, saw rhetoric less as a way of developing speech than as a means of teaching writing, whose importance was much greater than in classical times, both to the Church and the new nation-states. The five ancient canons were reorganized, assigning invention and disposition to dialectic and largely ignoring memory (although learning by heart remained a prime element in education). Renaissance rhetoric served the growth of literacy in the vernaculars as well as Latin, focusing on composition, style, and the figures of speech.

Rhetoric and English

During and after the Renaissance, rhetoric dominated education in the humanities in England, Scotland, and France, remaining little changed until the later 19c. During this period, the ancient tension between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ rhetoric continued, as the following extracts indicate. The first, from The Schoolmaster ( Roger Ascham, 1563), praises Cicero and everything Latinate; the second, from Hudibras ( Samuel Butler, 1663) mocks the ornate and empty:
Ascham. There is a way, touched in the first book of Cicero De oratore, which, wisely brought into schools, truly taught, and constantly used, would not only take wholly away this butcherly fear in making of Latins but would also, with ease and pleasure and in short time, as I know by good experience, work a true choice and placing of words, a right ordering of sentences, an easy understanding of the tongue, a readiness to speak, a facility to write, a true judgment both of his own and other men's doings, what tongue soever he doth use.
Butler. For rhetoric, he could not ope His mouth but out there flew a trope; And when he happened to break off In the middle of his speech, or cough, He had hard words ready to show why, And tell what rules he did it by.

The fragmentation of rhetoric that began in the Renaissance created whole new subjects in succeeding centuries. The third and fourth canons (elocution and pronunciation) became in the 18c courses in ‘proper’ speech, taught by actors like Thomas Sheridan and John Walker, both of whom published pronouncing dictionaries of English.

During the 17–19c, the methods of Cicero and Quintilian were standard in British and American universities. Yet, while students learned the classical languages and their rhetoric, their teachers were often in the forefront of change to English. The Scottish scholar Adam Smith chose English rather than Latin when giving his lectures; his friend Hugh Blair was appointed to the first chair of Rhetoric and Belles Lettres at the U. of Edinburgh in 1762, the precursor of all chairs of English language and literature around the world. In 1806, the first Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard, Massachusetts, was John Quincy Adams (later sixth US president). He was charged to instruct students in accordance with the models and exercises of Quintilian, but when Francis J. Child occupied the same chair in 1851, it was as Professor of English. In 18c society at large, issues of judgement and taste became more important than aesthetics and rhetoric, and among Romantics in the 18c and 19c freedom and feeling were more intriguing than discipline and refinement. As the 19c progressed, the ancient theorists became of less and less interest, except to classical scholars, and rhetoric became for many either the (empty) forms of public speaking or the study of writing and composition in schools. Some of the ancient aims and practices were, however, sustained in the debating societies of British universities and the departments of speech and public address in US colleges.

Conclusion

The ancient rhetoricians assumed that truth was absolute and separable from a text. Many 20c critics and scholars, however, see truth as relative and texts as self-contained objects whose ‘truth’ is re-made by every reader. The ancients regarded discourse as dynamic, embodying an intention and a design fitted to an audience, much as politicians and lawyers still see it. Many present-day literary critics, however, see discourses and especially texts as complete in themselves and distinct from their creators, the intention and ideas of the creator having reduced importance or no importance at all if they are not directly shown in the text. The dynamic therefore lies not with the writer but with the reader, in the re-creation of meaning. The emphasis has accordingly been on structure, coherence, and interpretation rather than on creation and the techniques of dissimulation that may accompany it, except insofar as these can be deconstructed to reveal a variety of possible interpretations. Even so, classical rhetoric survives. It has given shape to much of the Western world's inheritance of oracy and literacy. Everyone who speaks and writes a Western language or any language influenced by the forensic and literary traditions of the West is willy-nilly affected by it. Anyone who speaks in public or writes for professional purposes engages in the processes first listed in the five canons. In journalism and publishing, on radio and television, in the theatre and cinema, the old names may or may not be known, but the tools continue to be used.

See DISCOURSE, ELOCUTION, FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE, GRAMMAR, IRONY, PLAYING WITH WORDS, RHETORICAL QUESTION, STYLE.