Definitions of Rhetoric

  1. What is Rhetoric?
    1. Unlike a well-defined discipline like physics, even professional scholars in rhetoric disagree on how to define it. There have been many definitions throughout history. (Definitions in brackets are derived from the author rather than directly quoted.)
    2. Most people have many ideas about what rhetoric is.
      1. Style vs. substance.
      2. Hot air, bombast
      3. Argumentation
      4. Speech making
    3. At the most basic level, rhetoric is equivalent to persuasion.
      1. Coercion--threats
      2. Demonstration--math, logic
      3. Persuasion--rhetoric. It involves:
        1. Political speeches
        2. College Lectures
        3. Human symbolic interaction
        4. Marketing
        5. Advertising
          1. even on a Candy Box--a Lemonhead's box
          2. or the splatter screen in the urinals in Ohio Big Boy's--"Say no to drugs"
      4. Good rhetoric always disclaims itself
  2. Definitions from the Classical Period
    1. The ancient Egyptians did not use a word like rhetoric, but they did teach the "principle of fine speech," which serves as a rough equivalent to rhetoric. 
      1. "The English word “rhetoric” has an equivalent in an Egyptian phrase that means literally “the principle of fine speech,” which Ptahhotep, the teacher in the earliest well-preserved wisdom text, lists this as one of the main virtues he will teach in his wisdom instruction (1.48). The use of the singular “principle” (or “rule”) here is significant. Ptahhotep sees himself as presenting not just a variety of counsels about good speech, but as offering instructions that together for “the principle of fine speech.” Eloquence is a unity." (Michael V. Fox, “Ancient Egyptian Rhetoric,” Rhetorica, 1 (1, Spring, 1983): 11-12).
    2. Corax and Tisias, 467 BC
      1. Corax--"rhetoric is the artificer of persuasion."
      2. James J. Murphy says Corax "invented rhetoric"
      3. [The art of judicial (forensic) disputation using the doctrine of probability]
      4. Background
        1. Corax lived in a Greek colony on the island of Sicily.
          1. The tyrants who had ruled the country were overthrown, and a free government replaced them.
          2. Much like similar problems in Eastern Europe after the overthrow of communist regimes, people who had owned land before the tyrants wanted their property back from those who had taken it during the tyrants reign.
          3. The people went to court to settle these disputes.
          4. They needed rhetorical training
        2. Corax went to the courts to watch what people did.
          1. He studied who was successful and who wasn't and why.
          2. Thus he made the first systematic study of rhetoric.
      5. Tisias was a student of Corax who learned his lessons well.
        1. Like many students, Tisias did not pay his fees to Corax for his rhetoric instruction. Corax took him to court.
        2. Tisias defended himself with a two-part argument.
          1. If I win, then I will not have to pay the fees.
          2. If I loose, I have not learned argument and Corax has not taught me anything. Therefore, I should not have to pay the fees.
        3. Corax responded with another two-part argument.
          1. If I win, then Tisias will pay the fees.
          2. If I loose, then Tisias has obviously learned his lessons and should pay the fees.
        4. The judge threw the case out of court, saying, "Bad crow, bad egg."
      6. Corax and Tisias are best known for the doctrine of probability.
        1. In general, there are two kinds of questions that come up when we look at the world.
          1. Empirical (Apodictic)
            1. These questions can be solved by objective analysis.
            2. "Is the earth an oblate spheroid?"
          2. Contingent.
            1. This is the view of politics, law, religion, etc.
            2. "Was Nixon a good president?"
            3. This is the domain of rhetoric
        2. Corax saw that when people make an argument, they are not so much concerned with what is true, as they are concerned with what is likely to be true, what is probably true.
          1. If a small man is accused of beating up a big man, we would think that he probably did not do it, since most of the time, little men don't beat up big men.
          2. Judgments based on probability depend upon experience.
            1. If we have had experience with a thing, then we can make judgments based on that experience.
            2. The broader our experience, the more accurate our judgments based on probability.
    3. The Sophists--traveling teachers of rhetoric.
      1. Principal examples
        1. Gorgias
        2. Protagoras
      2. [Rhetoric is artful display with the goal of winning your argument]
      3. cf. Rhetoric is the art which seeks to capture in opportune moments that which is appropriate and attempts to suggest that which is possible. (John Poulakos, "Toward a Sophistic Definition of Rhetoric," Philosophy and Rhetoric 16(1):35-48, p. 36)
      4. The most extreme sophists were the erestic sophists.
        1. For them, winning isn't everything, it is the only thing.
        2. Winning an argument was more important than style.
      5. The sophists were driven by the notion that there is no objective truth. e.g. Gorgias
        1. Nothing exists
        2. If it did exist, we couldn't know it.
        3. If we could know it, we couldn't communicate it.
    4. Socrates/Plato
      1. Plato's major project was to preserve a certain type of discourse from the subjectivist influences of the sophists.
      2. In the Phaedrus, he defined rhetoric as "the art of winning the soul with words."
        1. "Is not rhetoric in its entire nature an art which leads the soul by means of words, not only in law courts and the various other public assemblages, but in private companies as well?" (Phaedrus, 261a)
        2. Or the practice of influencing/enchanting the mind language.
          1. An artist would know all the principles of his art.
          2. Therefore, a garbage man could be an artist.
        3. Techne is the Greek word for art.
        4. This allows for persuasion--winning the soul
        5. This allows for psychology--winning the soul
        6. This allows for a philosophy of language--through language
      1. Unlike the sophists, Plato believed that there is objective truth
        1. We can know it.
        2. By engaging in a certain kind of discourse--dialectic, we can discover the truth.
    1. Aristotle
      1. "Rhetoric is the power of discovering in any given case all the available means of persuasion." (Rhetoric,  1355b, 25)
      2. Aristotle was Plato's student, he taught at Plato's Academy in Athens
        1. He taught philosophy in the morning and rhetoric in the afternoon.
      3. The definition is significant in several ways.
        1. "discovering"--invention.
          1. This is the first of the five canons of rhetoric. The others are.
            1. arrangement
            2. style
            3. delivery--for Demosthenes and Cicero, this was the most important.
            4. memory
          2. heuresis--the past perfect form of the verb is eureka--"I have found it"
          3. Invention involves finding arguments to prove your case.
            1. This canon thrives when society is open/free
            2. It fades in a closed society.
        2. "given case" adapted to the situation
        3. "persuasion"--the major theme of rhetorical theory.
    2. Cicero
      1. "the art of effective persuasion"
      2. a product of Roman pragmatism
    3. Quintilian
      1. "the science of speaking well"
      2. "speaking well" implies the ethics of rhetoric
        1. This ties into Quintilian's saying that "the good speaker is the good man speaking well"
        2. This is a Roman notion of goodness--the good citizen.
          1. Quintilian said the good man would be willing to lie even in trivial matters.
          2. He would also be willing to purger himself.
  3. Definitions from the Medieval Period--characterized by style and religious concerns.
    1. Augustine 430 AD
      1. [Rhetoric is the art of interpreting and transmitting authority.]
    2. Alberic of Monte Casino 1075 AD
      1. [the art of effective letter-writing]
      2. The is typical of the Middle Ages, when:
        1. period of oppression
        2. little free discourse
        3. invention waned
        4. Rhetoric became letter writing and an art of ingratiation.
    3. Cassiodorus, c. 551
      1. "skill in making a set speech"
      2. A conservative definition
        1. It conceives of rhetoric as a speaker in front of an audience.
        2. It deals with skill, not theory or ethics, etc.
  4. Definitions from the British or Modern Period
    1. Peter Ramus, c. 1572
      1. [The art of stylistic adornment]
      2. Because he wanted no overlap between academic disciplines, Ramus truncated the discipline of rhetoric
        1. it retained only style and delivery.
        2. Logic, philosophy, he thought, was the place for invention and arrangement.
    2. Rene Descartes
      1. In the Enlightenment, astronomy and mathematics became the paragons of knowledge.
      2. Descartes wrote Meditations and Discourse on Method to show how we can discover truth if we use the right objective, scientific method.
      3. Rhetoric was not important
        1. "Those who have the strongest power of reasoning, and who most skillfully arrange their thoughts in order to render them clear and intelligible, have the best power of persuasion even if they but speak the language of lower Britanny and have never learned Rhetoric" (Discourse on Method, Part I).
        2. Rhetoric has "the possible use...to serve to explain at times more easily to others the truths we have already ascertained."
    3. Giambattista Vico, Italian humanist and critic of Descartes
      1. Hikins definitions
        1. [The study of human expression through language]
        2. You do not need a method [Kaminski note--this is not true with Vico. If so, why did he develop the "The New Science"?]
          1. we examine discourse
          2. there we find things out about humans
      2. "What is eloquence, in effect but wisdom, ornately and copiously delivered in words appropriate to the common opinion of all mankind?" (On the Study Methods of our Time, p. 78)
    4. Francis Bacon 1629
      1. "The duty and office of rhetoric is the application of reason to the imagination for the better moving of the will."
      2. This is the dawn of the Enlightenment--bullish on human potential.
      3. The definition is significant because:
        1. It is the first definition since Plato to adapt psychology to rhetoric
          1. This was faculty psychology
          2. The mind was divided into various faculties
        2. This begins a rhetoric of social amelioration--make society better.
    5. George Campbell 1776
      1. "the art or talent by which discourse is adapted to its end." (See more about Campbell)
      2. In order to get the response he desires, the rhetor should be aware of:
        1. sentiments
        2. passions
        3. human dispositions
        4. purposes
      3. Discourse is adapted to its end by the association of lively ideas in the mind of the audience.
    6. [Thomas Sheridan ]
  5. Definitions from the Contemporary Period
    1. I.A. Richards, c. 1936
      1. "the study of misunderstanding and its remedies"
      2. The Philosophy of Rhetoric
      3. This is a rhetoric of social amelioration
        1. An emphasis started with Bacon.
        2. This emphasis characterizes the contemporary period.
    2. Donald Bryant, d. 1988, definition c. 1972
      1. "The rationale of informative and suasory discourse"
      2. Later, "The rationale of the informative and suasory in discourse."
        1. There is a rhetorical dimension to all discourse.
        2. Poetry may not be rhetoric.
        3. But there may be rhetoric in poetry. A poem or a song can entertain and/or persuade.
        4. This expands the realm of rhetoric to all discourse, not just persuasion.
      3. "The central rhetorical function is the adjusting of ideas to people and people to ideas."
    3. Douglas Ehninger, d. 1975
      1. "The art of symbolic inducement"
      2. This expands the realm of rhetoric to all symbolic behavior.
    4. Karl Wallace, c. 1972
      1. [Good rhetoric is more than style and structure, but the giving of good reasons.]
      2. This counters remnants of Ramism.
      3. We can make better decisions through argument.
      4. This definition is highly culture-bound.
        1. The good reasons are determined by a given culture.
        2. The definition is essentially relativistic.
    5. Cherwitz and Hikins
      1. "the linguistic description of reality"
      2. While some definitions emphasize certain things, none get at the essence of rhetoric, according to Hikins
        1. Vico-psychology
        2. Others-invention
      3. People are always advocating realities
      4. This definition deals with epistemology--how we know
      5. Linguistic is more narrow than symbolic
        1. non-linguistic symbols become language
        2. they are translated into language in the mind
    6. Kenneth Burke
      1. the function of rhetoric: "the use of words by human agents to form attitudes or to induce actions in other agents."
      2. "Eloquence is not showiness; it is, rather, the result of that desire in the artist to make a work perfect by adapting it in every minute detail to the racial appetites." (Counter-Statement, p. 41)
    7. Bowers and Ochs
      1. "the rationale of instrumental symbolic behavior"
    8. Chaim Perelman
      1. "gaining the adherence of minds"
    9. Lloyd Bitzer
      1. "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." (See an outline of the essay from which this comes)

Search this site and more

This page was last modified on Thursday, January 16, 2003.
You may contact the instructor at SHKaminski@yahoo.com
This material is for the exclusive use of the students in classes taught by Steven H. Kaminski. Unauthorized use is prohibited.