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Rhetoric |
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Rhetoric (from Greek ῥήτωρ, rhêtôr, orator, teacher) is
generally understood to be the art or technique of persuasion through the use of
oral, visual, or written language; however, this definition of rhetoric has expanded greatly since rhetoric emerged as a field of
study in universities. In this sense, there is a divide between classical rhetoric (with the aforementioned definition) and
contemporary practices of rhetoric which include the analysis of written and visual texts.
Historically, classical rhetoric has its inception in a school of Pre-Socratic philosophers known as Sophists. It is later taught
as one of the three original liberal arts or trivium (the other members are dialectic and grammar) in Western culture. In ancient and medieval times, grammar concerned
itself with correct, accurate, pleasing, and effective language use through the study and criticism of literary models,
dialectic concerned itself with the testing and invention of new knowledge through a process
of question and answer, and rhetoric concerned itself with persuasion in public and political settings such as assemblies and
courts of law. As such, rhetoric is said to flourish in open and democratic societies with
rights of free speech, free assembly, and political enfranchisement for some portion
of the population.
Contemporary studies of rhetoric have a more diverse range of practices and meanings than was the case in ancient times. The
concept of rhetoric has thus shifted widely during its 2500-year history. Rhetoricians have recently argued that the classical
understanding of rhetoric is limited because persuasion depends on communication, which in turn depends on meaning. Thus the
scope of rhetoric is understood to include much more than simply public--legal and political--discourse. This emphasis on meaning
and how it is constructed and conveyed draws on a large body of critical and social theory (see literary theory and Critical Theory), philosophy (see
Post-structuralism and Hermeneutics),
and problems in social science methodology (see Reflexivity). So
while rhetoric has traditionally been thought of being involved in such arenas as politics, law, public relations, lobbying,
marketing and advertising, the study of rhetoric has recently entered into diverse fields such as humanities, religion, social
sciences, law,[1] science, journalism, history, literature
and even cartography and architecture. Every aspect of human life and thought that depends on the articulation and communication
of meaning can be said to involve elements of the rhetorical. "In the last ten years, many scholars have investigated exactly how
rhetoric works within a particular field";[2][3][4][5]
History of Classical Rhetoric
Ancient Greece
The earliest mention of oratorical skill occurs in Homer's Iliad, where heroes like Achilles, Hektor, and Odysseus were honored for their ability to advise and exhort
their peers and followers (the Laos or army) in wise and appropriate action. With the rise of the democratic polis,
speaking skill was adapted to the needs of the public and political life of cities in Ancient
Greece, much of which revolved around the use of oratory as the medium through which
political and judicial decisions were made, and through which philosophical ideas were developed and disseminated. For modern
students today, it can be difficult to remember that the wide use and availability of written texts is a phenomenon that was just
coming into vogue in Classical Greece. In Classical times, many of the great thinkers
and political leaders performed their works before an audience, usually in the context of a competition or contest for fame,
political influence, and cultural capital; in fact, many of them are known only through the texts that their students, followers,
or detractors wrote down. As has already been noted, rhetor was the Greek term for orator: A rhetor was a
citizen who regularly addressed juries and political assemblies and who was thus understood to have gained some knowledge about
public speaking in the process, though in general facility with language was often referred to as logôn techne, "skill
with arguments" or "verbal artistry." See, Mogens Herman Hansen The Athenian Democracy in the Age of Demosthenes (Blackwell,
1991); Josiah Ober Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens (Princeton UP, 1989); Jeffrey Walker, Rhetoric and Poetics in
Antiquity (Oxford UP, 2000).
Rhetoric thus evolved as an important art, one that provided the orator with the forms, means, and strategies for persuading
an audience of the correctness of the orator's arguments. Today the term rhetoric can be used at times to refer only to
the form of argumentation, often with the pejorative connotation that rhetoric is a means of obscuring the truth. Classical
philosophers believed quite the contrary: the skilled use of rhetoric was essential to the
discovery of truths, because it provided the means of ordering and clarifying arguments.
The Sophists
Organized thought about public speaking began in ancient Greece. Possibly, the first
study about the power of language may be attributed to the philosopher Empedocles (d. ca. 444
BC), whose theories on human knowledge would provide a basis for many future rhetoricians. The first written manual is attributed
to Corax and his pupil Tisias. Their work, as well as
that of many of the early rhetoricians, grew out of the courts of law; Tisias, for example, is believed to have written judicial
speeches that others delivered in the courts. Teaching in oratory was popularized in the 5th century BC by itinerant teachers
known as sophists, the best known of whom were Protagoras
(c.481-420 BC), Gorgias (c.483-376 BC), and Isocrates
(436-338 BC). The Sophists were a disparate group who travelled from city to city making public displays to attract students who
were then charged a fee for their education. Their central focus was on logos or what we might
broadly refer to as discourse, its functions and powers. They defined parts of speech,
analyzed poetry, parsed close synonyms, invented argumentation strategies, and debated the nature of reality. They claimed to
make their students "better," or, in other words, to teach virtue. They thus claimed that human
"excellence" was not an accident of fate or a prerogative of noble birth, but an art or "techne" that could be taught and
learned. They were thus among the first humanists. Several sophists also questioned received wisdom about the gods and the Greek
culture, which they believed was taken for granted by Greeks of their time, making them among the first agnostics. For example,
they argued that cultural practices were a function of convention or nomos rather than
blood or birth or phusis. They argued even further that morality or immorality of any action could not be judged outside
of the cultural context within which it occurred. The well-known phrase, "Man is the measure of all things" arises from this
belief. One of their most famous, and infamous, doctrines has to do with probability and counter arguments. They taught that
every argument could be countered with an opposing argument, that an argument's effectiveness derived from how "likely" it
appeared to the audience (its probability of seeming true), and that any probability argument could be countered with an inverted
probability argument. Thus, if it seemed likely that a strong, poor man were guilty of robbing a rich, weak man, the strong poor
man could argue, on the contrary, that this very likelihood (that he would be a suspect) makes it unlikely that he committed the
crime, since he would most likely be apprehended for the crime. They also taught and were known for their ability to make the
weaker (or worse) argument the stronger (or better). Aristophanes famously parodies the
clever inversions that sophists were known for in his play The Clouds.
The word "sophistry" developed strong negative connotations in ancient Greece that continue today, but in ancient Greece
sophists were nevertheless popular and well-paid professionals, widely respected for their abilities but also widely criticized
for their excesses.
See Jacqueline de Romilly, The Great Sophists in Periclean Athens
(French orig. 1988; English trans. Clarendon Press/Oxford University Press, 1992).
Isocrates
Isocrates (436-338 BC), (not to be confused with the philosopher Socrates) like the
sophists, taught public speaking as a means of human improvement, but he worked to distinguish
himself from the Sophists, whom he saw as claiming far more than they could deliver. He suggested that while an art of virtue or
excellence did exist, it was only one piece, and the least, in a process of self-improvement that relied much more heavily on
native talent and desire, constant practice, and the imitation of good models. Isocrates believed that practice in speaking
publicly about noble themes and important questions would function to improve the character of both speaker and audience while
also offering the best service to a state. He thus wrote his speeches as "models" for his students to imitate in the same way
that poets might imitate Homer or Hesiod. His was the first permanent school in Athens and it is
likely that Plato's Academy and Aristotle's Lyceum were founded
in part as a response to Isocrates. Though he left no handbooks, his speeches ("Antidosis" and "Against the
Sophists" are most relevant to students of rhetoric) became models of oratory (he was one of the canonical "Ten Attic Orators") and he had a marked influence on Cicero and
Quintilian, and through them, on the entire educational system of the west.
Plato outlined the difference between true and false rhetoric.
Plato
Plato (427-347 BC) has famously outlined the differences between true and false rhetoric in a
number of dialogues, but especially the Gorgias
and the Phaedrus. Both dialogues are complex and difficult, but in both Plato
disputes the Sophistic notion that an art of persuasion, the art of the Sophists which he calls "rhetoric" (after the public
speaker or rhêtôr) can exist independent of the art of dialectic. Plato claims that since Sophists appeal only to what seems
likely or probable, rather than to what is true, they are not at all making their students and audiences "better," but simply
flattering them with what they want to hear. While Plato's condemnation of rhetoric is clear in the Gorgias, in the
Phaedrus he seems to suggest the possibility of a true art of rhetoric based upon the knowledge produced by dialectic, and
he relies on such a dialectically informed rhetoric to appeal to the main character, Phaedrus, to take up philosophy. It is
possible that in developing his own theory of knowledge, Plato coined the term "rhetoric" both to denounce what he saw as the
false wisdom of the sophists, and to advance his own views on knowledge and method. Plato's animosity against the Sophists
derives not only from their inflated claims to teach virtue and their reliance on appearances, but from the fact that his
teacher, Socrates, was accused of being a sophist and ultimately sentenced to death for his
teaching. In his dialogues, Plato attempts to distinguish the rhetoric common to Socratic questioning from Sophistry.
Aristotle
Plato's student Aristotle (384-322 BC) famously set forth an extended treatise on rhetoric
that still repays careful study today.…
In the first sentence of The Art of Rhetoric, Aristotle says that "rhetoric is
the counterpart [literally, the antistrophe] of dialectic." As the "antistrophe" of a Greek
ode responds to and is patterned after the structure of the "strophe" (they form two sections of the whole and are sung by two parts of the chorus), so the art of rhetoric
follows and is structurally patterned after the art of dialectic because both are arts of discourse production. Thus, while
dialectical methods are necessary to find truth in theoretical matters, rhetorical methods are required in practical matters such
as adjudicating somebody's guilt or innocence when charged in a court of law, or adjudicating a prudent course of action to be
taken in a deliberative assembly. For Plato and Aristotle, dialectic involves persuasion, so when Aristotle says that rhetoric is
the antistrophe of dialectic, he means that rhetoric as he uses the term has a domain or
scope of application that is parallel to but different from the domain or scope of application of dialectic. In Nietzsche
Humanist (1998: 129), Claude Pavur explains that "[t]he Greek prefix 'anti' does not merely designate opposition, but it can
also mean 'in place of.'" When Aristotle characterizes rhetoric as the antistrophe of dialectic, he no doubt means that rhetoric
is used in place of dialectic when we are discussing civic issues in a court of law or in a legislative assembly. The domain of
rhetoric is civic affairs and practical decision making in civic affairs, not theoretical considerations of operational
definitions of terms and clarification of thought -- these, for him, are in the domain of dialectic.
Aristotle's treatise on rhetoric is an attempt to systematically describe civic rhetoric as a human art or skill (techne). His
definition of rhetoric as a mode of discovery seems to limit the art to the inventional process, and Aristotle heavily emphasizes
the logical aspect of this process. But the treatise in fact also discusses not only elements of style and (briefly) delivery,
but also emotional appeals (pathos) and characterological appeals (ethos). He thus identifies three steps or "offices" of
rhetoric--invention, arrangement, and style--and three different types of rhetorical proof:
- ethos: how the character and credibility of a speaker influence an audience to consider him to
be believable.
- This could be any position in which the speaker--from being a college professor of the subject, to being an acquaintance of
person who experienced the matter in question--knows about the topic.
- pathos: the use of emotional appeals to alter the audience's judgment.
- This can be done through metaphor, amplification, storytelling, or presenting the topic in a way that evokes strong emotions
in the audience.
- logos: the use of reasoning, either inductive or deductive, to construct an argument.
- Logos appeals include appeals to statistics, math, logic, and objectivity. For instance, when advertisements claim
that their product is 37% more effective than the competition, they are making a logical appeal.
- Inductive reasoning uses examples (historical, mythical, or hypothetical) to draw conclusions.
- Deductive or "enthymematic" reasoning uses generally accepted propositions to derive specific conclusions. The term
logic evolved from logos. Aristotle emphasized enthymematic reasoning as central to the process of rhetorical
invention, though later rhetorical theorists placed much less emphasis on it.
Aristotle also identifies three different types or genres of civic rhetoric: forensic (also known as judicial, was concerned with determining truth or falsity of events that took place in the past, issues of
guilt), deliberative (also known as political, was concerned with determining whether or
not particular actions should or should not be taken in the future), and
epideictic (also known as ceremonial, was concerned with praise and blame, values,
right and wrong, demonstrating beauty and skill in the present).
One of the most fruitful of Aristotelian doctrines was the idea of topics (also referred to as common topics or commonplaces).
Though the term had a wide range of application (as a memory technique or compositional exercise, for example) it most often
referred to the "seats of argument"--the list of categories of thought or modes of reasoning--that a speaker could use in order
to generate arguments or proofs. The topics were thus a heuristic or inventional tool designed to help speakers categorize and
thus better retain and apply frequently used types of argument. For example, since we often see effects as "like" their causes,
one way to invent an argument (about a future effect) is by discussing the cause (which it will be "like"). This and other
rhetorical topics derive from Aristotle's belief that there are certain predictable ways in which humans (particularly
non-specialists) draw conclusions from premises. Based upon and adapted from his dialectical Topics, the rhetorical topics became
a central feature of later rhetorical theorizing, most famously in Cicero's work of that name.
See Eugene Garver, Aristotle's Rhetoric: An Art of Character (University of Chicago Press,1994).
Roman rhetoricians
The Romans, for whom oration also became an important part of public life, saw much value in Greek rhetoric, hiring Greek
rhetoricians to teach in their schools and as private tutors, and imitating and adapting Greek rhetorical works in Latin and with
Roman examples. Roman rhetoric thus largely extends upon and develops its Greek roots, though it tends to prefer practical advice
to the theoretical speculations of Greek rhetoricians. Cicero (106-43 BC) and Quintilian (35-100 AD) were chief among Roman rhetoricians, and their work is an extension of sophistic,
Isocratean, Platonic and Aristotelian rhetorical theory.
Latin rhetoric was developed out of the Rhodian schools of rhetoric. In the second century BC, Rhodes became an important educational center, particularly of rhetoric, and the sons of noble Roman families
studied there.
Although not widely read in Roman times, the Rhetorica ad Herennium
(sometimes attributed to Cicero, but probably not his work) is a notable early work on Latin rhetoric. Its author was probably a
Latin rhetorician in Rhodes, and for the first time we see a systematic treatment of Latin elocutio. The Ad
Herennium provides a glimpse into the early development of Latin rhetoric, and in the Middle
Ages and Renaissance, it achieved wide publication as one of the basic school texts
on rhetoric.
Whether or not he wrote the Rhetorica ad Herennium, Cicero, along with Quintilian (the most influential Roman teacher
of rhetoric), is considered one of the most important Roman rhetoricians. His works include the early and very influential De
Inventione (On Invention, often read alongside the Ad Herennium as the two basic texts of rhetorical theory throughout
the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance), De Oratore (a fuller statement of rhetorical principles in dialague form),
Topics (a rhetorical treatment of common topics, highly influential through the Renaissance), Brutus (a discussion
of famous orators) and Orator (a defense of Cicero's style). Cicero also left a large body of speeches and letters which
would establish the outlines of Latin eloquence and style for generations to come. It was the rediscovery of Cicero's speeches
(such as the defence of Archias) and letters (to Atticus) by Italians like Petrarch that, in
part, ignited the cultural innovations that we know as the Renaissance.
Quintilian's career began as a pleader in the courts of law; his reputation grew so great that Vespasian created a chair of rhetoric for him in Rome. The culmination of his life's work was the
Institutio oratoria (or Institutes of Oratory), a lengthy treatise on the training of the orator in which he
discusses the training of the "perfect" orator from birth to old age and, in the process, reviews the doctrines and opinions of
many influential rhetoricians who preceded him.
In the Institutes, Quintilian organizes rhetorical study through the stages of education that an aspiring orator would
undergo, beginning with the selection of a nurse. Aspects of elementary education (training in reading and writing, grammar, and
literary criticism) are followed by preliminary rhetorical exercises in composition (the progymnasmata) that include maxims and
fables, narratives and comparisons, and finally full legal or political speeches. The delivery of speeches within the context of
education or for entertainment purposes became widespread and popular under the term "declamation." Rhetorical training proper
was categorized under five canons that would persist for centuries in academic circles:
- Inventio (invention) is the process that leads to the development and refinement of
an argument.
- Once arguments are developed, dispositio (disposition, or arrangement) is used to
determine how it should be organized for greatest effect, usually beginning with the exordium.
- Once the speech content is known and the structure is determined, the next steps involve elocutio (style) and pronuntiatio (presentation).
- Memoria (memory) comes to play as the speaker recalls each of these elements during
the speech.
- Actio (delivery) is the final step as the speech is presented in a gracious and
pleasing way to the audience - the Grand Style.
This work was available only in fragments in medieval times, but the discovery of a complete copy at Abbey of St. Gall in 1416 led to its emergence as one of the most influential works on rhetoric during
the Renaissance.
Quintilian's work attempts to describe not just the art of rhetoric, but the formation of the perfect orator as a politically
active, virtuous, publicly minded citizen. His emphasis on the real life application of rhetorical training was in part nostalgia
for the days when rhetoric was an important political tool, and in part a reaction against the growing tendency in Roman schools
toward standardization of themes and techniques and increasing separation between school exercises and actual legal practice, a
tendency equally powerful today in public schools and law schools alike. At the same time that rhetoric was becoming divorced
from political decision making, rhetoric rose as a culturally vibrant and important mode of entertainment and cultural criticism
in a movement known as the "second sophistic," a development which gave rise to the charge (made by Quintilian and others) that
teachers were emphasizing ornamentation over substance in rhetoric. Quintilian's masterful work was not enough to curb this
movement, but his dismayed response cemented the scholarly opinion that 2nd century C.E. rhetoric fell into decadence and
political irrelevance, despite its wide popularity and cultural importance.
Although he is not commonly regarded as a rhetorician, St. Augustine (354-430) was
trained in rhetoric and was at one time a teacher of Latin rhetoric. After his conversion to Christianity, he became interested
in using these "pagan" arts for spreading his religion. This new use of rhetoric is explored in
the Fourth Book of his De Doctrina Christiana, which laid the foundation of what would become homiletics, the rhetoric of the sermon.
A valuable collection of studies can be found in Stanley E. Porter, ed., Handbook of Classical Rhetoric in the Hellenistic
Period 330 B.C. - A.D. 400 (Brill, 1997).
Rhetoric from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment
After the Roman Empire, the study of rhetoric continued to be central to the study of the verbal arts; but the study of the
verbal arts went into decline for several centuries, followed eventually by a gradual rise in formal education, culminating in
the rise of medieval universities. But rhetoric transmuted during this period in the arts of letter writing (ars dictaminis) and writing sermons (ars praedicandi). As part of the trivium, rhetoric was secondary to the study of logic, and its study was highly scholastic:
students were given repetitive exercises in the creation of discourses on historical subjects (suasoriae) or on classic
legal questions (controversiae).
In his 1943 Cambridge University doctoral dissertation in English,
Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980) surveys the verbal arts from approximately the time of
Cicero down to the time of Thomas Nashe
(1567-1600?).[6] His dissertation is still noteworthy for
undertaking to study the history of the verbal arts together as the trivium, even though the developments that he surveys have
been studied in greater detail since he undertook his study. As noted below, McLuhan became one of the most widely publicized
thinkers in the 20th century, so it is important to note his scholarly roots in the study of the history of rhetoric and
dialectic.
Sixteenth century
Walter J. Ong's encyclopedia article "Humanism" in the 1967 New Catholic Encyclopedia provides a well-informed survey
of Renaissance humanism, which defined itself broadly as disfavoring medieval scholastic logic and dialectic and as favoring
instead the study of classical Latin style and grammar and philology and rhetoric. (Reprinted in Ong's Faith and Contexts
(Scholars Press, 1999; 4: 69-91.))
Desiderius Erasmus was an exponent of classical rhetoric
One influential figure in the rebirth of interest in classical rhetoric was Erasmus (c.1466-1536). His 1512 work, De Duplici Copia Verborum et Rerum (also known as
Copia: Foundations of the Abundant Style), was widely
published (it went through more than 150 editions throughout Europe) and became one of the basic school texts on the subject. Its
treatment of rhetoric is less comprehensive than the classic works of antiquity, but provides a traditional treatment of
res-verba (matter and form): its first book treats the subject of elocutio, showing the
student how to use schemes and tropes; the second book covers inventio. Much of the emphasis is on abundance of variation (copia means "plenty" or "abundance", as in
copious or cornucopia), so both books focus on ways to introduce the maximum amount of variety into discourse. For instance, in
one section of the De Copia, Erasmus presents two hundred variations of the sentence "Semper, dum vivam, tui
meminero". Another of his works, the extremely popular The Praise of Folly also
had considerable influence on the teaching of rhetoric in the later sixteenth century. Its orations in favour of qualities such
as madness spawned a type of exercise popular in Elizabethan grammar schools, later called adoxography, which required pupils to compose passages in praise of useless things.
Juan Luis Vives (1492 - 1540) also helped shape the study of rhetoric in England. A
Spaniard, he was appointed in 1523 to the Lectureship of Rhetoric at Oxford by Cardinal
Wolsey, and was entrusted by Henry VIII to be one of the tutors of Mary.
Vives fell into disfavor when Henry VIII divorced Catherine of Aragon and left
England in 1528. His best-known work was a book on education, De Disciplinis, published in 1531, and his writings on
rhetoric included Rhetoricae, sive De Ratione Dicendi, Libri Tres (1533), De Consultatione (1533), and a rhetoric
on letter writing, De Conscribendis Epistolas (1536).
It is likely that many well-known English writers would have been exposed to the works of Erasmus and Vives (as well as those of the Classical
rhetoricians) in their schooling, which was conducted in Latin (not English) and often included some study of Greek and placed
considerable emphasis on rhetoric. See, for example, T.W. Baldwin's William Shakspere's Small Latine and Lesse Greeke, 2
vols. (University of Illinois Press, 1944).
The mid-1500s saw the rise of vernacular rhetorics — those written in English rather than in the Classical languages; adoption
of works in English was slow, however, due to the strong orientation toward Latin and Greek. A successful early text was Thomas
Wilson's The Arte of Rhetorique (1553), which presents a traditional treatment of rhetoric. For instance, Wilson presents
the five canons of rhetoric (Invention, Disposition, Elocutio, Memoria, and Utterance or Actio). Other notable works included Angel Day's The
English Secretorie (1586, 1592), George Puttenham's The Arte of English
Poesie (1589), and Richard Rainholde's Foundacion of Rhetorike (1563).
During this same period, a movement began that would change the organization of the school curriculum in Protestant and
especially Puritan circles and lead to rhetoric losing its central place. A French scholar, Petrus
Ramus (1515-1572), dissatisfied with what he saw as the overly broad and redundant organization of the trivium, proposed a new curriculum. In his scheme of things, the five components of rhetoric no
longer lived under the common heading of rhetoric. Instead, invention and disposition were determined to fall exclusively under
the heading of dialectic, while style, delivery, and memory were all that remained for rhetoric. See Walter J. Ong, Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue: From the Art of Discourse to the Art of
Reason (Harvard University Press, 1958; reissued by the University of Chicago Press, 2004, with a new foreword by Adrian
Johns).
John Milton, English poet and rhetorician
One of Ramus' followers, Audomarus Talaeus (Omer Talon) published his rhetoric, Institutiones Oratoriae, in 1544. This
work provided a simple presentation of rhetoric that emphasized the treatment of style, and became so popular that it was
mentioned in John Brinsley's (1612) Ludus literarius; or The Grammar Schoole as being the "most used in the best
schooles." Many other Ramist rhetorics followed in the next half-century, and by the 1600s, their approach became the primary
method of teaching rhetoric in Protestant and especially Puritan circles. See Walter J. Ong, Ramus and Talon Inventory
(Harvard University Press, 1958); Joseph S. Freedman, Philosophy and the Arts in Central Europe, 1500-1700: Teaching and Texts
at Schools and Universities (Ashgate, 1999). John Milton (1608-1674) wrote a textbook in
logic or dialectic in Latin based on Ramus' work, which has now been translated into English by Walter J. Ong and Charles J.
Ermatinger in The Complete Prose Works of John Milton (Yale University Press, 1982; 8: 206-407), with a lengthy
introduction by Ong (144-205). The introduction is reprinted in Ong's Faith and Contexts (Scholars Press, 1999; 4:
111-41).
But Ramism did not strongly influence the established Catholic schools and universities or the new Catholic schools and
universities founded by members of the religious order known as the Society of Jesus,
as can be seen in the Jesuit document known as the Ratio Studiorum that Claude Pavur,
S.J., has recently translated into English, with the Latin text in the parallel column on each page (St. Louis: Institute of
Jesuit Sources, 2005). The influence of Cicero and Quintilian permeates the Ratio
Studiorum.
Seventeenth century
In New England and at Harvard College (founded 1636), Ramus and his followers
dominated, as Perry Miller shows in The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century
(Harvard University Press, 1939). However, in England, several writers influenced the course of rhetoric during the seventeenth
century, many of them carrying forward the dichotomy that had been set forth by Ramus and his followers during the preceding
decades. Of greater importance is that this century saw the development of a modern, vernacular style that looked to English,
rather than to Greek, Latin, or French models.
Francis Bacon (1561-1626), although not a rhetorician, contributed to the field in his
writings. One of the concerns of the age was to find a suitable style for the discussion of scientific topics, which needed above
all a clear exposition of facts and arguments, rather than the ornate style favored at the time. Bacon in his The Advancement
of Learning criticized those who are preoccupied with style rather than "the weight of matter, worth of subject, soundness of
argument, life of invention, or depth of judgment." On matters of style, he proposed that the style conform to the subject matter
and to the audience, that simple words be employed whenever possible, and that the style should be agreeable. See
Lisa Jardine, Francis Bacon: Discovery and the Art of Discourse (Cambridge University Press, 1975).
Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) also wrote on rhetoric. Along with a shortened translation of
Aristotle's Rhetoric, Hobbes also produced a number of other works on the subject.
Sharply contrarian on many subjects, Hobbes, like Bacon, also promoted a simpler and more natural style that used figures of
speech sparingly.
Perhaps the most influential development in English style came out of the work of the Royal
Society (founded in 1660), which in 1664 set up a committee to improve the English language. Among the committee's members
were John Evelyn (1620-1706), Thomas Sprat
(1635-1713), and John Dryden (1631-1700). Sprat regarded "fine speaking" as a disease, and
thought that a proper style should "reject all amplifications, digressions, and swellings of style" and instead "return back to a
primitive purity and shortness" (History of the Royal Society, 1667).
While the work of this committee never went beyond planning, John Dryden is often credited with creating and exemplifying a
new and modern English style. His central tenet was that the style should be proper "to the occasion, the subject, and the
persons." As such, he advocated the use of English words whenever possible instead of foreign ones, as well as vernacular, rather
than Latinate, syntax. His own prose (and his poetry) became exemplars of this new style.
Modern Rhetoric
History of Modern Rhetoric
Walter Jost has examined Rhetorical Thought in John Henry Newman (1989). (John
Henry Newman lived from 1801-1890.)
The Canadian Jesuit philosopher and theologian Bernard Lonergan (1904-1984), who was
deeply influenced by Newman's An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent (1870), worked out what he styles the generalized
empirical method in Insight: A Study of Human Understanding (1957) and elsewhere. In a review article originally published
in the Quarterly Journal of Speech (1985: 476-88),
At the turn of the twentieth century, there was a revival of rhetorical study manifested in the establishment of departments
of rhetoric and speech at academic institutions, as well as the formation of national and international professional
organizations. Theorists generally agree that a significant reason for the revival of the study of rhetoric was the renewed
importance of language and persuasion in the increasingly mediated environment of the twentieth century (see Linguistic turn). The rise of advertising and of mass media such as photography, telegraphy, radio, and film brought rhetoric
more prominently into people's lives.
For example, when McLuhan was working on his 1943 Cambridge University doctoral dissertation on the verbal arts and Nashe,
mentioned above, he was also preparing the materials that were eventually published as the book The Mechanical Bride: The
Folklore of Industrial Man (Vanguard Press, 1951). This book is a compilation of exhibits of ads and other materials from
popular culture with short essays about them by McLuhan. The essays involve rhetorical analyses of the ways in which the material
in an item aims to persuade, and commentary on the persuasive strategies in each item.
After studying the persuasive strategies involved in such an array of items in popular culture, McLuhan shifted the focus of
his rhetorical analysis and began to consider how communication media themselves have an impact on us as persuasive, in a manner
of speaking. In other words, the communication media as such embody and carry a persuasive dimension. McLuhan uses
hyperbole to express this insight when he says "The medium is the message". This shift in focus from his 1951 book led to his two most widely
known books, The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (University of Toronto Press, 1962) and Understanding
Media: The Extensions of Man (McGraw-Hill, 1964). These two books led McLuhan to become one of the most publicized thinkers
in the 20th century. No other scholar of the history and theory of rhetoric was as widely publicized in the 20th century as
McLuhan.
McLuhan read Lonergan's Insight, mentioned above, in 1957 (see Letters of Marshall McLuhan, 1987: 251).
Lonergan's book is an elaborate guidebook to cultivate one's inwardness and on attending to and reflecting on one's inward
consciousness. McLuhan's 1962 and 1964 books represent an inward turn to attending to one's consciousness that is far more
pronounced than anything found in his 1951 book or in his 1943 dissertation. By contrast, many other thinkers in the study of
rhetoric are more outward oriented toward sociological considerations and symbolic interaction.
McLuhan's famous dictum "the medium is the message" can be paraphrased with terminology from Lonergan. At the empirical level
of consciousness, the medium is the message, whereas at the intelligent and rational levels of consciousness, the content is the
message. McLuhan is thus ordering us to pay attention to the empirical level of consciousness.
Because the history of modern and contemporary rhetoric is closely tied to modern language theory and philosophy, many
scholars would also include post-structuralist thinkers like Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Francois Lyotard in the
discussion.
Contemporary Study of Rhetoric
Rhetorical theory today is as much influenced by the research results and research methods of the behavioral sciences and by theories of literary
criticism as by ancient rhetorical theory. Early rhetorical theorists attempted to turn the study of rhetoric into a
social science that allowed predictive analyses of human behavior. Interdisciplinary
scholars of symbol systems, such as Ernst Cassirer
(1874-1945), Hugh Duncan, and most notably Kenneth Burke
(1897-1993), influenced a new generation of rhetorical scholars who drew from various disciplines to more fully comprehend the
phenomenon of human communication in all its aspects. While ancient rhetorical scholarship had focused primarily on rhetoric as
speech, contemporary rhetorical theorists are interested in the panoply of human symbolic behavior—both the spoken and written
word as well as music, film, radio, television, etc. Thus
Kenneth Burke, who defined the human being as the "symbol-using animal," defined rhetoric as "the use of symbols to induce
cooperation in those who by nature respond to symbols." Current rhetorical theory also draws heavily from cultural studies,
performance studies, and design studies. Topics of interest to contemporary scholars include the relationships between rhetoric
and gender, studies of non-traditional or alternative rhetorics, and rhetorics of science, technology, and new media.
Rhetoricians
Other notable 20th century authors in the study of the history and theory of rhetoric include Herbert Wichelns, Edwin Black,
Ernest Wrage, Wayne C. Booth, Cleanth Brooks,
James Andrews, Karlyn Kohrs Campbell, Barbara Biesecker, Dana L. Cloud, Celeste M. Condit, Edward P.J. Corbett, Sharon Crowley, James Darsey, Thomas Farrell, Lloyd
Bitzer, James Aune, Charles Bazerman, Stephen H. Browne, Robert Ivie, Charles Arthur
Willard, Paul de Man, Raymie McKerrow, Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar, G. Thomas Goodnight,
Robert Hariman, Ernesto Grassi, Susan Jarrett, James Kinneavy, Ernesto Laclau, Richard A. Lanham, Michael Leff, John Lucaites, Andrea
Lunsford, John Lyne, Steve Mailloux, Michael Calvin McGee, Martin Medhurst, Marie
Hochmuth Nichols, Lucy Olbrechts-Tyteca, Chaim Perelman, I.A. Richards, Edward Schiappa, Stephen Toulmin,
Mark Turner,Richard E. Vatz,
Victor J. Vitanza, Thomas W. Benson, Robert Penn
Warren, Walter Ong, Eric Havelock,
Gunther Kress, and J. Michael Hogan, Richard M.
Weaver, David Zarefsky, Gerard Hauser, Stephen Lucas, Stephanie Kelley-Romano, and Bert Ballard.
Rhetoric in the Academy
Contemporary scholars in rhetoric come from diverse academic backgrounds, and are often housed in departments of English,
Communication Studies, Rhetoric, Education, or Speech Communication. Rhetorical scholars meet at conferences such as the
Conference on College Composition and Communication,
the National Communication Association conference, and the
Rhetoric Society of America conference. They publish research in journals including the
Quarterly Journal of Speech, College Composition and
Communication, the Rhetoric Society Quarterly, Rhetoric
Review, Rhetoric and Public Affairs, Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, and
Philosophy and Rhetoric. Dr. Patrick
Schools with dedicated departments to Rhetoric
Schools with hybrid departments to Rhetoric and to another discipline
Schools with emphases in Rhetoric through English Departments
Schools with emphases in Rhetoric through Communication Departments
Discourse analysis
Rhetoric is not only a method for training effective communicators (rhetors); as a discipline for advanced study, it is a
method for understanding on a theoretical as well as a practical level how humans use language ("discourse") to alter or shape our understanding of reality. Every text -- be it advertisement, lecture,
speech, letter, blog, or chat -- inhabits a given discourse environment, hence the term discourse analysis. Rather than providing a particular method, discourse analysis is a way of
approaching and thinking about a problem; neither a qualitative nor a quantitative research method, but rather a questioning of
the basic assumptions of quantitative and qualitative research methods.
Discourse analysis does not provide a tangible answer to problems based on scientific research, but it reveals the
ontological and epistemological assumptions behind a
project, a statement, a method o
