Week 3:
1. Reflect on ‘rhetoric’: Read Aristotle’s Rhetoric, available in text version at http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/rhetoric.mb.txt
What are some of the key points Aristotle makes about rhetorical speech? Summarise these on your blog. This is not an insubstantial task, and this will take up most of your week’s course hours, so don’t underestimate.
2. Consider your own use of rhetoric: Reflect on an example of argument in your own life, one in which you were successful in persuading someone else of something. Tell us about this (via an audio recording) in no more than two minutes. [This will require you to write notes, rehearse, ensure your mini-speech has an introduction, a body, and conclusion]. Post this as a link to your blog.
3. Review an argument: Watch In Defense of Rhetoric: No Longer Just for Liars at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYMUCz9bHAs&feature=youtu.be&hd=1 The video is 14 minutes. Write a short review of around 200 words (maximum) highlighting the key arguments.
Task one –
One of his most known works, Aristotle’s Rhetoric was compiled hundreds of years before the Common Era as we know it today. Still widely in circulation and commonly referred to in political, ethical and literary circles, the collated works obviously hold much in the way of noteworthy intellectual practices. Aristotle’s Rhetoric is quite simply a collection of teachings gathered over a number of years detailing devices used in the art of persuasion. Rather than reviewing all of the devices individually and selecting those I deem to be of most importance looking forward to assessment item two, and making note of the key devices I will put into practice seems more appropriate. I did however learn that Aristotle’s Ethos relates to communication, Logos relates to messages, and Pathos relates to Audience. So that’s something…
Since the outset of my time at university, lecturers and assessment markers alike have perhaps rightly accused me of being verbose in my writing. As a result, I particularly focused on devices that would assist this habit of being quite ‘wordy’ and attempting to be poetic in my word choices. With this in mind I have compiled a short list of some of the devices that cater to this artistic flair with brief added examples as stated by Harris (2013):
Anaphora is the repetition of the same word or words at the beginning of successive phrases, clauses, or sentences, commonly in conjunction with climax and with parallelism:
- To think on death it is a misery, / To think on life it is a vanity; / To think on the world verily it is, / To think that here man hath no perfect bliss.
Personification metaphorically represents an animal or inanimate object as having human attributes-attributes of form, character, feelings, behavior, and so on. Ideas and abstractions can also be personified.
- The ship began to creak and protest as it struggled against the rising sea
Hyperbaton includes several rhetorical devices involving departure from normal word order. One device, a form of inversion, might be called delayed epithet, since the adjective follows the noun. If you want to amplify the adjective, the inversion is very useful:
- From his seat on the bench he saw the girl content-content with the promise that she could ride on the train again next week.
Diacope: repetition of a word or phrase after an intervening word or phrase as a method of emphasis:
- We will do it, I tell you; we will do it.
Enumeratio: detailing parts, causes, effects, or consequences to make a point more forcibly:
- I love her eyes, her hair, her nose, her cheeks, her lips [etc.].
(Further devices will be used as a means of reinforcing key messages and to counter potential opposition arguments and are as follows:)
Polysyndeton is the use of a conjunction between each word, phrase, or clause, and is thus structurally the opposite of asyndeton. The rhetorical effect of polysyndeton, however, often shares with that of asyndeton a feeling of multiplicity, energetic enumeration, and building up.
- They read and studied and wrote and drilled. I laughed and played and talked and flunked.
Procatalepsis, by anticipating an objection and answering it, permits an argument to continue moving forward while taking into account points or reasons opposing either the train of thought or its final conclusions. Often the objections are standard ones:
- It is usually argued at this point that if the government gets out of the mail delivery business, small towns like Podunk will not have any mail service. The answer to this can be found in the history of the Pony Express.
Distinctio is an explicit reference to a particular meaning or to the various meanings of a word, in order to remove or prevent ambiguity.
- To make methanol for twenty-five cents a gallon is impossible; by “impossible” I mean currently beyond our technological capabilities.
Amplification involves repeating a word or expression while adding more detail to it, in order to emphasize what might otherwise be passed over. In other words, amplification allows you to call attention to, emphasize, and expand a word or idea to make sure the reader realizes its importance or centrality in the discussion.
- In my hunger after ten days of rigorous dieting I saw visions of ice cream–mountains of creamy, luscious ice cream, dripping with gooey syrup and calories.
Hyperbole, the counterpart of understatement, deliberately exaggerates conditions for emphasis or effect. In formal writing the hyperbole must be clearly intended as an exaggeration, and should be carefully restricted. That is, do not exaggerate everything, but treat hyperbole like an exclamation point, to be used only once a year. Then it will be quite effective as a table-thumping attention getter, introductory to your essay or some section thereof:
- There are a thousand reasons why more research is needed on solar energy.
Task two –
(rhEGGtoric)
Let it be known that I like to debate. It’s not that I like to argue, it’s just I like to swing others to having the same viewpoint as my own because clearly I’m right and everyone else is wrong.
So let me paint you a picture of a time I once used rhetoric to win an argument in my own life.
Task three –
Source: Clemsonenglish
I’m not entirely sure I understand the task at hand here, as I’m not so much seeing an argument as I am seeing an informative video. Is the argument that we all use rhetoric every day? Kate didn’t make an epistemic decision, poor Kate. Overall, the video was quite messy and amateur in appearance. The narrator did however teach me a new term in ‘global village’. The global village refers to global consciousness, according to Reese (2010), this implies a ‘homogeneity of world views, or at least a diverse dialog of cultures’. I’m convinced I’ll use both of those terms at a later date.
References:
Aristotle. (350 B.C.E.) Rhetoric. Rhys Roberts, W. (Trans), viewed 15 May 2016, http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/rhetoric.mb.txt.
Clemsonenglish 2011, In defense of rhetoric video, viewed 15 May 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYMUCz9bHAs&feature=youtu.be&hd=1.
Harris, R 2013, A handbook of rhetorical devices, viewed 15 May 2016, http://virtualsalt.com/rhetoric.htm.
Reese, S 2010, Journalism and Globalization, viewed 15 May 2016, https://journalism.utexas.edu/sites/journalism.utexas.edu/files/attachments/reese/journalism-globalization.pdf.
Anthony Norris CQU Student Blog 