Rhetoric focuses on persuasion. To argue a point, one must successfully use rhetoric. Foss, Foss, and Trapp’s article describes rhetoric as a person’s “ability” to communicate with another (using symbols)…in order to persuade. In class we were given an example:
Major premise: Men are mortal
Minor premise: Socrates is a man
Conclusion: Socrates is mortal.
Seems like a logical fallacy – affirming the consequent. I sort of wanted to create a venn diagram, not to worry, I controlled myself.
Similarly, President Trump did the same thing in his speech addressing immigration. He argued that illegal immigrants bring in drugs and Americans are dying of drug use… therefore all illegal immigrants are killing all Americans. Hmm. I’m not buying it.
Bizzell and Herzberg’s article describes “graduate students and junior faculty members of the English department” teaching composition and leaving out “the outdated tradition of rhetoric.” I was amused.
When explaining rhetoric to my 201 students, I show them Aristotle’s rhetorical triangle: Speaker, Audience, Message.
Going back to the speech we watched in class… President Trump being the speaker – Americans being the audience – Immigration and the border wall being the message.
Watching this speech and speaking to classmates highlighted the importance of delivery in rhetoric, a point I now realize I usually overlook. Trump seemed to be on his best behavior; the delivery was pretty well executed. I spoke to my 201 students about rhetoric today and multiple students brought up the delivery of information and organization (arrangement) from their assigned articles. They critiqued one author for trying to put too much information on too little space and jumping from one point to the next then back again… sounds like someone we know.
I was glad to read (in our assigned articles) that rhetoric was being revived. In teaching English 101 and 201, I’ve found rhetoric to be a super important lesson to teach. I wasn’t taught the art of rhetoric as a Freshman and believe I would have greatly benefited from even a small introduction.
While considering the message (meaning) portion of rhetoric, I immediately thought of the sign, signifier, and signified. I noticed the Bissell and Herzberg article also mentions this. The article quotes Bakhtin: “Rhetorical genres have been studied since antiquity (and not much has been added in subsequent epochs to classical theory).” Theorists have had many different views on rhetoric (both limited and broad). It’s intriguing to view the popularity rhetoric has gained and lost over the years; it is clearly a valid and important subject that needs to be taught.
Lorin's Rhetoric Journal 