Climate migration is a subset of climate-related mobility that
refers to primarily voluntary movement driven by the impact of sudden
or gradual climate-exacerbated disasters, such as "abnormally heavy
rainfalls, prolonged droughts, desertification, environmental
degradation, or sea-level rise and cyclones".
The majority of climate migrants move internally within their own
countries, though a smaller number of climate-displaced people also move
across national borders.
Climate change gives rise to migration on a large, global scale. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
(UNHCR) estimates that an average of 20 million people are forcibly
displaced to other areas in countries all over the world by
weather-related events every year.
Climate-related disasters disproportionately affect marginalized
populations, who are often facing other structural challenges in
climate-vulnerable regions and countries.
As a result, climate-related disasters are often described as a threat
multiplier that compounds crises over time and space. The 2021 White
House Report on the Impact of Climate Change on Migration underscored
the multifaceted impacts of climate change and climate-related
migration, ranging from destabilizing vulnerable and marginalized
communities, exacerbating resource scarcity, to igniting political
tension.
Few existing international frameworks and regional and domestic legal regimes provide adequate protection to climate migrants.
However, as the UN Dispatch noted, "people who have been uprooted
because of climate change exist all over the world — even if the
international community has been slow to recognize them as such."
As a result, climate migration has been described as “the world’s
silent crisis,” contrasting its global pervasiveness with its lack of
recognition and investigation. The number of people displaced by climate-related disasters is forecast to top 200 million by 2050. The World Bank projects that there will be 216 million climate migrants by 2050. The International Environmental Program (IEP) projects there will be 1.2 billion climate migrants by 2050. The UN International Organization for Migration projects that there will be 1.4 billion climate migrants by 2060.
Definitions
Climate migrants refer to those who engage in primarily voluntary
movement driven by the impact of sudden or gradual climate change, such
as "abnormally heavy rainfalls, prolonged droughts, desertification, environmental degradation, or sea-level rise and cyclones".
Few existing international frameworks and regional and domestic legal regimes provide adequate protection to climate migrants. Typically, climate migrants are not legally recognized as refugees and therefore do not enjoy international and domestic refugee law protections. Pope Francis noted in his encyclical letterLaudato si'
(2015), that "migrants seeking to flee from the growing poverty caused
by environmental degradation ... are not recognized by international
conventions as refugees".
In the Americas, instead of being granted refugee status, individuals
displaced by environmental factors are offered humanitarian visas or
complementary protection, which do not always provide permanent
residence and citizenship pathways.
Internationally, the 1951 Refugee Convention does not recognize climate factors as standalone criteria to define a refugee. However, in January 2020, the UN Human Rights Committee
ruled that "climate refugees fleeing the effects of the climate crisis
cannot be forced by their adoptive countries to return to their home
counties whose climate is posing an immediate threat."
Climate justice and adaptation
German artist Hermann Josef Hack's World Climate Refugee Camp in Hannover displaying 600 small climate refugee tents.
Climate migrants may migrate internally within their own country or
to another country in response to climate change. However, climate
adaptation projects in preparation for and in response to climate change
may increase the climate resilience of communities and reduce the
degree of migration people will need to make in the face of climate
change.
There are both short- and long-term impacts of climate change
which bring under-prepared communities environmental harm and exacerbate
existing inequities.
In the short-term, sudden climatic events like severe storms and
natural disasters may destroy critical infrastructure, flood
neighborhoods, disrupt transit systems, overburden medical centers,
cause food and water shortages, destabilize energy plants, and
jeopardize human health and well-being.
In the long-term, famines, droughts, and other resource shortages and
economic damages brought about by climate change may cause conflict,
political instability, climate gentrification, and accumulated negative
health effects due to exposure to unhealthy environments.
Slow-impact events, such as droughts and slowly rising temperatures,
have more mixed effects, but are more likely to lead to longer-term
changes.
People may lose the means to migrate, leading to a net decrease in
migration. The migration that does take place is seen as voluntary and
economically motivated.
In some cases climate change could also exacerbate economic insecurity
or political instability as causes for migration beyond temperatures and extreme weather events.
Just as individuals and countries do not contribute equally to climate
change, they also do not experience the negative effects of the crisis
equally.
The degree to which some of the environmental and related changes occur can be reduced by means of climate adaptation projects which increase the climate resilience
of communities and peoples. Varying levels of investment are made in
supporting the adaptation, resilience, and mobility of neighborhoods,
municipalities, and nations in the face of climate change and consequent
environmental migration. Small island states, rural populations, people
of color, low-income communities, the elderly, people with
disabilities, coastal urban populations, food and housing insecure
households, and least developed countries are especially vulnerable to
the worst effects of the climate crisis and therefore to environmental
migration.
People with livelihoods tied to the environment, like those in
agriculture, fisheries, and coast-dependent businesses, are also at risk
of relocation or job loss due to climate change.
Who leaves and who stays when affected by climate change often falls
along lines of race and class, as mobility requires some amount of
wealth.
Gentrification
Climate gentrification is a result of climate migration,
changes in populations due to environmental changes caused by climate
change, in which certain lower-socioeconomic communities are displaced
place of housing for more wealthy communities. Areas affected by this
phenomenon are typically coastal cities, islands, and other vulnerable
areas that are susceptible to rising sea levels, extreme weather events, and other climate-related disasters.
Gentrification is a process of economic displacement whereby areas of lower socioeconomic status get upscaled and changed by wealthier people moving in, increasing the cost of living and displacing lower class citizens. The climate crisis
continues to threaten communities globally, a new form of
gentrification has been established known as climate gentrification. One
example of a community affected by climate gentrification took place in
Coastal communities in Florida. An article about this states,
"Historically, wealthier populations have owned highly desirable
waterfront properties and lower income populations have lived on the
'less desirable' land inland and at higher elevation from the coast". Waterfront properties are now experiencing an increased risk of flooding due to sea level rise, storm surge, heavier precipitation and stronger hurricane-force winds during landfall."
Global statistics
An activist holding a sign "Climate change = more climate refugees" at the Melbourne Global climate strike on Sep 20, 2019.
In 1990, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC 1990: 20) declared that the greatest single consequence of
climate change could be migration, 'with millions of people displaced by
shoreline erosion, coastal flooding and severe drought'.
The most common projection is that the world will have 150–200
million people displaced by climate change by 2050. Variations of this
claim have been made in influential reports on climate change by the
IPCC (Brown 2008: 11) and the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change (Stern et al. 2006: 3), as well as by NGOs such as Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace Germany (Jakobeit and Methmann 2007) and Christian Aid; and inter-governmental organisations such as the Council of Europe, UNESCO, IOM (Brown 2008) and UNHCR.
Francois Gemenne has stated that: 'When it comes to predictions,
figures are usually based on the number of people living in regions at
risk, and not on the number of people actually expected to migrate.
Estimates do not account for adaptation strategies [or] different levels
of vulnerability' (Gemenne 2009: 159). However, Hein de Haas
has argued that to link the climate change issue "with the specter of
mass migration is a dangerous practice based on myth rather than fact.
The use of apocalyptic migration forecasts to support the case for
urgent action on climate change is not only intellectually dishonest,
but also puts the credibility of those using this argument - as well as
the broader case for climate change action - seriously at risk".
He argued that while "climate change is unlikely to cause mass
migration" this also overlooks the fact that the implications of
environmental adversity are most severe for the most vulnerable
populations who lack the means to move out
While climate-related migration is often framed as a remote
issue, extreme weather events are already forcing people out of their
homes in many parts of the world. In 2020, storms, floods, landslides,
wildfires and droughts triggered 38 million internal displacements (i.e.
displacement within a country), according to the Internal Displacement
Monitoring Centre. This is a record and three times as many forced
movements as those caused by conflicts.
In 2018, the BBC reported that "UN figures indicate that 80% of people displaced by climate change are women".
Statistics by region
Asia and the Pacific
Bangladesh climate refugee
According to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, more than
42 million people were displaced in Asia and the Pacific triggered by
sudden onset natural hazards during 2010 and 2011, more than twice the
population of Sri Lanka. This figure includes those displaced by storms,
floods, and heat and cold waves. Still others were displaced by drought
and sea-level rise. Most of those compelled to leave their homes
eventually returned when conditions improved, but an undetermined number
became migrants, usually within their country, but also across national
borders.
Climate-induced migration is a highly complex issue which needs
to be understood as part of global migration dynamics. Migration
typically has multiple causes, and environmental factors are intertwined
with other social and economic factors, which themselves can be
influenced by environmental changes. The United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) recognized that climate change and
environmental harm frequently “interact with other drivers of
displacement” that fit into the established refugee definition.
A 2012 Asian Development Bank study argues that climate-induced
migration should be addressed as part of a country's development agenda,
given the major implications of migration on economic and social
development. The report recommends interventions both to address the
situation of those who have migrated, as well as those who remain in
areas subject to environmental risk. It says: "To reduce migration
compelled by worsening environmental conditions, and to strengthen the
resilience of at-risk communities, governments should adopt policies and
commit financing to social protection, livelihoods development, basic
urban infrastructure development, and disaster risk management."
Additionally, it is maintained that the poor populate areas that
are most at risk for environmental destruction and climate change,
including coastlines, flood-lines, and steep slopes. As a result,
climate change threatens areas already suffering from extreme poverty.
"The issue of equity is crucial. Climate affects us all, but does not
affect us all equally," UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told delegates
at a climate conference in Indonesia.
Africa is also one of the world regions where environmental
displacement is critical largely due to droughts and other
climate-related eventualities.
Due to rising sea levels, as many as 70,000 people will be displaced in the Sundarbans as early as 2020 according to an estimate by the Center for Oceanographic Studies at Jadavpur University. One expert calls for restoring the Sundarbans’ original mangrove
habitats to both mitigate the impacts of rising seas and storm surges,
and to serve as a carbon sink for greenhouse gas emissions.
650 families of Satbhaya in Kendrapara district of Odisha, India
who have been displaced by sea level rise and coastal erosion have been a
part of the state government of Odisha's pioneering approach to planned
relocation at Bagapatia under Gupti Panchayat.
While this approach makes provision for homestead land and other
amenities, provisioning for livelihoods like agriculture and fishing
which are the mainstay for the relocated populations is needed.
In Minqin County, Gansu Province, "10,000 people have left the area and have become shengtai yimin, 'ecological migrants'". In Xihaigu, Ningxia,
water shortages driven by climate change and deforestation have
resulted in several waves of government-mandated relocations since 1983.
In 2013 a claim of a Kiribati man, Ioane Teitiota, of being a "climate change refugee" under the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (1951) was determined by the New Zealand High Court to be untenable. The Refugee Convention did not apply as there is no persecution or
serious harm related to any of the five stipulated convention grounds.
The Court rejected the argument that the international community itself
(or countries which can be said to have been historically high emitters
of carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases) were the "persecutor" for
the purposes of the Refugee Convention.
This analysis of the need for the person to identify persecution of the
type described in the Refugee Convention does not exclude the
possibility that a people for countries experiencing severe impacts of
climate change can come with the Refugee Convention. However, it is not
the climate change event itself, rather the social and political
response to climate change, which is likely to create the pathway for a
successful claim. The New Zealand Immigration and Protection Tribunal
and the High Court, "there is a complex inter-relationship between
natural disasters, environmental degradation and human vulnerability.
Sometimes a tenable pathway to international protection under the
Refugee Convention can result. Environmental issues sometimes lead to
armed conflict. There may be ensuing violence towards or direct
repression of an entire section of a population. Humanitarian relief can
become politicised, particularly in situations where some group inside a
disadvantaged country is the target of direct discrimination". The New Zealand Court of Appeal also rejected the claim in a 2014 decision.
On further appeal, the New Zealand Supreme Court confirmed the earlier
adverse rulings against the application for refugee status, with the
Supreme Court also rejecting the proposition "that environmental
degradation resulting from climate change or other natural disasters
could never create a pathway into the Refugee Convention or protected
person jurisdiction".
Teitiota appealed to the UN. In January 2020, the UN Human Rights
Committee "ruled against Teitiota on the basis that his life was not at
imminent risk," but also said that it was a human rights violation to
force refugees to return "to countries where climate change poses an
immediate threat."
In 2014 attention was drawn to an appeal to the New Zealand
Immigration and Protection Tribunal against the deportation of a
Tuvaluan family on the basis that they were "climate change refugees",
who would suffer hardship resulting from the environmental degradation
of Tuvalu. However the subsequent grant of residence permits to the family was made on grounds unrelated to the refugee claim.
The family was successful in their appeal because, under the relevant
immigration legislation, there were "exceptional circumstances of a
humanitarian nature" that justified the grant of resident permits as the
family was integrated into New Zealand society with a sizeable extended
family which had effectively relocated to New Zealand.
North America
California
California is confronting a growing forest and wildlife crisis due to wildfire.
California has historically been vulnerable to wildfires – at least a
third of the worst wildfires in US history have occurred in California.
However, climate change – specifically, warmer temperatures and more
intense drought seasons – in recent years have dramatically increased
the size and intensity of wildfires in the state. More than half of the 20 largest California wildfires
in modern history occurred between 2018 and 2022. The 2020 wildfires
were particularly devastating, burning down more than 4 million acres of
land, destroying thousands of buildings, and forcing hundreds of
thousands of people to leave their homes.
Evidence suggests that only a small percentage of those affected
by the wildfires choose to stay. Only several thousands of the 27,000
residents affected by the 2018 Sierra Nevada fire chose to remain and rebuild. The others chose to migrate either to other parts of California or out-of-state.
They face special difficulties with relocation due to lack of fire
insurance policies and the state’s lack of affordable housing. The state estimates at least 2.5 million homes are needed in the next eight years to catch up to demand.
Alaska
Shishmaref, Alaska, along with other Alaska villages, has faced increased flood risk since 2003
There have been 178 Alaskan communities threatened by erosion of
their land. The annual temperature has steadily increased over the last
fifty years, with Alaska seeing it double (compared to the rate seen
across the rest of the United States) to the rate of 3.4 degrees, with
an alarming 6.3 degrees increase for the winters over the past fifty
years. Many of the communities residing in these areas have been living
off the land for generations. There is an eminent threat of loss of
culture and loss of tribal identity with these communities.
Between 2003 and 2009, a partial survey by the Army Corps of Engineers
identified thirty-one Alaskan villages under imminent threat of
flooding and erosion. By 2009, 12 of the 31 villages had decided to
relocate, with four (Kivalina, Newtok, Shaktoolik, and Shishmaref) requiring immediate evacuation due to danger of immediate flooding along with limited evacuation options.
However, relocation is proving difficult because there is no
governmental institutional framework that exists for the aid of climate
refugees in the United States. The Obama administration promised to fund
$50.4 billion to help with relocation efforts in 2016.
Louisiana
Isle de Jean Charles, Louisiana, home to the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw First Nation, is being depopulated with federal grant money, due to saltwater intrusion
and sea level rise. This Indigenous Nation residing on the Isle de
Jean Charles is facing the effects of climate change. The resettlement
of this community of around 100, exists as the first migration of a
total community in the state of Louisiana. This state has lost almost
2,000 square miles (5,200 km2) of its coast within the last 87 years and now an alarming rate of almost 16 square miles (41 km2)
per year is disappearing. In early 2016, a 48-million-dollar grant was
the first allocation of federal tax dollars to aid a community suffering
from direct impact of climate change. Louisiana has lost land mass
comparable to the size of the state of Delaware revealing land mass loss
that is at a rate faster than many places in the world. The
resettlement plan for the Isle de Jean Charles is at the forefront of
responding to climate change without destroying the community that
resides within.
Native American tribes located on the outer coast of the state of Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, such as the Quinault Indian Nation village of Taholah, and the Shoalwater Bay Tribe, have been increasingly vulnerable to encroaching sea levels, storm surges and intense rain causing landslides and floods.
In response, the Quinault Indian Nation conducted a vulnerability
assessment and devised a comprehensive relocation plan to move two of
its villages – Taholah and Queets, home to 660 tribal members – to
higher ground way above the tsunami and flood zones.
However, relocation is expensive and only possible with federal funding
– it is estimated that moving the 471-member Shoalwater Bay Tribe up
the mountain could cost half a billion dollars. The Department of the Interior,
under the Biden Administration, has created programs designed to help
relocate communities affected by climate change and is assessing which
tribes to allocate funding to first.
The people of Central America and the Caribbean are repeatedly faced
with severe weather events and climate change will only exacerbate this
issue. A large portion of this region lies along the “Dry Corridor”,
an arid region that includes areas of Panama, Honduras, Nicaragua, El
Salvador and the Dominican Republic. The dry corridor is predicted to
expand with the onset of climate change. It is currently home to
approximately 10 million people, half of whom are subsistence farmers.
From 2009 - 2019, two million residents in the dry corridor have
experienced hunger because of extreme weather events caused by climate
change.
Natural weather patterns such as the El Niño Southern Oscillation, or
simply “El Niño”, can make dry conditions in this region more extreme.
Wet periods following an El Niño weather event can bring torrential rain
that results in major flooding and catastrophic landslides. Multiple
studies have shown that climate change could result in more frequent
extreme El Niños.
Food security issues are expected to worsen across Central
America due to climate change. In August 2019, Honduras declared a state
of emergency when a drought caused the southern part of the country to
lose 72% of its corn and 75% of its bean production. It is predicted
that by 2070, corn yields in Central America may fall by 10%, beans by
29%, and rice by 14%. With Central American crop consumption dominated
by corn (70%), beans (25%), and rice (6%), the expected drop in staple
crop yields could have devastating consequences. The World Bank predicts
that by 2050, climate change-induced migration could displace 1.4 - 2.1
million residents of Central America and Mexico. The highest estimate
is that worsening droughts and flooding from climate change could
displace up to 4 million people in the region by 2050.
Several weather events in the 21st century have displayed the
devastating effects of the El Niño weather pattern and have led to mass
displacement and hunger crises. In 2009, extreme drought hit the Dry
Corridor, followed by Hurricane Ida. The storm affected forty thousand
people in Nicaragua and left thirteen thousand homeless. El Salvador
received up to 17 inches (43 cm) of rain in two days, causing massive
landslides which killed 190 people and displaced ten thousand more. In
2015, due to the strongest El Niño in recorded history, hundreds of
thousands of Central American subsistence farmers lost a portion or the
entirety of their crops. Throughout 2014 and 2015, El Salvador alone saw
over $100 million in damage to crops. In Guatemala, the drought caused a
food shortage that left 3 million people struggling to feed themselves,
according to a 2015 report authored by the International Organization
for Migration (IOM) and the United Nations’ World Food Programme (WFP).
The Guatemalan government declared a state of emergency as the drought
and high food prices led to a hunger crisis during which chronic
malnutrition was common among children. By the end of June 2016, it was
estimated by the United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of
Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) that 3.5 million people required
humanitarian assistance across El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.
The western highlands of Guatemala are particularly susceptible
to climate change, affecting the region’s predominantly Indigenous
population of subsistence farmers. The main crops, potatoes and maize,
have been under increasing pressure as hard frosts in the region have
become more frequent since 2013. Hard frosts can kill a whole season’s
worth of crops at once. At lower elevations, new pests are becoming more
prevalent and there has been decreased rainfall. In 2018, 50% of the
94,000 Guatemalans deported from the United States and Mexico were from
these western highlands.
The IOM/WFP report also showed the ways in which food insecurity
led to migration from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. Pointing out
that there are millions of Central Americans living abroad (with over
80% in the United States), the report stated there is a positive
correlation between food insecurity and migration from these countries.
It also confirmed that crises related to hunger and violence are
exacerbated when the region heads into the second consecutive year of an
extreme drought. In their conclusions, the authors definitively found
that food insecurity has led to migration in these countries. Despite
this evidence, the ramifications of extreme weather and climate change
have rarely been discussed in relation to Central American migrants and
it requires more research to prove their direct link.
South America
South America Continental Divide
Many peer-reviewed articles analyzing migration in South America have
found multiple types of linkages between climate change and its effect
on migration. The effects and results vary based on the type of climatic
change, socioeconomic status and demographic characteristics of
migrants and the distance and direction of the migration.
Since most climate migration studies are done in the developed world,
scientists have called for more quantitative research within the
developing world, including South America.
Migration in South America does not always increase as a result of
increased environmental threats but is affected by factors such as
climate variability and land suitability. These migrations happen either
gradually or suddenly but are typically directed from rural to urban
areas. Inter-provincial migration is shown to not be as heavily
influenced by environmental changes whereas migration outside of the
country of origin is heavily influenced by environmental changes.
The results of a climactic event catalyzing migration change depending
on the onset of the event, however, climate change related events such
as drought and hurricanes augment or increase youth migration. Youth are
more likely to migrate as a response to climate-related events. As a
result, children who have been displaced are found to travel shorter
distances to find work in rural destinations versus further to an urban
area.
Researchers suggest a review of the terms that define who is an
environmental migrant since policy-making bodies and intergovernmental
agencies most affect responses when an environmental event causes people
to migrate. Because of the increase in interest in this topic in the
past decade some people call for a measure called preventive
resettlement. The cases in which preventive resettlement appear
appropriate is typically discerned by local and governmental bodies.
Others call for an increase in social programs to both prevent and help
in a migration event.
Active sea-level rise resulted in the relocation of the people of
Enseada da Baleia, a coastal community located on Cardoso Island in
southeastern Brazil. The government offered the residents the ability to
either relocate to another community on the island or a city on the
mainland. Most residents chose to move to a new location that was more
inland on the same island and paid for their own expenses of relocation
with little government assistance. Brazilian lawyer Erika Pires Ramos
argues that the dilemma faced by the residents of Enseada da Baleia
illustrates how climate migrants are invisible throughout much of Latin
America. Governments must first recognize and identify groups of climate
migrants in order to better help them.
The International Organization for Migration estimates that today
nearly 11 million South Americans are currently resettling or migrating
due to recent and ongoing natural disasters, some of which are
climate-induced. Collecting and maintaining data on climate migrants
remains a major obstacle for South American governments in preparing and
anticipating for migration flows from future climate-induced disasters.
Peru passed a national climate change law in 2018 that mandates the
government, led by a multi-agency group, to create a plan to mitigate
and adapt to future climate migrations. Uruguay already has its own
“national resettlement plan” for climate-induced migrations in place.
A few countries like Argentina and Brazil, offer a
“disaster-related emergency visa”. In Argentina, the visa came into
effect in 2022 includes relocation, housing and integration support
provided by civil society.
Some Kuna people, such as those in the settlement of Gardi Sugdub, have decided to relocate from islands to the mainland of Panama due to sea level rise.
Europe
Fairbourne, Wales, an area particularly vulnerable to sea level riseHouses destroyed in the Wennington wildfire, London 2022
Estimates put the number of displaced persons in Europe from
climate-related events at over 700,000 in the last ten years. Most of
the continent’s climate-related catastrophes are a result of either
flooding or wildfires.
The European Union has yet to adopt any continent-wide convention on the status of migrants displaced by climate-related events.
Record droughts caused by climate change in part of the Middle
East are increasingly seen as a significant contributing factor to
regional unrest and mass migrations to Europe. While the role of
climate change in exacerbating internal domestic unrest is still being
widely debated, there’s increasing empirical support for the argument
that climate change acts as a security threat multiplier in developing
countries. Back-to-back unprecedented droughts plagued Syrian farmers
from 2006 to 2011, resulting in mass migrations from the countryside to
the cities where existing infrastructure came under strain. This
internal migration further exacerbated the growing unemployment and
inequality and was one of the main driving forces leading to the Syrian Civil War. Over one million Syrians have fled the country since the war began, largely resettling in neighboring Turkey.
Due to the 2014 Balkan flooding
(which is considered to be linked to climate change), some people in
Bosnia and Herzegovina migrated to other European countries.
Moldova,
with a large rural population dependent on subsistence farming, is one
of Europe’s most vulnerable countries to the threat of climate change.
Increasing erratic weather patterns may lead to crop failures and mass
migrations to neighboring countries. In 2010, devastating floods
completely submerged the village of Cotul Morii
in central Moldova resulting in the evacuation of 440 families.
Government authorities mandated that Cotul Morii be reconstructed in a
new location 15 kilometers away from the original village which the
government officially abandoned. Despite this, over 60 families chose to
remain and rebuild their community in the original village even with a
lack of running water or electricity. Climate migration researchers
emphasize the growing importance of a “right to voluntary immobility”.
There are often very sensitive and complicated issues at play when
making the decision to relocate an entire population from their home,
and many residents may choose to voluntarily opt-out of government
efforts.
In Wales, the village of Fairbourne has been cited as an area particularly vulnerable to sea level rise. The local Gwynedd Council has described it as impractical to protect from rising sea levels and proposed managed retreat.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) expects the scale of global migration to rise as a result of accelerated climate change. It, therefore, recommends policymakers around the world to take a proactive stance on the matter.
Despite the scale of climate migration, current legal protections
across the world are ineffective in protecting climate migrants. A
report from the International Refugee Assistance Project
(IRAP) therefore recommends the creation of new legal pathways to
safety for people moving in the context of climate change and
environmental degradation. IRAP’s report also recommends that
governments develop stronger humanitarian protection for people who are
forcibly displaced in a changing climate. The report emphasizes that
strengthening the legal protections for climate-displaced persons should
be preemptive with increased options for these persons before
environmental disasters occur.
The International Law Commission
(ILC) provides guidance on the legal protections that climate-displaced
persons should enjoy when disasters strikes. ILC’s Draft Articles on
the Protection of Persons in the Event of Disasters advocates for mass
displacement to be included in the definition of “disaster”. The United Nations Human Rights Committee
(UNHRC) recently decided cases wherein the Committee asserted that “the
ICCPR obligates states not to return people fleeing life-threatening
climate change impacts.” In one of these cases, Teitota v. New Zealand,
the UNHRC held that “individuals and groups who have crossed national
borders could file subsequent petitions against deportation to the
UNHRC, after exhausting domestic options, based on climate change
impacts that violate the right to life.”
The Environmental Justice Foundation
(EJF) argued that people who will be forced to move due to climate
change currently have no adequate recognition in international law.
The EJF contends that a new multilateral legal instrument is required
to specifically address the needs of "climate refugees" in order to
confer protection to those fleeing environmental degradation and climate
change. They have also asserted that additional funding is needed to enable developing countries to adapt to climate change. Sujatha Byravan
and Sudhir Chella Rajan have argued for the use of the term 'climate
exiles' and for international agreements to provide them political and
legal rights, including citizenship in other countries, bearing in mind
those countries' responsibilities and capabilities.
Global perceptions from possible countries of asylum
Acceptance
of the possibility of environmental migrants may be influenced by other
challenges that confront a nation. In Canada, there is public interest
in policies that foster planning and accommodations. On 20 September 2016, Prime Minister Trudeau of Canada told the UN Summit for Refugees and Migrants that plans just for resettlement would not be enough.
Sweden which had allowed refugees to seek asylum from areas of war in
an open door policy has changed to a policy that is more deterrent of
asylum seekers and is even offering money for asylum seekers to withdraw
their requests.
The United States, which was warned under the Obama administration to
prepare for climate change and consequent refugees, had more
difficulties in doing so under former President Donald Trump, who denied
the reality of climate change,
signed executive orders dismantling environmental protections, ordered
the EPA to remove climate change information from their public site, and
signaled his administration's unwillingness to anticipate environmental
refugees from climate change.
A nation grants "asylum" when it grants someone freedom from
prosecution within its borders. Each country makes its own rules and
laws of asylum. The United States, for example, has a system recognized
by federal and international laws. France was the first country to
constitute the right to asylum. The right to asylum differs in different
nations. There is a still fight for the right to asylum in some areas
of the world.
In 2021, a French court ruled in an extradition hearing to avoid the deportation of a Bangladeshi man with asthma from France after his lawyer argued that he risked a severe deterioration in his condition, due to the air pollution in his homeland.Heavy floods affected Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh in July 2021.
The Biden administration
in the United States released several intelligence agency reports in
2021 that sketched out in sweeping language the risks climate change
poses to global stability. The reports emphasize the destabilizing
effects climate change will take on developing countries including
massive rises in food insecurity, worsening droughts, fires and
flooding, and sea level rises. Some of the most vulnerable countries,
the report concludes, are Guatemala, Haiti, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and
Iraq; countries with weak state institutions that are located in
especially climate-vulnerable regions of the world. In February of 2021,
President Biden signed an executive order “directing the National
Security Council to provide options for protecting and resettling people
displaced by climate change”.
In an updated report on climate migration released in October of
2021, the Biden Administration detailed how the United States government
should work to aid and assist climate migrants around the world. The
report points to the use of U.S. foreign assistance through active
humanitarian support, technical expertise, and capacity building and
calls for increased funding to achieve these goals. Emphasizing the
“complex interplay between climate change and migration”, the report
orients the government’s focus to focus on climate migration as a single
issue, demanding greater attention and focus in the coming years.
Perspective of countries taking immigrants
In
the UK, research is being done on how climate change's impact on
countries that are emigrated to will vary due to the infrastructure of
those countries. They want to put into place policies so that those who
have to migrate could go throughout Europe, and have solid emergency
planning in place so that the people being displaced would have a swift
and quick plan of escape once their environment can no longer handle
inhabitants-slow or sudden onset. The end goal of this work is to determine the best course of action in the event of various environmental catastrophes.
Planning for climate migrants
Planning
for climate migration, a subset of environmental migration, entails
preparing for the desertion of geographically vulnerable areas as well
as for the influx of vulnerable communities into largely urban areas.
In addressing current issues of environmental migration and preparing
for forthcoming ones, experts call for interdisciplinary,
locally-informed, equitable, and accessible approaches.
Cities can explore what being “migrant friendly” might look like, such
as offering job training programs, affordable and livable housing,
access to green spaces, accessible mass transit systems, and resources
to overcome language or cultural barriers.
Special investment in both resources and information dissemination can
help accommodate the diverse needs of people with disabilities and
mental health conditions – both in the immediate moment of a disaster,
where some emergency response and early warning systems may not be
audiologically or visually accessible, and in the aftermath.
Investments in flood barriers and other infrastructure for adaptation
can provide physical protections against severe weather. Incorporating
these considerations into planning conversations now can assist cities
in preparing for the worst effects of climate change before some of the scenarios for climate migration come to occur.
Sustainable development, emergency response mechanisms, and local
planning can help mitigate the consequences of climate migration. For
people whose livelihoods are closely linked to the stability and health
of their environment – like farmers and fishers – migration may become
necessary for survival. A recent New York Times and Pulitzer Center
article on the issue notes that “by comparison, Americans are richer,
often much richer, and more insulated from the shocks of climate change.
They are distanced from the food and water sources they depend on, and
they are part of a culture that sees every problem as capable of being
solved by money...Census data show us how Americans move: toward heat,
toward coastlines, toward drought, regardless of evidence of increasing
storms and flooding and other disasters...The sense that money and
technology can overcome nature has emboldened Americans."
This disparity is reflected in the coastal real estate market and
development projects. Addressing climate migration issues and climate
change as a whole may involve reimagining how, where, and why
municipalities develop and urbanize for the future.
In an article written for The Guardian, Gaia Vince
outlined what the future of climate migration would look like and how
countries can prepare. She cites research from the United Nations
estimating that in the next 30 years, over 1 billion climate and
environmental migrants will be uprooted from their homes, largely from
countries in the Global South. Developed nations in North America and
Europe, with aging and declining populations, will benefit from
accepting and assimilating these climate migrants into their societies,
she argues. Climate migration can be a solution to many of the world’s
problems, rather than just a problem, according to Vince. Currently,
there is no global body or organization devoted exclusively to the issue
of climate migration, however, Vince argues that new climate-friendly
policies are still possible.
Vince points to the rapid European response to enact open-border
policies and right-to-work laws for Ukrainian refugees fleeing the 2022 war
as an example. The policies arguably saved millions of lives and
enabled the migrants to avoid the convoluted and slow-acting
bureaucratic hurdles that exist for migrants from other countries. Vince
argues that the Ukrainian migrant policy provides a blueprint for how
developed countries can adopt policies and contingency plans for climate
migrants in the future.
Society and culture
A documentary entitled Climate Refugees was released in 2010. Climate Refugees was an Official Selection for the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. More recently, Short Documentary Academy Award Nominee, Sun Come Up (2011), tells the story of Carteret islanders in Papua New Guinea who are forced to leave their ancestral land in response to climate change and migrate to war-torn Bougainville. Since 2007, German artist Hermann Josef Hack
has shown his World Climate Refugee Camp in the centers of various
European cities. The model camp, made of roughly 1000 miniature tents,
is a public art intervention that depicts the social impacts of climate
change.
Painting depicting a lecture in a knight academy, painted by Pieter Isaacsz or Reinhold Timm for Rosenborg Castle as part of a series of seven paintings depicting the seven independent arts. This painting illustrates rhetoric.
Rhetoric (/ˈrɛtərɪk/) is the art of persuasion, which along with grammar and logic (or dialectic), is one of the three ancient arts of discourse.
Rhetoric aims to study the techniques writers or speakers utilize to
inform, persuade, or motivate particular audiences in specific
situations. Aristotle defines rhetoric as "the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion"
and since mastery of the art was necessary for victory in a case at
law, for passage of proposals in the assembly, or for fame as a speaker
in civic ceremonies, he calls it "a combination of the science of logic
and of the ethical branch of politics". Rhetoric typically provides heuristics for understanding, discovering, and developing arguments for particular situations, such as Aristotle's three persuasive audience appeals: logos, pathos, and ethos. The five canons of rhetoric or phases of developing a persuasive speech were first codified in classical Rome: invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery.
From Ancient Greece
to the late 19th century, rhetoric played a central role in Western
education in training orators, lawyers, counsellors, historians,
statesmen, and poets.
Scholars have debated the scope of rhetoric since ancient times.
Although some have limited rhetoric to the specific realm of political
discourse, many modern scholars liberate it to encompass every aspect of
culture. Contemporary studies of rhetoric address a much more diverse
range of domains than was the case in ancient times. While classical
rhetoric trained speakers to be effective persuaders in public forums
and institutions such as courtrooms and assemblies, contemporary
rhetoric investigates human discourse writ large.
Rhetoricians have studied the discourses of a wide variety of domains,
including the natural and social sciences, fine art, religion,
journalism, digital media, fiction, history, cartography, and
architecture, along with the more traditional domains of politics and
the law.
Because the ancient Greeks highly valued public political
participation, rhetoric emerged as a crucial tool to influence politics.
Consequently, rhetoric remains associated with its political origins.
However, even the original instructors of Western speech—the Sophists—disputed this limited view of rhetoric. According to the Sophists, such as Gorgias,
a successful rhetorician could speak convincingly on any topic,
regardless of his experience in that field. This method suggested
rhetoric could be a means of communicating any expertise, not just
politics. In his Encomium to Helen, Gorgias even applied rhetoric to fiction by seeking for his own pleasure to prove the blamelessness of the mythical Helen of Troy in starting the Trojan War.
Looking to another key rhetorical theorist, Plato
defined the scope of rhetoric according to his negative opinions of the
art. He criticized the Sophists for using rhetoric as a means of deceit
instead of discovering truth. In "Gorgias", one of his Socratic Dialogues, Plato defines rhetoric as the persuasion of ignorant masses within the courts and assemblies.
Rhetoric, in Plato's opinion, is merely a form of flattery and
functions similarly to cookery, which masks the undesirability of
unhealthy food by making it taste good. Thus, Plato considered any
speech of lengthy prose
aimed at flattery as within the scope of rhetoric. Some scholars,
however, contest the idea that Plato despised rhetoric and instead view
his dialogues as a dramatization of complex rhetorical principles.
Aristotle both redeemed rhetoric from his teacher and narrowed its focus by defining three genres of rhetoric—deliberative, forensic or judicial, and epideictic.
Yet, even as he provided order to existing rhetorical theories,
Aristotle extended the definition of rhetoric, calling it the ability to
identify the appropriate means of persuasion in a given situation,
thereby making rhetoric applicable to all fields, not just politics.
When one considers that rhetoric included torture (in the sense that the
practice of torture is a form of persuasion or coercion), it is clear
that rhetoric cannot be viewed only in academic terms. However, the enthymeme based upon logic (especially, based upon the syllogism) was viewed as the basis of rhetoric.
However, since the time of Aristotle, logic has changed. For example, Modal logic has undergone a major development that also modifies rhetoric.
Yet, Aristotle also outlined generic constraints that focused the
rhetorical art squarely within the domain of public political practice.
He restricted rhetoric to the domain of the contingent or probable: those matters that admit multiple legitimate opinions or arguments.
The contemporary neo-Aristotelian
and neo-Sophistic positions on rhetoric mirror the division between the
Sophists and Aristotle. Neo-Aristotelians generally study rhetoric as
political discourse, while the neo-Sophistic view contends that rhetoric
cannot be so limited. Rhetorical scholar Michael Leff
characterizes the conflict between these positions as viewing rhetoric
as a "thing contained" versus a "container". The neo-Aristotelian view
threatens the study of rhetoric by restraining it to such a limited
field, ignoring many critical applications of rhetorical theory,
criticism, and practice. Simultaneously, the neo-Sophists threaten to
expand rhetoric beyond a point of coherent theoretical value.
Over the past century, people studying rhetoric have tended to enlarge its object domain beyond speech texts. Kenneth Burke
asserted humans use rhetoric to resolve conflicts by identifying shared
characteristics and interests in symbols. By nature, humans engage in identification, either to assign oneself or another to a group. This definition of rhetoric as identification
broadened the scope from strategic and overt political persuasion to
the more implicit tactics of identification found in an immense range of
sources.
Among the many scholars who have since pursued Burke's line of thought, James Boyd White sees rhetoric as a broader domain of social experience in his notion of constitutive rhetoric. Influenced by theories of social construction,
White argues that culture is "reconstituted" through language. Just as
language influences people, people influence language. Language is
socially constructed, and depends on the meanings people attach to it.
Because language is not rigid and changes depending on the situation,
the very usage of language is rhetorical. An author, White would say, is
always trying to construct a new world and persuading his or her
readers to share that world within the text.
People engage in the rhetorical process anytime they speak or produce meaning. Even in the field of science,
the practices of which were once viewed as being merely the objective
testing and reporting of knowledge, scientists must persuade their
audience to accept their findings by sufficiently demonstrating that
their study or experiment was conducted reliably and resulted in
sufficient evidence to support their conclusions.
The vast scope of rhetoric is difficult to define; however,
political discourse remains, in many ways, the paradigmatic example for
studying and theorizing specific techniques and conceptions of
persuasion, considered by many a synonym for "rhetoric".
As a civic art
Throughout European History,
rhetoric has concerned itself with persuasion in public and political
settings such as assemblies and courts. Because of its associations with
democratic institutions, rhetoric is commonly said to flourish in open
and democratic societies with rights of free speech,
free assembly, and political enfranchisement for some portion of the
population. Those who classify rhetoric as a civic art believe that
rhetoric has the power to shape communities, form the character of
citizens and greatly affect civic life.
Rhetoric was viewed as a civic art by several of the ancient philosophers. Aristotle and Isocrates were two of the first to see rhetoric in this light. In his work, Antidosis,
Isocrates states, "We have come together and founded cities and made
laws and invented arts; and, generally speaking, there is no institution
devised by man which the power of speech has not helped us to
establish." With this statement he argues that rhetoric is a fundamental
part of civic life in every society and that it has been necessary in
the foundation of all aspects of society. He further argues in his piece
Against the Sophists
that rhetoric, although it cannot be taught to just anyone, is capable
of shaping the character of man. He writes, "I do think that the study
of political discourse can help more than any other thing to stimulate
and form such qualities of character." Aristotle, writing several years
after Isocrates, supported many of his arguments and continued to make
arguments for rhetoric as a civic art.
In the words of Aristotle, in the Rhetoric, rhetoric is
"... the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of
persuasion". According to Aristotle, this art of persuasion could be
used in public settings in three different ways. He writes in Book I,
Chapter III, "A member of the assembly decides about future events, a
juryman about past events: while those who merely decide on the orator's
skill are observers. From this it follows that there are three
divisions of oratory – (1) political, (2) forensic, and (3) the
ceremonial oratory of display". Eugene Garver, in his critique of
"Aristotle's Rhetoric", confirms that Aristotle viewed rhetoric as a
civic art. Garver writes, "Rhetoric articulates a civic art of rhetoric,
combining the almost incompatible properties of techne and
appropriateness to citizens." Each of Aristotle's divisions plays a role in civic life and can be used in a different way to affect cities.
Because rhetoric is a public art capable of shaping opinion, some of the ancients including Plato
found fault in it. They claimed that while it could be used to improve
civic life, it could be used equally easily to deceive or manipulate
with negative effects on the city. The masses were incapable of
analyzing or deciding anything on their own and would therefore be
swayed by the most persuasive speeches. Thus, civic life could be
controlled by the one who could deliver the best speech. Plato explores
the problematic moral status of rhetoric twice: in Gorgias, a dialogue named for the famed Sophist, and in The Phaedrus, a dialogue best known for its commentary on love.
More trusting in the power of rhetoric to support a republic, the Roman orator Cicero
argued that art required something more than eloquence. A good orator
needed also to be a good man, a person enlightened on a variety of civic
topics. He describes the proper training of the orator in his major
text on rhetoric, De Oratore, modeled on Plato's dialogues.
Modern day works continue to support the claims of the ancients
that rhetoric is an art capable of influencing civic life. In his work Political Style, Robert Hariman
claims, "Furthermore, questions of freedom, equality, and justice often
are raised and addressed through performances ranging from debates to
demonstrations without loss of moral content". James Boyd White
argues further that rhetoric is capable not only of addressing issues
of political interest but that it can influence culture as a whole. In
his book, When Words Lose Their Meaning, he argues that words of
persuasion and identification define community and civic life. He states
that words produce "the methods by which culture is maintained,
criticized, and transformed". Both White and Hariman agree that words and rhetoric have the power to shape culture and civic life.
In modern times, rhetoric has consistently remained relevant as a
civic art. In speeches, as well as in non-verbal forms, rhetoric
continues to be used as a tool to influence communities from local to
national levels.
As a course of study
Rhetoric
as a course of study has evolved significantly since its ancient
beginnings. Through the ages, the study and teaching of rhetoric has
adapted to the particular exigencies of the time and venue. The study of rhetoric has conformed to a multitude of different applications, ranging from architecture to literature.
Although the curriculum has transformed in a number of ways, it has
generally emphasized the study of principles and rules of composition as
a means for moving audiences. Generally speaking, the study of rhetoric
trains students to speak and/or write effectively, as well as
critically understand and analyze discourse.
Rhetoric began as a civic art in Ancient Greece where students
were trained to develop tactics of oratorical persuasion, especially in
legal disputes. Rhetoric originated in a school of pre-Socratic philosophers known as the Sophists circa 600 BC. Demosthenes and Lysias emerged as major orators during this period, and Isocrates and Gorgias as prominent teachers. Rhetorical education focused on five particular canons: inventio (invention), dispositio (arrangement), elocutio (style), memoria (memory), and actio
(delivery). Modern teachings continue to reference these rhetorical
leaders and their work in discussions of classical rhetoric and
persuasion.
Rhetoric was later taught in universities during the Middle Ages as one of the three original liberal arts or trivium (along with logic and grammar).
During the medieval period, political rhetoric declined as republican
oratory died out and the emperors of Rome garnered increasing authority.
With the rise of European monarchs in following centuries, rhetoric
shifted into the courtly and religious applications. Augustine
exerted strong influence on Christian rhetoric in the Middle Ages,
advocating the use of rhetoric to lead audiences to truth and
understanding, especially in the church. The study of liberal arts, he
believed, contributed to rhetorical study: "In the case of a keen and
ardent nature, fine words will come more readily through reading and
hearing the eloquent than by pursuing the rules of rhetoric." Poetry and letter writing, for instance, became a central component of rhetorical study during the Middle Ages.
After the fall of the Republic in Rome, poetry became a tool for
rhetorical training since there were fewer opportunities for political
speech.
Letter writing was the primary form through which business was
conducted both in state and church, so it became an important aspect of
rhetorical education.
Rhetorical education became more restrained as style and substance separated in 16th-century France with Peter Ramus,
and attention turned to the scientific method. That is, influential
scholars like Ramus argued that the processes of invention and
arrangement should be elevated to the domain of philosophy, while
rhetorical instruction should be chiefly concerned with the use of
figures and other forms of the ornamentation of language. Scholars such
as Francis Bacon developed the study of "scientific rhetoric". This concentration rejected the elaborate style characteristic of the classical oration. This plain language carried over to John Locke's
teaching, which emphasized concrete knowledge and steered away from
ornamentation in speech, further alienating rhetorical instruction,
which was identified wholly with this ornamentation, from the pursuit of
knowledge.
In the 18th century, rhetoric assumed a more social role, initiating the creation of new education systems. "Elocution schools" arose (predominantly in England) in which females analyzed classic literature, most notably the works of William Shakespeare, and discussed pronunciation tactics.
The study of rhetoric underwent a revival with the rise of
democratic institutions during the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
Scotland's author and theorist Hugh Blair
served as a key leader of this movement during the late 18th century.
In his most famous work "Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres", he
advocates rhetorical study for common citizens as a resource for social
success. Many American colleges and secondary schools used Blair's text
throughout the 19th century to train students of rhetoric.
Political rhetoric also underwent renewal in the wake of the US
and French revolutions. The rhetorical studies of ancient Greece and
Rome were resurrected in the studies of the era as speakers and teachers
looked to Cicero and others to inspire defense of the new republic. Leading rhetorical theorists included John Quincy Adams of Harvard
who advocated the democratic advancement of rhetorical art. Harvard's
founding of the Boylston Professorship of Rhetoric and Oratory sparked
the growth of rhetorical study in colleges across the United States.
Harvard's rhetoric program drew inspiration from literary sources to
guide organization and style. Recently, there have been studies
conducted examining the rhetoric used in political speech acts to
illustrate how political figures will persuade audiences for their own
purposes.
Debate clubs and lyceums also developed as forums in which common
citizens could hear speakers and sharpen debate skills. The American
lyceum in particular was seen as both an educational and social
institution, featuring group discussions and guest lecturers. These programs cultivated democratic values and promoted active participation in political analysis.
Throughout the 20th century, rhetoric developed as a concentrated
field of study with the establishment of rhetorical courses in high
schools and universities. Courses such as public speaking and speech analysis apply fundamental Greek theories (such as the modes of persuasion: ethos, pathos, and logos)
as well as trace rhetorical development throughout the course of
history. Rhetoric has earned a more esteemed reputation as a field of
study with the emergence of Communication Studies
departments as well as Rhetoric and Composition programs within English
departments in universities and in conjunction with the linguistic
turn. Rhetorical study has broadened in scope, and is especially
utilized by the fields of marketing, politics, and literature.
Another area of rhetoric is the study of cultural rhetorics,
which is the communication that occurs between cultures and the study of
the way members of the culture communicate with each other.
These ideas can then be studied and understood by other cultures, in
order to bridge gaps in modes of communication and help different
cultures communicate effectively with each other. James Zappen defines
cultural rhetorics as the idea that rhetoric is concerned with
negotiation and listening, not persuasion, which differs from ancient
definitions. Some ancient rhetoric was looked down on for fear that the persuasive techniques would be used to teach falsehoods. Communication in cultural rhetorics is focused on listening and negotiation, and has little to do with persuasion.
Rhetoric, as an area of study, is concerned with how humans use
symbols, especially language, to reach agreement that permits
coordinated effort of some sort. Harvard University,
the first university in the United States, based on the European model,
taught a basic curriculum, including rhetoric. Rhetoric, in this sense,
how to properly give speeches, played an important role in their
training. Rhetoric was soon taught in departments of English as well.
Music
Having enjoyed a resurgence during the Renaissance nearly every author who wrote about music before the Romantic era discussed rhetoric. Joachim Burmeister wrote in 1601, "there is only little difference between music and the nature of oration". Christoph Bernhard
in the latter half of the century said "...until the art of music has
attained such a height in our own day, that it may indeed be compared to
a rhetoric, in view of the multitude of figures".
Knowledge
The
relationship between rhetoric and knowledge is an old and interesting
philosophical problem, partly because of our different assumptions on
the nature of knowledge. But it is fairly clear that while knowledge is
primarily concerned with what is commonly known as "truth", rhetoric is
primarily concerned with statements and their effects on the audience.
The word "rhetoric" may also refer to "empty speak", which reflects an
indifference to truth, and in this sense rhetoric is adversarial to
knowledge. Plato famously criticized the Sophists for their rhetoric
which had persuaded people to sentence his friend Socrates to death
regardless of what was true. However, rhetoric is also used in the
construction of true arguments, or in identifying what is relevant, the
crux of the matter, in a selection of true but otherwise trivial
statements. Hence, rhetoric is also closely related to knowledge.
History
Rhetoric has its origins in Mesopotamia. Some of the earliest examples of rhetoric can be found in the Akkadian writings of the princess and priestess Enheduanna (c. 2285–2250 BC). As the first named author in history,
Enheduanna's writing exhibits numerous rhetorical features that would
later become canon in Ancient Greece. Enheduanna's "The Exaltation of Inanna," includes an exordium, argument, and peroration, as well as elements of ethos, pathos, and logos, and repetition and metonymy.
She is also known for describing her process of invention in "The
Exaltation of Inanna," moving between first- and third-person address to
relate her composing process in collaboration with the goddess Inanna, reflecting a mystical enthymeme in drawing upon a Cosmic audience. Later examples of early rhetoric can be found in the Neo-Assyrian Empire during the time of Sennacherib (704–681 BC).
In ancient Egypt, rhetoric had existed since at least the Middle Kingdom period
(c. 2080–1640 BC). The five canons of eloquence in ancient Egyptian
rhetoric include silence, timing, restraint, fluency, and truthfulness. The Egyptians
held eloquent speaking in high esteem, and it was a skill that had a
very high value in their society. The "Egyptian rules of rhetoric" also
clearly specified that "knowing when not to speak is essential, and very
respected, rhetorical knowledge". Their "approach to rhetoric" was thus
a "balance between eloquence and wise silence". Their rules of speech
also strongly emphasized "adherence to social behaviors that support a
conservative status quo" and they held that "skilled speech should
support, not question, society". In ancient China, rhetoric dates back to the Chinese philosopher, Confucius (551–479 BC), and continued with later followers. The tradition of Confucianism emphasized the use of eloquence in speaking. The use of rhetoric can also be found in the ancient Biblical tradition.
In ancient Greece, the earliest mention of oratorical skill occurs in Homer's Iliad, where heroes like Achilles, Hector, 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".
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.
In Europe, 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. c. 444 BC), whose theories on human knowledge would provide a
newfound 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). Aspasia of Miletus is believed to be one of the first women to engage in private and public rhetoric activities as a Sophist.
The Sophists were a disparate group who travelled from city to city,
teaching in public places to attract students and offer them an
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.
Isocrates (436–338 BC), 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 city. In fact, Isocrates was an
outspoken champion of rhetoric as a mode of civic engagement.
He thus wrote his speeches as "models" for his students to imitate in
the same way that poets might imitate Homer or Hesiod, seeking to
inspire in them a desire to attain fame through civic leadership. 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 keys to his entire educational program. He had a marked influence on Cicero and Quintilian, and through them, on the entire educational system of the west.
Plato (427–347 BC) famously outlined the differences between true and false rhetoric in a number of dialogues; particularly the Gorgias and Phaedrus dialogues wherein Plato disputes the sophistic notion that the art of persuasion (the sophists' art, which he calls "rhetoric"), can exist independent of the art of dialectic.
Plato claims that since sophists appeal only to what seems probable,
they are not advancing their students and audiences, 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
suggests the possibility of a true art wherein rhetoric is based upon
the knowledge produced by dialectic, and relies on a dialectically
informed rhetoric to appeal to the main character, Phaedrus, to take up
philosophy. Thus Plato's rhetoric is actually dialectic (or philosophy)
"turned" toward those who are not yet philosophers and are thus unready
to pursue dialectic directly. Plato's animosity against rhetoric, and
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 sentenced to death after sophists' efforts.
Some scholars, however, see Plato not as an opponent of rhetoric
but rather as a nuanced rhetorical theorist who dramatized rhetorical
practice in his dialogues and imagined rhetoric as more than just oratory.
Aristotle
(384–322 BC) was a student of Plato who 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. The core features of dialectic include
the absence of determined subject matter, its elaboration on earlier
empirical practice, the explication of its aims, the type of utility and
the definition of the proper function.
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 systematically describes civic
rhetoric as a human art or skill (techne). It is more of an objective
theory than it is an interpretive theory with a rhetorical tradition.
Aristotle's art of rhetoric emphasizes persuasion as the purpose of
rhetoric. His definition of rhetoric as "the faculty of observing in any
given case the available means of persuasion", essentially a mode of
discovery, limits the art to the inventional process, and Aristotle
heavily emphasizes the logical aspect of this process. In his account,
rhetoric is the art of discovering all available means of persuasion. A
speaker supports the probability of a message by logical, ethical, and
emotional proofs. Some form of logos, ethos, and pathos is present in
every possible public presentation that exists. But the treatise in fact
also discusses not only elements of style and (briefly) delivery, but
also emotional appeals (pathos) and characterological appeals (ethos).
Aristotle identifies three steps or "offices" of
rhetoric—invention, arrangement, and style—and three different types of
rhetorical proof: ethos
(Aristotle's theory of character and how the character and credibility
of a speaker can influence an audience to consider him/her to be
believable—there being three qualities that contribute to a credible
ethos: perceived intelligence, virtuous character, and goodwill); pathos
(the use of emotional appeals to alter the audience's judgment through
metaphor, amplification, storytelling, or presenting the topic in a way
that evokes strong emotions in the audience.); and, logos (the use of reasoning, either inductive or deductive, to construct an argument).
Aristotle emphasized enthymematic reasoning
as central to the process of rhetorical invention, though later
rhetorical theorists placed much less emphasis on it. An "enthymeme"
would follow today's form of a syllogism; however it would exclude
either the major or minor premise. An enthymeme is persuasive because
the audience is providing the missing premise. Because the audience is
able to provide the missing premise, they are more likely to be
persuaded by the message.
Aristotle identified three different types or genres of civic rhetoric. Forensic
(also known as judicial) was concerned with determining the truth or
falseness of events that took place in the past and issues of guilt. An
example of forensic rhetoric would be in a courtroom. Deliberative
(also known as political) was concerned with determining whether or not
particular actions should or should not be taken in the future. Making
laws would be an example of deliberative rhetoric. Epideictic
(also known as ceremonial) was concerned with praise and blame, values,
right and wrong, demonstrating beauty and skill in the present.
Examples of epideictic rhetoric would include a eulogy or a wedding
toast.
India has a deep and enriching past in the art of rhetoric. In India's Struggle for Independence,
Chandra et al. offer a vivid description of the culture that sprang up
around the newspaper in village India of the early 1870s:
A newspaper would reach remote
villages and would then be read by a reader to tens of others. Gradually
library movements sprung up all over the country. A local 'library'
would be organized around a single newspaper. A table, a bench or two or
a charpoy would constitute the capital equipment. Every piece of
news or editorial comment would be read or heard and thoroughly
discussed. The newspaper not only became the political educator; reading
or discussing it became a form of political participation.
This reading and discussion was the focal point of origin of the
modern Indian rhetorical movement. Much before this, ancient greats such
as Kautilya, Birbal, and the likes indulged themselves in a great deal of discussion and persuasion.
Keith Lloyd in his 2007 article "Rethinking Rhetoric from an Indian perspective: Implications in the Nyaya Sutra" said that much of the recital of the Vedas can be likened to the recital of ancient Greek poetry. Lloyd proposed including the Nyāya Sūtras
in the field of rhetorical studies, exploring its methods within their
historical context, comparing its approach to the traditional logical
syllogism, and relating it to the contemporary perspectives of Stephen
Toulmin, Kenneth Burke, and Chaim Perelman.
Nyaya is a Sanskrit word which means just or right and
refers to "the science of right and wrong reasoning" (Radhakrishnan
& Moore, 1957, p. 356). Sutra is also a Sanskrit word which
means string or thread. Here sutra refers to a collection of aphorism in
the form of a manual. Each sutra is a short rule usually consisted of
one or two sentences. An example of a sutra is: "Reality is truth, and
what is true is so, irrespective of whether we know it is, or are aware
of that truth." The Nyāya Sūtras is an ancient Indian Sanskrit text composed by Aksapada Gautama. It is the foundational text of the Nyaya
school of Hindu philosophy. The date when the text was composed, and
the biography of its author is unknown. It is estimated that the text
was composed between 6th-century BC and 2nd-century AD. Zimmer (2013)
has said that the text may have been composed by more one author, over a
period of time. Radhakrishan and Moore (1957) placed its origin in the
"third century BC ... though some of the contents of the Nyaya Sutra are
certainly a post-Christian era" (p. 36). Vidyabhusana (1930) stated
that the ancient school of Nyaya extended over a period of one thousand
years, beginning with Gautama about 550 BC and ending with Vatsyayana
about 400 AD.
Nyaya provides significant insight into the Indian rhetoric.
Nyaya presents an argumentative approach that works a rhetor how to
decide about any argument. In addition, it proposes a new approach of
thinking of a cultural tradition which is different from the Western
rhetoric. It also broadens the view of rhetoric and the relationship
among human beings. Nyaya proposes an enlightenment of reality which is
associated with situations, time, and places. Toulmin emphasizes the
situational dimension of argumentative genre as the fundamental
component of any rhetorical logic. On the contrary, Nyaya views this
situational rhetoric in a new way which offers context of practical
arguments.
The Five Canons of Rhetoric serve as a guide to creating persuasive messages and arguments. These are invention (the process of developing arguments); arrangement (organizing the arguments for extreme effect); style (determining how to present the arguments); memory (the process of learning and memorizing the speech and persuasive messages), and delivery (the gestures, pronunciation, tone and pace used when presenting the persuasive arguments).
In the rhetoric field, there is an intellectual debate about
Aristotle's definition of rhetoric. Some believe that Aristotle defines
rhetoric in On Rhetoric as the art of persuasion, while others
think he defines it as the art of judgment. Rhetoric as the art of
judgment would mean the rhetor discerns the available means of
persuasion with a choice. Aristotle also says rhetoric is concerned with
judgment because the audience judges the rhetor's ethos.
One of the most famous 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 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.
For the Romans, oration became an important part of public life. Cicero
(106–43 BC) was chief among Roman rhetoricians and remains the best
known ancient orator and the only orator who both spoke in public and
produced treatises on the subject. Rhetorica ad Herennium,
formerly attributed to Cicero but now considered to be of unknown
authorship, is one of the most significant works on rhetoric and is
still widely used as a reference today. It is an extensive reference on
the use of rhetoric, and in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, it achieved wide publication as an advanced school text on rhetoric.
Cicero is considered one of the most significant rhetoricians of
all time, charting a middle path between the competing Attic and Asiatic styles to become considered second only to Demosthenes among history's orators. 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 dialogue 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 defense of Archias) and letters (to Atticus) by Italians like Petrarch
that, in part, ignited the cultural innovations that is known as the
Renaissance. He championed the learning of Greek (and Greek rhetoric),
contributed to Roman ethics, linguistics, philosophy, and politics, and
emphasized the importance of all forms of appeal (emotion, humor,
stylistic range, irony and digression in addition to pure reasoning) in
oratory. But perhaps his most significant contribution to subsequent
rhetoric, and education in general, was his argument that orators learn
not only about the specifics of their case (the hypothesis) but also about the general questions from which they derived (the theses).
Thus, in giving a speech in defense of a poet whose Roman citizenship
had been questioned, the orator should examine not only the specifics of
that poet's civic status, he should also examine the role and value of
poetry and of literature more generally in Roman culture and political
life. The orator, said Cicero, needed to be knowledgeable about all
areas of human life and culture, including law, politics, history,
literature, ethics, warfare, medicine, even arithmetic and geometry.
Cicero gave rise to the idea that the "ideal orator" be well-versed in
all branches of learning: an idea that was rendered as "liberal
humanism", and that lives on today in liberal arts or general education
requirements in colleges and universities around the world.
Quintilian (35–100 AD) began his career 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 (Institutes of Oratory, or alternatively, The Orator's Education),
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 the 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 describes not just the art of rhetoric, but the
formation of the perfect orator as a politically active, virtuous,
publicly minded citizen. His emphasis was on the ethical application of
rhetorical training, in part a reaction against the growing tendency in
Roman schools toward standardization of themes and techniques. 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 that gave rise to the charge (made by
Quintilian and others) that teachers were emphasizing style over
substance in rhetoric.
Medieval to Enlightenment
After
the breakup of the western 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 into the arts of letter writing (ars dictaminis) and sermon writing (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).
Although he is not commonly regarded as a rhetorician, St. Augustine
(354–430) was trained in rhetoric and was at one time a professor of
Latin rhetoric in Milan. 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. Augustine begins the book by asking why
"the power of eloquence, which is so efficacious in pleading either for
the erroneous cause or the right", should not be used for righteous
purposes (IV. 3).
One early concern of the medieval Christian church was its attitude to classical rhetoric itself. Jerome (d. 420) complained, "What has Horace to do with the Psalms, Virgil
with the Gospels, Cicero with the Apostles?" Augustine is also
remembered for arguing for the preservation of pagan works and fostering
a church tradition that led to conservation of numerous pre-Christian
rhetorical writings.
Rhetoric would not regain its classical heights until the Renaissance, but new writings did advance rhetorical thought. Boethius (480?–524), in his brief Overview of the Structure of Rhetoric, continues Aristotle's taxonomy by placing rhetoric in subordination to philosophical argument or dialectic. The introduction of Arab scholarship from European relations with the Muslim empire (in particular Al-Andalus)
renewed interest in Aristotle and Classical thought in general, leading
to what some historians call the 12th century Renaissance. A number of
medieval grammars and studies of poetry and rhetoric appeared.
Late medieval rhetorical writings include those of St. Thomas Aquinas (1225?–1274), Matthew of Vendome (Ars Versificatoria, 1175?), and Geoffrey of Vinsauf (Poetria Nova, 1200–1216). Pre-modern female rhetoricians, outside of Socrates' friend Aspasia, are rare; but medieval rhetoric produced by women either in religious orders, such as Julian of Norwich (d. 1415), or the very well-connected Christine de Pizan (1364?–1430?), did occur if not always recorded in writing.
In his 1943 Cambridge University doctoral dissertation in English, Canadian Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) surveys the verbal arts from approximately the time of Cicero down to the time of Thomas Nashe (1567–1600?).
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.
Walter J. Ong's article "Humanism" in the 1967 New Catholic Encyclopedia surveys 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.))
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 16th 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 were 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-16th century 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. Leonard Cox's The Art or Crafte of Rhetoryke
(c. 1524–1530; second edition published in 1532) is considered to be
the earliest text on rhetorics in English; it was, for the most part, a
translation of the work of Philipp Melanchthon. 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 led to rhetoric losing its central place. A French
scholar, Pierre de la Ramée, in Latin 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). Ramus was martyred
during the French Wars of Religion. His teachings, seen as inimical to
Catholicism, were short-lived in France but found a fertile ground in
the Netherlands, Germany and England.
One of Ramus' French 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 17th century,
their approach became the primary method of teaching rhetoric in
Protestant and especially Puritan circles. John Milton (1608–1674) wrote a textbook in logic or dialectic in Latin based on Ramus' work.
Ramism could not exert any influence on the established Catholic
schools and universities, which remained loyal to Scholasticism, or on
the new Catholic schools and universities founded by members of the
religious orders known as the Society of Jesus or the Oratorians, as can be seen in the Jesuit curriculum (in use right up to the 19th century, across the Christian world) 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)). If the influence of Cicero and Quintilian
permeates the Ratio Studiorum, it is through the lenses of devotion and the militancy of the Counter-Reformation. The Ratio
was indeed imbued with a sense of the divine, of the incarnate logos,
that is of rhetoric as an eloquent and humane means to reach further
devotion and further action in the Christian city, which was absent from
Ramist formalism. The Ratio is, in rhetoric, the answer to St Ignatius
Loyola's practice, in devotion, of "spiritual exercises". This complex
oratorical-prayer system is absent from Ramism.
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 17th 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.
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.
Eighteenth century
Arguably
one of the most influential schools of rhetoric during this time was
Scottish Belletristic rhetoric, exemplified by such professors of
rhetoric as Hugh Blair whose Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres saw international success in various editions and translations.
Another notable figure in 18th century rhetoric was Maria Edgeworth,
a novelist and children's author whose work often parodied the
male-centric rhetorical strategies of her time. In her 1795 "An Essay on
the Noble Science of Self-Justification," Edgeworth presents a satire
of Enlightenment rhetoric's science-centrism and the Belletristic
Movement. She was called "the great Maria" by Sir Walter Scott, with whom she corresponded, and by contemporary scholars is noted as "a transgressive and ironic reader" of the 18th century rhetorical norms.
At the
turn of the 20th 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. Jim A. Kuypers
and Andrew King suggest that the early interest in rhetorical studies
was a movement away from elocution as taught in departments of English
in the United States, and was an attempt to refocus rhetorical studies
away from delivery only to civic engagement. Collectively, they write,
twentieth century rhetorical studies offered an understanding of
rhetoric that demonstrated a "rich complexity" of how rhetorical
scholars understood the nature of rhetoric.
Theorists generally agree that by the 1930s 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
20th century (see Linguistic turn)
and through the 21st century, with the media focus on the wide
variations and analyses of political rhetoric and its consequences. The
term rhetoric has been applied to media forms other than verbal
language, e.g. visual rhetoric. Scholars have also recently highlighted the importance of "temporal rhetorics" and the "temporal turn" to rhetorical theory and practice.
Chaïm Perelman was a philosopher of law, who studied, taught, and lived most of his life in Brussels. He was among the most important argumentation theorists of the 20th century. His chief work is the Traité de l'argumentation – la nouvelle rhétorique (1958), with Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca, which was translated into English as The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation,
by John Wilkinson and Purcell Weaver (1969). Perelman and
Olbrechts-Tyteca move rhetoric from the periphery to the center of
argumentation theory. Among their most influential concepts are
"dissociation", "the universal audience", "quasi-logical argument", and
"presence".
Kenneth Burke was a rhetorical theorist, philosopher, and poet. Many of his works are central to modern rhetorical theory: A Rhetoric of Motives (1950), A Grammar of Motives (1945), Language as Symbolic Action (1966), and Counterstatement
(1931). Among his influential concepts are "identification",
"consubstantiality", and the "dramatistic pentad". He described rhetoric
as "the use of language as a symbolic means of inducing cooperation in
beings that by nature respond to symbols".
In relation to Aristotle's theory, Aristotle was more interested in
constructing rhetoric, while Burke was interested in "debunking" it.
Edwin Black was a rhetorical critic best known for his book Rhetorical Criticism: A Study in Method (1965) in which he criticized the dominant "neo-Aristotelian" tradition in American rhetorical criticism
as having little in common with Aristotle "besides some recurrent
topics of discussion and a vaguely derivative view of rhetorical
discourse". Furthermore, he contended, because rhetorical scholars had
been focusing primarily on Aristotelian logical forms they often
overlooked important, alternative types of discourse. He also published
several highly influential essays including: "Secrecy and Disclosure as
Rhetorical Forms", "The Second Persona", and "A Note on Theory and Practice in Rhetorical Criticism".
Marshall McLuhan
was a media theorist whose theories and whose choice of objects of
study are important to the study of rhetoric. McLuhan's famous dictum
"the medium is the message" highlights the significance of the medium
itself. No other scholar of the history and theory of rhetoric was as
widely publicized in the 20th century as McLuhan.
I. A. Richards was a literary critic and rhetorician. His The Philosophy of Rhetoric
is an important text in modern rhetorical theory. In this work, he
defined rhetoric as "a study of misunderstandings and its remedies", and introduced the influential concepts tenor and vehicle to describe the components of a metaphor—the main idea and the concept to which it is compared.
The Groupe µ:
This interdisciplinary team has contributed to the renovation of the
elocutio in the context of poetics and modern linguistics, significantly
with Rhétorique générale (1970; translated into English as A General Rhetoric, by Paul B. Burrell et Edgar M. Slotkin, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981) and Rhétorique de la poésie (1977).
Stephen Toulmin was a philosopher whose models of argumentation have had great influence on modern rhetorical theory. His Uses of Argument is an important text in modern rhetorical theory and argumentation theory.
Richard Vatz
is a rhetorician responsible for the salience-agenda/meaning-spin
conceptualization of rhetoric, later revised (2014) to an "agenda-spin"
model, a conceptualization which emphasizes persuader responsibility for
the agenda and spin he/she creates. His theory is notable for its
agent-focused perspective, articulated in The Only Authentic Book of Persuasion (Kendall Hunt), derived from the Summer, 1973 Philosophy and Rhetoric article, "The Myth of the Rhetorical Situation".
Richard M. Weaver
was a rhetorical and cultural critic well known for his contributions
to the new conservatism. He focused on the ethical implications of
rhetoric and his ideas can be seen in "Language is Sermonic" and "The
Ethics of Rhetoric". According to Weaver there are four types of
argument, and through the argument a person habitually uses the critic
can see the rhetorician's worldview. Those who prefer the argument from
genus or definition are idealists. Those who argue from similitude, such
as poets and religious people, see the connectedness between things.
The argument from consequence sees a cause and effect relationship.
Finally the argument from circumstance considers the particulars of a
situation and is an argument preferred by liberals.
Gloria Anzaldúa was a "Mestiza"
and "Borderland" rhetorician, as well as a Mexican-American poet and
pioneer in the field of Chicana lesbian feminism. Mestiza and Borderland
rhetoric focused on ones' formation of identity, disregarding societal
and discourse labels.
With "Mestiza" rhetoric, one viewed the world as discovering one's
"self" in others and others' "self" in you. Through this process, one
accepted living in a world of contradictions and ambiguity. Anzaldua learned to balance cultures, being Mexican in the eyes of the Anglo-majority and Indian in a Mexican culture. Her other notable works include: Sinister Wisdom, Borderlands/La Fronters: The New Mestiza, and La Prieta.
Gertrude Buck
was one of the prominent female rhetorical theorists who was also a
composition educator. Her scholastic contributions such as "The present
status of Rhetorical Theory"
to inspire the egalitarian status of hearers-speakers to achieve the
goal of communication. Another piece that she edited with Newton Scott
is "Brief English Grammar" which troubled the common prescriptive
grammar. This book received a lot of praise and critiques for
descriptive nature of social responsibility from non-mainstream beliefs.
Krista Ratcliffe is a prominent feminist and critical race rhetorical theorist. In her book, Rhetorical Listening: Identification, Gender, Whiteness,
Ratcliffe puts forward a theory and model of rhetorical listening as "a
trope for interpretive invention and more particularly as a code of
cross-cultural conduct." This book has been described as "taking the field of feminist rhetoric to a new place" in its movement away from argumentative rhetoric and towards an undivided logos
wherein speaking and listening are reintegrated. Reviewers have also
acknowledged the theoretical contributions Ratcliffe makes towards a
model for appreciating and acknowledging difference in instances of
cross-cultural communication.
Sonja K. Foss
is a rhetorical scholar and educator in the discipline of
communication. Her research and teaching interests are in contemporary
rhetorical theory and criticism, feminist perspectives on communication,
the incorporation of marginalized voices into rhetorical theory and
practice, and visual rhetoric.
Methods of analysis
Criticism seen as a method
Rhetoric
can be analyzed by a variety of methods and theories. One such method
is criticism. When those using criticism analyze instances of rhetoric
what they do is called rhetorical criticism (see section below).
According to rhetorical critic Jim A. Kuypers,
"The use of rhetoric is an art; as such, it does not lend itself well
to scientific methods of analysis. Criticism is an art as well; as such,
it is particularly well suited for examining rhetorical creations."
He asserts that criticism is a method of generating knowledge just as
the scientific method is a method for generating knowledge:
The way the Sciences and the
Humanities study the phenomena that surround us differ greatly in the
amount of researcher personality allowed to influence the results of the
study. For example, in the Sciences researchers purposefully adhere to a
strict method (the scientific method). All scientific researchers are
to use this same basic method, and successful experiments must be 100
percent replicable by others. The application of the scientific method
may take numerous forms, but the overall method remains the same—and the
personality of the researcher is excised from the actual study. In
sharp contrast, criticism (one of many Humanistic methods of generating
knowledge) actively involves the personality of the researcher. The very
choices of what to study, and how and why to study a rhetorical
artifact are heavily influenced by the personal qualities of the
researcher. In criticism this is especially important since the
personality of the critic considered an integral component of the study.
Further personalizing criticism, we find that rhetorical critics use a
variety of means when examining a particular rhetorical artifact, with
some critics even developing their own unique perspective to better
examine a rhetorical artifact.
— Jim A. Kuypers
Edwin Black (rhetorician)
wrote on this point that, "Methods, then, admit of varying degrees of
personality. And criticism, on the whole, is near the indeterminate,
contingent, personal end of the methodological scale. In consequence of
this placement, it is neither possible nor desirable for criticism to be
fixed into a system, for critical techniques to be objectified, for
critics to be interchangeable for purposes of [scientific] replication,
or for rhetorical criticism to serve as the handmaiden of
quasi-scientific theory. [The] idea is that critical method is too
personally expressive to be systematized.
Jim A. Kuypers sums this idea of criticism as art in the
following manner: "In short, criticism is an art, not a science. It is
not a scientific method; it uses subjective methods of argument; it
exists on its own, not in conjunction with other methods of generating
knowledge (i.e., social scientific or scientific). [I]nsight and
imagination top statistical applications when studying rhetorical
action."
Observation on analytic method
There
does not exist an analytic method that is widely recognized as "the"
rhetorical method, partly because many in rhetorical study see rhetoric
as merely produced by reality (see dissent from that view below). The
object of rhetorical analysis is typically discourse, and therefore the
principles of "rhetorical analysis" would be difficult to distinguish
from those of "discourse analysis".
However, rhetorical analytic methods can also be applied to almost
anything, including objects—a car, a castle, a computer, a comportment.
Generally speaking, rhetorical analysis makes use of rhetorical
concepts (ethos, logos, kairos, mediation, etc.) to describe the social
or epistemological functions of the object of study. When the object of
study happens to be some type of discourse (a speech, a poem, a joke, a
newspaper article), the aim of rhetorical analysis is not simply to
describe the claims and arguments advanced within the discourse, but
(more important) to identify the specific semiotic strategies employed
by the speaker to accomplish specific persuasive goals. Therefore, after
a rhetorical analyst discovers a use of language that is particularly
important in achieving persuasion, she typically moves onto the question
of "How does it work?" That is, what effects does this particular use
of rhetoric have on an audience, and how does that effect provide more
clues as to the speaker's (or writer's) objectives?
There are some scholars who do partial rhetorical analysis and
defer judgments about rhetorical success. In other words, some analysts
attempt to avoid the question of "Was this use of rhetoric successful
[in accomplishing the aims of the speaker]?" To others, however, that
is the preeminent point: is the rhetoric strategically effective and
what did the rhetoric accomplish? This question allows a shift in focus
from the speaker's objectives to the effects and functions of the
rhetoric itself.
Strategies
Rhetorical strategies
are the efforts made by authors to persuade or inform their readers.
Rhetorical strategies are employed by writers and refer to the different
ways they can persuade the reader. According to Gray, there are various
argument strategies used in writing. He describes four of these as
argument from analogy, argument from absurdity, thought experiments, and
inference to the best explanation.
Criticism
Modern rhetorical criticism
explores the relationship between text and context; that is, how an
instance of rhetoric relates to circumstances. Since the aim of rhetoric
is to be persuasive, the level to which the rhetoric in question
persuades its audience is what must be analyzed, and later criticized.
In determining the extent to which a text is persuasive, one may explore
the text's relationship with its audience, purpose, ethics, argument,
evidence, arrangement, delivery, and style. In his Rhetorical Criticism: A Study in Method, scholar Edwin Black
states, "It is the task of criticism not to measure ... discourses
dogmatically against some parochial standard of rationality but,
allowing for the immeasurable wide range of human experience, to see
them as they really are." While the language "as they really are" is debatable, rhetorical critics explain texts and speeches by investigating their rhetorical situation,
typically placing them in a framework of speaker/audience exchange. The
antithetical view places the rhetor at the center of creating that
which is considered the extant situation; i.e., the agenda and spin.
Additional theoretical approaches
Following the neo-Aristotelian
approaches to criticism, scholars began to derive methods from other
disciplines, such as history, philosophy, and the social sciences.
The importance of critics' personal judgment decreased in explicit
coverage while the analytical dimension of criticism began to gain
momentum. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, methodological pluralism
replaced the singular neo-Aristotelian method. Methodological rhetorical
criticism is typically done by deduction, where a broad method is used
to examine a specific case of rhetoric. These types include:
Ideological criticism –
critics engage rhetoric as it suggests the beliefs, values,
assumptions, and interpretations held by the rhetor or the larger
culture. Ideological criticism also treats ideology as an artifact of
discourse, one that is embedded in key terms (called "ideographs") as well as material resources and discursive embodiment.
Cluster criticism – a method developed by Kenneth Burke
that seeks to help the critic understand the rhetor's worldview. This
means identifying terms that are 'clustered' around key symbols in the
rhetorical artifact and the patterns in which they appear.
Frame analysis –
when used as rhetorical criticism, this theoretical perspective allows
critics to look for how rhetors construct an interpretive lens in their
discourse. In short, how they make certain facts more noticeable than
others. It is particularly useful for analyzing products of the news
media.
Genre criticism –
a method that assumes certain situations call for similar needs and
expectations within the audience, therefore calling for certain types of
rhetoric. It studies rhetoric in different times and locations, looking
at similarities in the rhetorical situation and the rhetoric that
responds to them. Examples include eulogies, inaugural addresses, and
declarations of war.
Narrative criticism –
narratives help organize experiences in order to endow meaning to
historical events and transformations. Narrative criticism focuses on
the story itself and how the construction of the narrative directs the
interpretation of the situation.
By the mid-1980s, however, the study of rhetorical criticism began to
move away from precise methodology towards conceptual issues.
Conceptually driven criticism operates more through abduction, according to scholar James Jasinski,
who argues that this emerging type of criticism can be thought of as a
back-and-forth between the text and the concepts, which are being
explored at the same time. The concepts remain "works in progress", and
understanding those terms develops through the analysis of a text.
Criticism is considered rhetorical when it focuses on the way
some types of discourse react to situational exigencies—problems or
demands—and constraints. This means that modern rhetorical criticism is
based in how the rhetorical case or object persuades, defines, or
constructs the audience. In modern terms, what can be considered
rhetoric includes, but it is not limited to, speeches, scientific
discourse, pamphlets, literary work, works of art, and pictures.
Contemporary rhetorical criticism has maintained aspects of early
neo-Aristotelian thinking through close reading, which attempts to
explore the organization and stylistic structure of a rhetorical object.
Using close textual analysis means rhetorical critics use the tools of
classical rhetoric and literary analysis to evaluate the style and
strategy used to communicate the argument.
Purpose of criticism
Rhetorical
criticism serves several purposes or functions. First, rhetorical
criticism hopes to help form or improve public taste. It helps educate
audiences and develops them into better judges of rhetorical situations
by reinforcing ideas of value, morality, and suitability. Rhetorical
criticism can thus contribute to the audience's understanding of
themselves and society.
According to Jim A. Kuypers,
a dual purpose for performing criticism should be primarily to enhance
our appreciation and understanding. "[W]e wish to enhance both our own
and others' understanding of the rhetorical act; we wish to share our
insights with others, and to enhance their appreciation of the
rhetorical act. These are not hollow goals, but quality of life issues.
By improving understanding and appreciation, the critic can offer new
and potentially exciting ways for others to see the world. Through
understanding we also produce knowledge about human communication; in
theory this should help us to better govern our interactions with
others." Criticism is a humanizing activity in that it explores and
highlights qualities that make us human."
Animal rhetoric
Rhetoric is practiced by social animals in a variety of ways. For example, birds use song, various animals warn members of their species of danger, chimpanzees
have the capacity to deceive through communicative keyboard systems,
and deer stags compete for the attention of mates. While these might be
understood as rhetorical actions (attempts at persuading through meaningful actions and utterances), they can also be seen as rhetorical fundamentals shared by humans and animals. The study of animal rhetoric has been described as biorhetorics.
The self-awareness
required to practice rhetoric might be difficult to notice and
acknowledge in some animals. However, some animals are capable of
acknowledging themselves in a mirror, and therefore, they might be
understood to be self-aware and engaged in rhetoric when practicing some
form of language, and therefore, rhetoric.
Anthropocentrism plays a significant role in human-animal
relationships, reflecting and perpetuating binaries in which humans are
assumed to be beings that "have" extraordinary qualities while animals
are regarded as beings that "lack" those qualities. This dualism
is manifested through other forms as well, such as reason and sense,
mind and body, ideal and phenomenon in which the first category of each
pair (reason, mind, and ideal) represents and belongs to only humans. By becoming aware of and overcoming these dualistic
conceptions including the one between humans and animals, human
knowledge of themselves and the world is expected to become more
complete and holistic.
The relationship between humans and animals (as well as the rest of the
natural world) is often defined by the human rhetorical act of naming
and categorizing animals through scientific and folk
labeling. The act of naming partially defines the rhetorical
relationships between humans and animals, though both may be understood
to engage in rhetoric beyond human naming and categorizing.
Contrary to the binary assumptions deriving from anthropocentrism, which regarded animals as creatures without extraordinarily qualities, it does exist some specific animals with a sort of phrónēsis
which confers them capabilities to "learn and receive instruction" with
rudimentary understanding of some significant signs. Those animals do
practice deliberative, judicial, and epideictic rhetoric deploying ethos, logos, and pathos with gesture and preen, sing and growl.
Since animals offer models of rhetorical behavior and interaction that
are physical, even instinctual, but perhaps no less artful, getting rid
of our accustomed focus on verbal language and consciousness concepts
will help people interested in rhetoric and communication matters
promote human-animals' rhetoric.
Comparative rhetoric
Comparative
rhetoric is a practice and methodology that developed in the late
twentieth century to broaden the study of rhetoric beyond the dominant
rhetorical tradition that has been constructed and shaped in western
Europe and the U.S.
As a research practice, comparative rhetoric studies past and present
cultures across the globe to reveal diversity in the uses of rhetoric
and to uncover rhetorical perspectives, practices, and traditions that
have been historically underrepresented or dismissed.
As a methodology, comparative rhetoric constructs a culture's
rhetorical perspectives, practices, and traditions on their own terms,
in their own contexts, as opposed to using European or American
theories, terminology, or framing.
Comparative rhetoric is comparative in that it illuminates how
rhetorical traditions relate to one another, while seeking to avoid
binary depictions or value judgments.
These relationalities can reveal issues of power within and between
cultures as well as new or under-recognized ways of thinking, doing, and
being that challenge or enrich the dominant Euro-American tradition and
provide a fuller account of rhetorical studies.
Robert T. Oliver is credited as the first scholar who recognized the need to study non-Western rhetorics in his 1971 publication Communication and Culture in Ancient India and China. George A. Kennedy has also been credited for publishing the first cross-cultural overview of rhetoric in his 1998 publication Comparative Rhetoric: An Historical and Cross-cultural Introduction.
Though Oliver's and Kennedy's works contributed to the birth of
comparative rhetoric, given the newness of the field, they both used
Euro-American terms and theories to interpret non-Euro-American
cultures' practices.
LuMing Mao, Xing Lu, Mary Garrett, Arabella Lyon, Bo Wang, Hui
Wu, and Keith Lloyd have published extensively on comparative rhetoric,
helping to shape and define the field. In 2013, LuMing Mao edited a special issue on comparative rhetoric in Rhetoric Society Quarterly , focusing on comparative methodologies in the age of globalization. In 2015, LuMing Mao and Bo Wang coedited a symposium Manifesting a Future for Comparative Rhetoric in Rhetoric Review ,
featuring position essays by a group of leading scholars in the field.
In their introduction, Mao and Wang emphasize the fluid and
cross-cultural nature of rhetoric, "Rhetorical knowledge, like any other
knowledge, is heterogeneous, multidimentional, and always in the
process of being created."
The symposium includes "A Manifesto: The What and How of Comparative
Rhetoric," demonstrating the first collective effort to identify and
articulate comparative rhetoric's definition, goals, and methodologies. The tenets of this manifesto are engaged in many later works that study or utilize comparative rhetoric.
Automatic detection of rhetorical figures
As
natural language processing has developed since the late nineties, so
has interest in automatically detecting rhetorical figures. The major
focus has been to detect specific figures, such as chiasmus, epanaphora, and epiphora
using classifiers trained with labeled data. A major shortcoming to
achieving high accuracy with these systems is the shortage of labeled
data for these tasks, but with recent advances in language modeling,
such as few shot learning, it may be possible to detect more rhetorical
figures with less data.
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