Psychological manipulation is a type of social influence that aims to change the behavior or perception of others through indirect, deceptive, or underhanded tactics.
By advancing the interests of the manipulator, often at another's
expense, such methods could be considered exploitative and devious.
Social influence is not necessarily negative. For example, people such as friends, family and doctors, can try to persuade
to change clearly unhelpful habits and behaviors. Social influence is
generally perceived to be harmless when it respects the right of the
influenced to accept or reject it, and is not unduly coercive. Depending
on the context and motivations, social influence may constitute underhanded manipulation.
Theories
According to psychology author George K. Simon in 1996, successful psychological manipulation primarily involves the manipulator:
Concealing aggressive intentions and behaviors and being affable.
Knowing the psychological vulnerabilities of the victim to determine which tactics are likely to be the most effective.
Having a sufficient level of ruthlessness to have no qualms about causing harm to the victim if necessary.
According to Braiker
Harriet B. Braiker (2004) identified the following ways that manipulators control their victims:
Intermittent or partial reinforcement: Partial or intermittent negative reinforcement can create an effective climate of fear and doubt. Partial or intermittent positive reinforcement can encourage the victim to persist.
Traumatic one-trial learning: using verbal abuse, explosive anger, or other intimidating behavior to establish dominance or superiority; even one incident of such behavior can condition or train victims to avoid upsetting, confronting or contradicting the manipulator.
According to Simon
George K. Simon (1996) identified the following manipulative techniques:
Lying (by commission) : It is hard to tell if somebody is lying
at the time they do it, although often the truth may be apparent later
when it is too late. One way to minimize the chances of being lied to is
to understand that some personality types (particularly psychopaths) are experts at lying and cheating, doing it frequently, and often in subtle ways.
Lying by omission: This is a subtle form of lying by withholding a significant amount of the truth. This technique is also used in propaganda.
Denial: Manipulator refuses to admit that they have done something wrong.
Rationalization: An excuse made by the manipulator for inappropriate behavior. Rationalization is closely related to spin.
Minimization:
This is a type of denial coupled with rationalization. The manipulator
asserts that their behavior is not as harmful or irresponsible as
someone else was suggesting.
Selective inattention or selective attention: Manipulator refuses to pay attention to anything that may distract from their agenda.
Diversion:
Manipulator not giving a straight answer to a straight question and
instead being diversionary, steering the conversation onto another
topic.
Evasion: Similar to diversion but giving irrelevant, rambling, or vague responses.
Covert intimidation: Manipulator putting the victim onto the defensive by using veiled (subtle, indirect or implied) threats.
Guilt trip: A special kind of intimidation tactic. A manipulator suggests to the conscientious
victim that they do not care enough, are too selfish or have it too
easy. This can result in the victim feeling bad, keeping them in a self-doubting, anxious and submissive position.
Shaming: Manipulator uses sarcasm
and put-downs to increase fear and self-doubt in the victim.
Manipulators use this tactic to make others feel unworthy and therefore
defer to them. Manipulators can make one feel ashamed for even daring
to challenge them. It is an effective way to foster a sense of
inadequacy in the victim.
Vilifying the victim:
This tactic is a powerful means of putting the victim on the defensive
while simultaneously masking the aggressive intent of the manipulator,
while the manipulator falsely accuses the victim as being an abuser in
response when the victim stands up for or defends themselves or their
position.
Playing the victim role: Manipulator portrays themself as a victim of circumstance or of someone else's behavior in order to gain pity, sympathy or evoke compassion
and thereby get something from another. Caring and conscientious people
often cannot stand to see anyone suffering and the manipulator often
finds it easy to play on sympathy to get cooperation.
Playing the servant role: Cloaking a self-serving agenda in the guise of a service to a more noble cause.
Seduction: Manipulator uses charm, praise, flattery or overtly supporting others in order to get them to lower their defenses and give their trust and loyalty
to the manipulator. They will also offer help with the intent to gain
trust and access to an unsuspecting victim they have charmed.
Projecting the blame (blaming others): Manipulator scapegoats
in often subtle, hard-to-detect ways. Often, the manipulator will
project their own thinking onto the victim, making the victim look like
they have done something wrong. Manipulators will also claim that the
victim is the one who is at fault for believing lies that they were
conned into believing, as if the victim forced the manipulator to be
deceitful. All blame, except for the part that is used by the
manipulator to accept false guilt, is done in order to make the victim
feel guilty about making healthy choices, correct thinking and good
behaviors. It is frequently used as a means of psychological and
emotional manipulation and control. Manipulators lie about lying, only
to re-manipulate the original, less believable story into a "more
acceptable" truth that the victim will believe. Projecting lies as being
the truth is another common method of control and manipulation.
Manipulators may falsely accuse the victim of "deserving to be treated
that way". They often claim that the victim is crazy or abusive,
especially when there is evidence against the manipulator.
Feigning innocence:
Manipulator tries to suggest that any harm done was unintentional or
that they did not do something that they were accused of. Manipulator
may put on a look of surprise or indignation. This tactic makes the
victim question their own judgment and possibly their own sanity.
Feigning confusion:
Manipulator tries to play dumb by pretending they do not know what the
victim is talking about or is confused about an important issue brought
to their attention. The manipulator intentionally confuses the victim in
order for the victim to doubt their own accuracy of perception, often
pointing out key elements that the manipulator intentionally included in
case there is room for doubt. Sometimes manipulators will have used
cohorts in advance to help back up their story.
Brandishing anger: Manipulator uses anger to brandish sufficient emotional intensity and rage
to shock the victim into submission. The manipulator is not actually
angry, they just put on an act. They just want what they want and get
"angry" when denied. Controlled anger is often used as a manipulation
tactic to avoid confrontation, avoid telling the truth or to further
hide intent. There are often threats used by the manipulator of going to
the police, or falsely reporting abuses that the manipulator
intentionally contrived to scare or intimidate the victim into
submission. Blackmail and other threats of exposure are other forms of
controlled anger and manipulation, especially when the victim refuses
initial requests or suggestions by the manipulator. Anger is also used
as a defense so the manipulator can avoid telling truths at inconvenient
times or circumstances. Anger is often used as a tool or defense to
ward off inquiries or suspicion. The victim becomes more focused on the
anger instead of the manipulation tactic.
Bandwagon effect: Manipulator comforts the victim into submission by
claiming (whether true or false) that many people already have done
something, and the victim should as well. Such manipulation can be seen
in peer pressure
situations, often occurring in scenarios where the manipulator attempts
to influence the victim into trying drugs or other substances.
Vulnerabilities exploited
According to Braiker's self-help book, manipulators exploit the following vulnerabilities (buttons) that may exist in victims:
the desire to please
addiction to earning the approval and acceptance of others
emotophobia (fear of negative emotion; i.e. a fear of expressing anger, frustration or disapproval)
According to Simon, manipulators exploit the following vulnerabilities that may exist in victims:
Naïveté – victim finds it too hard to accept the idea that some people are cunning, devious and ruthless or is "in denial" if they are being victimized.
Over-conscientiousness
– victim is too willing to give manipulator the benefit of the doubt
and see their side of things in which they blame the victim.
Over-intellectualization – victim tries too hard to understand and believes the manipulator has some understandable reason to be hurtful.
Emotional dependency – victim has a submissive
or dependent personality. The more emotionally dependent the victim is,
the more vulnerable they are to being exploited and manipulated.
Manipulators generally take the time to scope out the characteristics and vulnerabilities of their victims.
Kantor advises in his 2006 book The Psychopathology of Everyday Life: How Antisocial Personality Disorder Affects All of Us that vulnerability to psychopathic manipulators involves being too:
Dependent – dependent people need to be loved and are therefore gullible and liable to say yes to something to which they should say no.
Immature – has impaired judgment and so tends to believe exaggerated advertising claims.
Naïve
– cannot believe there are dishonest people in the world, or takes it
for granted that if there are any, they will not be allowed to prey on
others.
Trusting
– people who are honest often assume that everyone else is honest. They
are more likely to commit themselves to people they hardly know without
checking credentials, etc., and less likely to question so-called
experts.
Carelessness – not giving sufficient amount of thought or attention to harm or errors.
Lonely – lonely people may accept any offer of human contact. A psychopathic stranger may offer human companionship for a price.
Narcissistic – narcissists are prone to falling for unmerited flattery.
Greedy – the greedy and dishonest may fall prey to a psychopath who can easily entice them to act in an immoral way.
Masochistic
– lack self-respect and so unconsciously let psychopaths take advantage
of them. They think they deserve it out of a sense of guilt.
The elderly
– the elderly can become fatigued and less capable of multi-tasking.
When hearing a sales pitch they are less likely to consider that it
could be a con. They are prone to giving money to someone with a
hard-luck story. See elder abuse.
Motivations
Manipulators can have various possible motivations, including but not limited to:
the need to advance their own purposes and personal gain at (virtually any) cost to others
a strong need to attain feelings of power and superiority in relationships with others - compare megalomania
a desire to gain a feeling of power over others in order to raise their perception of self-esteem
furtherance of cult dynamics in recruiting or retaining followers
boredom, or growing tired of one's surroundings; seeing manipulation as a game more than hurting others
covert agendas, criminal or otherwise, including financial
manipulation (often seen when intentionally targetting the elderly or
unsuspecting, unprotected wealthy for the sole purpose of obtaining
victims' financial assets)
not identifying with underlying emotions (including experiencing commitment phobia),
and subsequent rationalization (offenders do not manipulate
consciously, but rather try to convince themselves of the invalidity of
their own emotions)
lack of self-control over impulsive and anti-social behaviour - leading to pre-emptive or reactionary manipulation to maintain image
One approach to management in general identifies a very fine, almost non-existent dividing line between management and manipulation.
A workplace psychopath may rapidly shift between emotions to manipulate people or to cause high anxiety.
The authors of the book Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work describe a five-phase model of how a typical workplace psychopath climbs to and maintains power. In phase three (manipulation) the psychopath will create a scenario of "psychopathic fiction" where positive information about themselves and negative disinformation about others will be created, where one's role as a part of a network of pawns or patrons will be utilised and one will be groomed into accepting the psychopath's agenda.
Antisocial, borderline and narcissistic personality disorders
According to Kernberg, antisocial, borderline, and narcissistic personality disorders are all organized at a borderline level of personality organization,
and the three share some common characterological deficits and
overlapping personality traits, with deceitfulness and exceptional
manipulative abilities being the most common traits among antisocial and
narcissism. Borderline is emphasized by unintentional and dysfunctional
manipulation, but stigma towards borderlines being deceitful still
wrongfully persists. Antisocials, borderlines, and narcissists are often pathological liars. Other shared traits may include pathological narcissism, consistent irresponsibility, Machiavellianism, lack of empathy, cruelty, meanness, impulsivity, proneness to self-harm and addictions,
interpersonal exploitation, hostility, anger and rage, vanity,
emotional instability, rejection sensitivity, perfectionism, and the use
of primitive defence mechanisms that are pathological and narcissistic. Common narcissistic defences include splitting, denial, projection, projective identification, primitive idealization and devaluation, distortion (including exaggeration, minimization and lies), and omnipotence.
Psychologist Marsha M. Linehan
has stated that people with borderline personality disorder often
exhibit behaviors which are not truly manipulative, but are erroneously
interpreted as such.
According to her, these behaviors often appear as unthinking
manifestations of intense pain, and are often not deliberate as to be
considered truly manipulative. In the DSM-V, manipulation was removed as a defining characteristic of borderline personality disorder.
Manipulative behavior is intrinsic to narcissists, who use manipulation to obtain power and narcissistic supply. Those with antisocial personalities will manipulate for material items, power, revenge, and a wide variety of other reasons.
People with histrionic personality disorder are usually
high-functioning, both socially and professionally. They usually have
good social skills, despite tending to use them to manipulate others into making them the center of attention.
Machiavellianism
Machiavellianism is a term that some social and personality psychologists use to describe a person's tendency to be unemotional, uninfluenced by conventional morality and more prone to deceive
and manipulate others. In the 1960s, Richard Christie and Florence L.
Geis developed a test for measuring a person's level of Machiavellianism
(sometimes referred to as the Machiavelli test).
A smear campaign, also referred to as a smear tactic or simply a smear, is an effort to damage or call into question someone's reputation, by propounding negative propaganda. It makes use of discrediting tactics.
It can be applied to individuals or groups. Common targets are public officials, politicians, political candidates, activists and ex-spouses. The term also applies in other contexts such as the workplace.
The term smear campaign became popular around 1936.
Definition
A smear campaign is an intentional, premeditated effort to undermine an individual's or group's reputation, credibility, and character. Like negative campaigning,
most often smear campaigns target government officials, politicians,
political candidates, and other public figures. However, private persons
or groups may also become targets of smear campaigns perpetrated in
companies, institutions, the legal system, and other formal groups.
Discrediting tactics are used to discourage people from believing in the
figure or supporting their cause, such as the use of damaging quotations.
Smear tactics differ from normal discourse or debate in that they
do not bear upon the issues or arguments in question. A smear is a
simple attempt to malign a group or an individual with the aim of
undermining their credibility.
Smears often consist of ad hominem attacks in the form of unverifiable rumors and distortions, half-truths, or even outright lies; smear campaigns are often propagated by gossip magazines.
Even when the facts behind a smear campaign are demonstrated to lack
proper foundation, the tactic is often effective because the target's
reputation is tarnished before the truth is known.
Smear campaigns can also be used as a campaign tactic associated with tabloid journalism,
which is a type of journalism that presents little well-researched news
and instead uses eye-catching headlines, scandal-mongering and
sensationalism. For example, during Gary Hart's 1988 presidential campaign (see below), the New York Post reported on its front page big, black block letters: "GARY: I'M NO WOMANIZER."
Smears are also effective in diverting attention away from the
matter in question and onto a specific individual or group. The target
of the smear typically must focus on correcting the false information rather than on the original issue.
Deflection has been described as a wrap-up smear: "You make up something. Then you have the press write about it. And then you say, everybody is writing about this charge".
In politics
Political debate often abuses publicconfidence
by one candidate attempting to sway voters, not by logical argument on
given issues, but by personal diatribe that does not directly bear on
the matter at hand.
Accusations of adultery in America date back to the 19th century. One famous example of this was the 1884 presidential campaign, in which Grover Cleveland's
opponents accused him of having fathered an illegitimate child. A
political catchphrase by his opponents was "Ma, ma, where's my pa?"
After Cleveland was elected, his supporters mockingly added, "Gone to
the White House, ha, ha, ha." Cleveland's defeat of his chief opponent, James G. Blaine,
may have been helped by another discrediting tactic used against him
which seriously backfired, namely the assertion that Cleveland's party was that of "Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion" (the latter two referring to Roman Catholicism and the American Civil War).
Cleveland's campaign also used the slogan, "Blaine, Blaine, James G.
Blaine, The Continental Liar from the State of Maine" in reference to
Blaine's discredited railroad deals.
Discrediting tactics are not just used against each other by opponents for office in democratic countries, but are also used in wartime between countries. In the middle of the 20th century, Soviet and Britishpropaganda made popular the idea that Adolf Hitlerhad only one testicle (and was thereby less of a man).
American politics draws a line between "mud slinging" and defamation. The key issue is that mud slinging is not a form of perjury or libel. Politics also can include barratry
where one opponent files frivolous litigation against the other,
specifically to injure the opponent's reputation even though the case is
groundless and may later be dismissed. By the time these facts can come
to light, the voters have cast their ballots.
In court cases
In the U.S. judicial system, discrediting tactics (called witness impeachment) are the approved method for attacking the credibility of any witness in court, including a plaintiff or defendant. In cases with significant mass media attention or high-stakes outcomes, those tactics often take place in public as well.
Logically, an argument is held in discredit if the underlying
premise is found, "So severely in error that there is cause to remove
the argument from the proceedings because of its prejudicial context and
application...". Mistrial
proceedings in civil and criminal courts do not always require that an
argument brought by defense or prosecution be discredited, however
appellate courts must consider the context and may discredit testimony
as perjurious or prejudicial, even if the statement is technically true.
Moral, psychological and legal considerations
Smear
campaigns are considered by many to be a low, disingenuous form of
discourse; they have been identified as a common weapon of psychopaths, borderlines, and narcissists.
In many countries, the law recognizes the value of reputation and credibility. Both libel
(a false and damaging publication) and slander (a false and damaging
oral statement) are often punishable by law and may result in
imprisonment or compensation or fees for damages done.
Targets
Smear tactics are commonly used to undermine effective arguments or critiques.
John C. Frémont – 1856 US presidential election candidate
During the 1856 presidential election, John C. Frémont was the target of a smear campaign alleging that he was a Catholic. The campaign was designed to undermine support for Fremont from those who were suspicious of Catholics.
"The Great Republican Reform Party Calling on their Candidate", an 1856 print which is a political cartoon about John C. Frémont,
the first Republican party candidate for president of the United
States. There was a political campaign smear rumor current in 1856 that
Fremont was a Catholic (the purpose of which was to prevent Fremont from
gaining support from those who were suspicious of Catholics).
General Motors against Ralph Nader
Ralph Nader
was the victim of a smear campaign during the 1960s, when he was
campaigning for car safety. In order to smear Nader and deflect public
attention from his campaign, General Motors
engaged private investigators to search for damaging or embarrassing
incidents from his past. In early March 1966, several media outlets,
including The New Republic and The New York Times, reported that GM had tried to discredit Nader, hiring private detectives to tap his phones and investigate his past and hiring prostitutes to trap him in compromising situations. Nader sued the company for invasion of privacy and settled the case for $284,000. Nader's lawsuit against GM was ultimately decided by the New York Court of Appeals, whose opinion in the case expanded tort law to cover "overzealous surveillance." Nader used the proceeds from the lawsuit to start the pro-consumer Center for Study of Responsive Law.
Gary Hart was the target of a smear campaign during the 1988 US presidential campaign. The New York Post once reported on its front page big, black block letters: "GARY: I'M NO WOMANIZER."
China against Apple Inc.
In 2011, China launched a smear campaign against Apple,
including TV and radio advertisements and articles in state-run papers.
The campaign failed to turn the Chinese public against the company and
its products.
Sathya Sai Baba
Spiritual leader Sathya Sai Baba was accused of fraud, sexual abuse and other misconduct.
Baba described the allegations as a "smear campaign". He never faced
any investigation and the critics were criticized for lacking any proof
against him.
The allegations against Julian Assange have been labelled by Australian journalist John Pilger as a smear campaign.
Brad Pitt's child custody dispute
In 2016, Brad Pitt
was the target of a smear campaign related to his child custody
dispute. Pitt was alleged to have acted inappropriately during an
argument with his 15-year-old son.
Chris Bryant
Chris Bryant, a British parliamentarian, accused Russia in 2012 of orchestrating a smear campaign against him because of his criticism of Vladimir Putin. In 2017 he alleged that other British officials are vulnerable to Russian smear campaigns.
Other examples
In January 2007, it was revealed that an anonymous website that attacked critics of Overstock.com, including media figures and private citizens on message boards, was operated by an official of Overstock.com.
Countries, particularly those outside the Western hemisphere,
have accused Western powers of smear campaigns to bring down their
governments. Gambia
accused the United States and Britain of backing "so-called Gambians to
set up organisations and media facilities to spread nothing but lies
against The Gambia by making false, outrageous and unfounded statements
about the state of human rights."
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 – see Martianus Capella), 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.
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. This concern is still maintained to nowadays.
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.
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 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.
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.
Indian rhetoric
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
rise of advertising and of mass media such as photography, telegraphy, radio, and film
brought rhetoric more prominently into people's lives. More recently
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.
Notable theorists
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). It
is important to note that 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."
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.
.jpg)
