Comm401
COMM401
Tensions in defining rhetoric * Substance versus surface * Literal versus figurative * Stable situations versus unstable situations * Normal versus poetic * Argument versus style * Everyday versus rare * Reflective versus constructive
Rhetoric
* “…that power which, of all the faculties which belong to the nature of man, is the source of most of our blessings.” Isocrates * Plato: “rhetoric is the knack of producing pleasure in the audience” * Aristotle: “Let rhetoric be {defined as} as ability, in each case to see the available means of persuasion” * Cicero: “speech designed to persuade” * Kenneth Burke “the use of language as a symbolic means of inducing cooperation in beings that by nature respond to symbols” * Campbell & Burkholder “persuasive discourses, written and oral, encountered face-to-face or through the electronic or print media, that seek to affect attitudes and actions” * Richard Weaver “We have no sooner uttered words than we have given impulse to other people to look at the world, or some small part of it, our way” * Lloyd Bitzer “rhetoric is am ode of altering reality, not by the direct application of energy to objects, but by the creation of discourse which changes reality through the mediation of thought and action”
Rhetorical Criticism * Analyzing and explaining the persuasive functions of public discourse
Elements of Criticism * Describe: What do I see? What is this thing made of? What are its parts? * Interpret: What does it do? How does it work? * Evaluate: How well does it do it? Is it good/bad, beautiful/ugly, likeable/objectionable
Bottom of Page 5 in Bitzer Article… (in our own words)
1) Response to situation, own thought
2) Context plays a major role in solution as well
3) In order to have an answer there must be a question, in order to have a rhetorical situation there must be something to be talked about, a problem → a rhetorical situation
Tensions in defining rhetoric * Substance versus surface * Literal versus figurative * Stable situations versus unstable situations * Normal versus poetic * Argument versus style * Everyday versus rare * Reflective versus constructive
Rhetoric
* “…that power which, of all the faculties which belong to the nature of man, is the source of most of our blessings.” Isocrates * Plato: “rhetoric is the knack of producing pleasure in the audience” * Aristotle: “Let rhetoric be {defined as} as ability, in each case to see the available means of persuasion” * Cicero: “speech designed to persuade” * Kenneth Burke “the use of language as a symbolic means of inducing cooperation in beings that by nature respond to symbols” * Campbell & Burkholder “persuasive discourses, written and oral, encountered face-to-face or through the electronic or print media, that seek to affect attitudes and actions” * Richard Weaver “We have no sooner uttered words than we have given impulse to other people to look at the world, or some small part of it, our way” * Lloyd Bitzer “rhetoric is am ode of altering reality, not by the direct application of energy to objects, but by the creation of discourse which changes reality through the mediation of thought and action”
Rhetorical Criticism * Analyzing and explaining the persuasive functions of public discourse
Elements of Criticism * Describe: What do I see? What is this thing made of? What are its parts? * Interpret: What does it do? How does it work? * Evaluate: How well does it do it? Is it good/bad, beautiful/ugly, likeable/objectionable
Bottom of Page 5 in Bitzer Article… (in our own words)
1) Response to situation, own thought
2) Context plays a major role in solution as well
3) In order to have an answer there must be a question, in order to have a rhetorical situation there must be something to be talked about, a problem → a rhetorical situation