HUM116: rhetoric

What is Rhetoric?
Rhetoric refers to the study and use of written, spoken, and
visual language. It investigates how language is used to
organize and maintain social groups, construct meanings and
identities, coordinate behavior, mediate power, produces
change, and create knowledge. Rhetoricians often assume
that language is constitutive (we shape and are shaped by
language), dialogic (it exists in the shared territory between
self and other), closely connected to thought (mental activity as "inner speech"), and integrated with social,
cultural and economic practices. Rhetorical study and written literacy are understood to be essential to civic,
professional, and academic life.

Rhetoric began 2500 years ago as the study of the forms of communication and argument essential to public,
political, and legal life in Ancient Greece. It has since evolved a rich and diverse body of research, texts, and
pedagogies.

Plato:
Socrates asks, “Must not the art of rhetoric, taken as a whole, be a kind of influencing of the
mind by means of words, not only in courts of law and other public gatherings but in private
places also? And must it not be the same art that is concerned with great issues and small,
its right employment commanding no more respect when dealing with important matters
than with unimportant? Phaedrus, 261a-261b.

Aristotle (ca. 350 BCE):

Let rhetoric be [defined as] an ability, in each [particular] case, to see the available means
of persuasion. This is the function of no other art; for each of the others is instructive and
persuasive about its own subject: for example, medicine about health and disease and
geometry about the properties of magnitudes and arithmetic about numbers and
similarly in the case of the other arts and sciences. But rhetoric seems to be able to
observe the persuasive about "the given," so to speak. That, too, is why we say it does
not include technical knowledge of any particular, defined genus [of subjects].

Friedrich Nietzsche (1872-73):

What is called "rhetorical," as a means of conscious art, had been active as a means of
unconscious art in language and its development, indeed, that the rhetorical is a further
development, guided by the clear light of the understanding, of the artistic means which are
already found in language. There is obviously no unrhetorical "naturalness" of language to
which one could appeal; language itself is the result of purely rhetorical arts. The power to
discover and to make operative that which works and impresses, with respect to each thing,
a power which Aristotle calls rhetoric, is, at the same time, the essence of language; the
latter is based just as little as rhetoric is upon that which is true, upon the essence of things.
Friedrich Nietzsche on Rhetoric and Language, p 21.

Terry Eagleton (1983):

Rhetoric, which was the received form of critical analysis all the way from
ancient society to the 18th century, examined the way discourse is constructed
in order to achieve certain effects. It was not worried about whether its objects
of inquiry were speaking or writing, poetry or philosophy, fiction or
historiography: its horizon was nothing less than the field of discursive practices
in society as a whole, and its particular interest lay in grasping such practices as
forms of power and performance. This is not to say that it ignored the truth-value of the discourse in question
since this could often be crucially relevant to the kinds of effect they produced in their readers and listeners.
Rhetoric in its major phase was neither a language nor a "formalism," preoccupied simply with analyzing
linguistic devices. It looked at such devices in terms of concrete performance-they were means of pleading,
persuading, inciting, and so on- and at people’s responses to discourse in terms of linguistic structures and the
material situations in which they functioned. It saw speaking and writing not merely as textual objects, to be
aesthetically contemplated or endlessly deconstructed, but as forms of activity inseparable from the wider social
relations between writers and readers, orators and audiences, and as largely unintelligible outside the social
purposes and conditions in which they were embedded.

Art of Rhetoric
The Three Means of Persuasion

The systematical core of Aristotle's Rhetoric is the doctrine that there are three technical means of persuasion.
The attribute ‘technical’ implies two characteristics: (i) Technical persuasion must rest on a method, and this, in
turn, is to say that we must know the reason why some things are persuasive and some are not. Further,
methodical persuasion must rest on a complete analysis of what it means to be persuasive. (ii) Technical means
of persuasion must be provided by the speaker himself, whereas preexisting facts, such as oaths, witnesses,
testimonies, etc. are non-technical, since they cannot be prepared by the speaker.

A speech consists of three things: the speaker, the subject that is treated in the speech, and the listener to
whom the speech is addressed (Rhet. I.3, 1358a37ff.). It seems that this is why only three technical means of
persuasion are possible: Technical means of persuasion are either (a) in the character of the speaker, or (b) in
the emotional state of the hearer, or (c) in the argument (logos) itself.

(a) The persuasion is accomplished by character whenever the speech is held in such a way as to render the
speaker worthy of credence. If the speaker appears to be credible, the audience will form the second-order
judgment that propositions put forward by the credible speaker are true or acceptable. This is especially
important in cases where there is no exact knowledge but room for doubt. But how does the speaker manage to
appear a credible person? He must display (i) practical intelligence (phronêsis), (ii) a virtu-ous character, and (iii)
good will (Rhet. II.1, 1378a6ff.); for, if he displayed none of them, the audience would doubt that he is able to
give good advice at all. Again, if he displayed (i) without (ii) and (iii), the audience could doubt whether the aims
of the speaker are good. Finally, if he displayed (i) and (ii) with-out (iii), the audience could still doubt whether
the speaker gives the best suggestion, though he knows what it is. But if he displays all of them, Aristotle
concludes, it cannot rationally be doubted that his sug-gestions are credible. It must be stressed that the
speaker must accomplish these effects by what he says; it is not necessary that he is actually virtuous: on the
contrary, a preexisting good character cannot be part of the technical means of persuasion.

(b) The success of the persuasive efforts depends on the emotional dispositions of the audience; for we do
not judge in the same way when we grieve and rejoice or when we are friendly and hostile. Thus, the orator has
to arouse emotions exactly because emotions have the power to modify our judgments: to a judge who is in a
friendly mood, the person about whom he is going to judge seems not to do wrong or only in a small way; but to
the judge who is in an angry mood, the same person will seem to do the opposite (cp. Rhet. II.1, 1378a1ff.).
Many interpreters writing on the rhetorical emotions were misled by the role of the emotions in Aristotle's
ethics: they suggested that the orator has to arouse the emotions in order (i) to motivate the audience or (ii) to
make them better persons (since Aristotle requires that virtuous persons do the right things together with the
right emotions). Thesis (i) is false for the simple reason that the aim of rhetorical persuasion is a certain
judgment (krisis), not an action or practical decision (prohairesis). Thesis (ii) is false, because moral education is
not the purpose of rhetoric (see above §4), nor could it be effected by a public speech: “Now if speeches were in
themselves enough to make men good, they would justly, as Theognis says, have won very great rewards, and
such rewards should have been provided; but as things are … they are not able to encourage the many to
nobility and goodness.” (EN X.9. 1179b4–10)

How is it possible for the orator to bring the audience to a certain emotion? Aristotle's technique essentially
rests on the knowledge of the definition of every significant emotion. Let, for example, anger be defined as
“desire, accompanied with pain, for conspicuous revenge for a conspicuous slight that was directed against
oneself or those near to one, when such a slight is undeserved.” (Rhet. II.2 1378a31– 33). According to such a
definition, someone who believes that he has suffered a slight from a person who is not entitled to do so, etc.,
will become angry. If we take such a definition for granted, it is possible to deduce circumstances in which a
person will most probably be angry; for example, we can deduce

(i) in what state of mind people are angry and (ii) against whom they are angry and (iii) for what sorts of
reason. Aristotle deduces these three factors for several emotions in the chapters II.2–11. With this equipment,
the orator will be able, for example, to highlight such characteristics of a case as are likely to provoke anger in
the audience. In comparison with the tricks of former rhetoricians, this method of arousing emotions has a
striking advantage: The orator who wants to arouse emotions must not even speak outside the subject; it is
sufficient to detect aspects of a given subject that are causally connected with the intended emotion.

(c) We persuade by the argument itself when we demonstrate or seem to demonstrate that something is
the case. For Aristotle, there are two species of arguments: inductions and deductions (Posterior Analytics I.1,
71a5ff.). Induction (epagôgê) is defined as the proceeding from particulars up to a universal (Topics I.12,
105a13ff.). A deduction (sullogismos) is an argument in which, certain things having been supposed, something
different from the suppositions results of necessity through them (Topics I.1, 100a25ff.) or because of their
being true (Prior Analytics I.2, 24b18–20). The inductive argument in rhetoric is the example (paradeigma);
unlike other inductive arguments, it does not proceed from many particular cases to one universal case, but
from one particular to a similar particular if both particulars fall under the same genus (Rhet. I.2, 1357b25ff.).
The deductive argument in rhetoric is the enthymeme (see below §6):

but when, certain things being the case, something different results beside them because of their being true,
either universally or for the most part, it is called deduction here (in dialectic) and enthymeme there (in
rhetoric).

Style: How to Say Things with Words

Rhet. III.1–12 introduces the topic of lexis, usually translated as ‘style’. This topic was not announced until the
final passage of Rhet. II, so that most scholars have come to think of this section as a more or less self-contained
treatise. The insertion of this treatise into the Rhetoric is motivated by the claim that, while Rhet. I & II dealt
with thought (dianoia), i.e., about what the orator should say, it remains to inquire into the various ways of
saying or formulating one and the same thing. In the course of Rhet. III.1–12 it turns out that Aristotle tackles
this task by using some quite heterogeneous approaches. After an initial exploration of the field of delivery and
style (III.1) Aristotle tries to determine what good prose style consists in; for this purpose he has to go into the
differentiation and the selection of various kinds of nouns, one of which is defined as metaphor (III.2). The
following chapters III.3–6 feature topics that are at best loosely connected with the theme of good prose style;
among these topics is the opposite of good style, namely frigid or deterring style (psuchron) (III.3), the simile,
which turns out to be connected with the metaphor (III.4), the issue of correct Greek (III.5), the appropriateness
(III.7) and the means by which one's style becomes long-winded and dignified (III.6). Chapters III.8–9 introduce
two new approaches to the issue of style, which seem to be unrelated to everything that has been said so far:
These are the topics of the rhythmical shaping of prose style and of periodic and non-periodic flow of speech.
Chapters III.10–11 are dedicated to how the orator can ‘bring things before one's eyes’, which amounts to
something like making the style more vivid. Again metaphors are shown to play a crucial role for that purpose,
so that the topic of metaphor is taken up again and deepened by extended lists of examples. Chapter III.12
seems to make a new start by distinguishing between oral and written style and assessing their suitability for the
three genres of speech (see above §2). The philosophical core of Aristotle's treatise on style in Rhet. III.1–12
seems to be included in the discussion of the good prose style (see below §8.1), however it is the topic of
metaphor (see below §8.2) that has attracted the most attention in the later reception up to the present day.

Source: Aristotle’s rhetoric (Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy). (n.d.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Roland Barthes (1964-1965):

The rhetoric under discussion here is that metalanguage (whose language-object was
"discourse") prevalent in the West from the fifth century BC to the nineteenth century AD.
We shall not deal with more remote efforts (India, Is-lam), and with regard to the West itself,
we shall limit ourselves to Athens, Rome, and France. This metalanguage (discourse on
discourse) has involved several practices, simultaneously or successively present, according
to periods, within "Rhetoric ":

• A technique, i.e., an "art," in the classical sense of the word; the art of persuasion, a body of rules and
recipes whose implementation makes it possible to convince the hearer of the discourse (and later the
reader of the work), even if what he is to be convinced of is " false."
• A teaching: the art of rhetoric, initially transmitted by personal means (a rhetor and his disciples, his
clients), was soon introduced into institutions of learning; in schools, it formed the essential matter of
what would today be called higher education; it was transformed into material for examination
(exercises, lessons, tests).
• A science, or in any case a proto-science, i.e. a. a field of autonomous observation delimiting certain
homogeneous phenomena, to wit the "effects" of language; b. a classification of these phenomena
(whose best-known trace is the list of rhetorical "figures"; c. an "operation" in Hjelmslevian sense, i.e. a
meta-language, a body of rhetorical treatises whose substance—or signified—is a language-object
(argumentative language and "figured" language).
• An ethic: as a system of "rules," rhetoric is imbued with the ambiguity of that word: it is at once a
manual of recipes, inspired by a practical goal, and a Code, a body of ethical prescriptions whose role is
to supervise (i.e. to permit and to limit) the "deviations" of emotive language.
• A social practice: Rhetoric is that privileged technique (since one must pay in order to acquire it) which
permits the ruling classes gain ownership of speech. Language being a power, selective rules of access to
this power have been decreed, constituting it as a pseudo-science, closed to "those who do not know
how to speak" and requiring an expensive initiation: born 2500 years ago in legal cases concerning
property, rhetoric was exhausted and died in the "rhetoric " class, the initiatory ratification of bourgeois
culture.
• A ludic practice: since all these practices constituted a formidable ("repressive," we now say)
institutional system, it was only natural that a mockery of rhetoric should develop, a "black" rhetoric
(suspicions, contempt, ironies): games, parodies, erotic or obscene allusions, classroom jokes, a whole
schoolboy practice (which still remains to be explored, moreover, and to be constituted as a cultural
code)."The Old Rhetoric: An aide-mémoire." The Semiotic Challenge, 12-14

Source: What is rhetoric? | Department of rhetoric and writing studies | San Diego State University. (n.d.). Department of Rhetoric and Writing Studies,
San Die-go State University. [Link]

[Excerpt] A Lover’s Discourse by Roland Barthes, trans. Richard Howard

Talking déclaration / declaration

The amorous subject’s propensity to talk copiously, with repressed feeling, to the
loved being, about his love for that being, for himself, for them: the declaration
does not bear upon the avowal of love, but upon the endlessly glossed form of
the amorous relation.

1. Language is a skin: I rub my language against the other. It is as if I had words

instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip of my words. My language trembles with
desire. The emotion derives from a double contact: on the one hand, a whole
activity of discourse discreetly, indirectly focuses upon a single signified, which is
“I desire you,” and releases, nourishes, ramifies it to the point of explosion
(language experiences orgasm upon touching itself); on the other hand, I enwrap the other in my words, I
caress, brush against, talk up this contact, I extend myself to make the commentary to which I submit the
relation endure.
[…]

"Everything follows from this principle: that the lover is not to be reduced to a simple symptomal subject, but
rather that we hear in his voice what is "unreal," i.e., intractable. Whence the choice of a "dramatic" method
which renounces examples and rests on the single action of a primary language (no metalanguage). The
description of the lover's discourse has been replaced by its simulation, and to that discourse has been restored
its fundamental person, the I, in order to stage an utterance, not an analysis. What is proposed, then, is a
portrait--but not a psychological portrait; instead, a structural one which offers the reader a discursive site: the
site of someone speaking within himself, amorously, confronting the other (the loved object), who does not
speak."

[. . .]

So it is a lover who speaks and who says:

"I am engulfed, I succumb . . ." s'abîmer / to be engulfed

Outburst of annihilation which affects the amorous subject in despair or fulfillment.

1. Either woe or well-being, sometimes I have a craving to be engulfed (1 Werther). This morning (in the
country), the weather is mild, overcast. I am suffering (from some incident). The notion of suicide occurs to me,
pure of any resentment (not blackmailing anyone); an insipid notion; it alters nothing ("breaks" nothing),
matches the color (the silence, the desolation) of this morning.

Another day, in the rain, we're waiting for the boat at the lake; from happiness, this time, the same outburst of
annihilation sweeps through me. This is how it happens sometimes, misery or joy engulfs me, without any
particular tumult ensuing, nor any pathos: I am dissolved, not dismembered; I fall, I flow, I melt. Such thoughts--
grazed, touched, tests (the way you test the water with your foot)--can recur. Nothing solemn about them. This
is exactly what gentleness is.

2. The crisis of engulfment can come from a wound, but also from a fusion: we die together from loving each
other: an open death, by dilution into the ether, a closed death of the shared grave. (2 Tristan, 3 Baudelaire)
Engulfment is a moment of hypnosis. A suggestion functions, which commands me to swoon without killing
myself. Whence, perhaps, the gentleness of the abyss: I have no responsibility here, the act (of dying) is not up
to me: I entrust myself, I transmit myself (to whom to God, to Nature, to everything, except to the other). (4
Ruysbroeck)

3. Therefore, on those occasions when I am engulfed, it is because there is no longer any place for me
anywhere, not even in death. The image of the other--to which I was glued, on which I lived--no longer exists;
sometimes this is a (futile) catastrophe which seems to remove the image forever, sometimes it is an excessive
happiness which enables me to unite with the image; in any case, severed or united, dissolved or discrete, I am
nowhere gathered together; opposite, neither your nor me, nor death, nor anything else to talk to.
(Strangely, it is in the extreme action of the amorous Image-repertoire--annihilation as a consequence of driving
out the image or f being identified with it--that there occurs a fall of this Image-repertoire: for the brief interval
of a vacillation, I lose my structure as a lover: this is a factitious mourning, without work to do: something like a
non-site.)
---
Footnotes
1. Werther: "In such thoughts I am engulfed, I succumb, under the power of these magnificent visions . . . I shall see her . . . Everything, yes, everything,
as though engulfed by an abyss, vanishes into this prospect."
2. Tristan: "In the blessed abyss of the infinite ether, in your sublime soul, boundless immensity, I sink and am engulfed, unconscious, O bliss!" (Isolde's
death).
3. Baudelaire: "Some pink and blue evening, we shall exchange a single impulse, a kind of long sob, heavy with farewells" ("La Mort des amants").
4. Ruysbroeck: ". . . The repose of the abyss."
5. Sartre: On swooning and anger as evasions, The Emotions.
From Roland Barthes "A Lover's Discourse: Fragments", translated by Richard Howard.

Source: [Link]
Rainer Maria Rilke: Letters to a Young Poet.

To write is to live, and to live is to write

“When a truly great and unique spirit speaks,

the lesser ones must be silent.”
Franz Xaver Kappus

“There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see
whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to
die if you were forbidden to write. This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I
write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer.

And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple ‘I must’, then build
your life in accordance with this necessity; your whole life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must
become a sign and witness to this impulse.
—Letter 1

"So, dear Sir, I can’t give you any advice but this: to go into yourself and see how deep the place is from which
your life flows; at its source you will find the answer to the question of whether you must create. Accept that
answer, just as it is given to you, without trying to interpret it. Perhaps you will discover that you are called to be
an artist.

Then take that destiny upon yourself, and bear it, its burden and its greatness, without ever asking what reward
might come from outside. For the creator must be a world for himself and must find everything in himself and in
Nature, to whom his whole life is devoted."
—Letter 1

“Allow your judgements their own silent, undisturbed development, which, like all progress, must come from
deep within and cannot be forced or hastened. Everything is gestation and then birthing.

To let each impression and each embryo of a feeling come to completion, entirely in itself, in the dark, in the
unsayable, the unconscious, beyond the reach of one’s own understanding, and with deep humility and patience
to wait for the hour when a new clarity is born: this alone is what it means to live as an artist: in understanding
as in creating.
—Letter 3

In this there is no measuring with time, a year doesn’t matter, and ten years are nothing. Being an artist means:
not numbering and counting, but ripening like a tree, which doesn’t force its sap, and stands confidently in the
storms of spring, not afraid that afterward summer may not come.

It does come. But it comes only to those who are patient, who are there as if eternity lay before them, so
unconcernedly silent and vast. I learn it every day of my life, learn it with pain I am grateful for: patience is
everything!”
—Letter 3

“If you trust in Nature, in what is simple in Nature, in the small things that hardly anyone sees and that can so
suddenly become huge, immeasurable; if you have this love for what is humble and try very simply, as someone
who serves, to win the confidence of what seems poor: then everything will become easier for you, more
coherent and somehow more reconciling, not in your conscious mind perhaps, which stays behind, astonished,
but in your innermost awareness, awakeness, and knowledge.
—Letter 4

It is also good to love: because love is difficult. For one human being to love another human being: that is
perhaps the most difficult task that has been entrusted to us, the ultimate task, the final test and proof, the work
for which all other work is merely preparation.
Loving does not at first mean merging, surrendering, and uniting with another person (for what would a union be
of two people who are unclarified, unfinished, and still incoherent?), it is a high inducement for the individual to
ripen, to become something in himself, to become world, to become world in himself for the sake of another
person; it is a great, demanding claim on him, something that chooses him and calls him to vast distances.
—Letter 7

We are solitary. We can delude ourselves about this and act as if it were not true. That is all. But how much
better it is to recognize that we are alone; yes, even to begin from this realization. It will, of course, make us
dizzy; for all points that our eyes used to rest on are taken away from us, there is no longer anything near us, and
everything far away is infinitely far.

A man taken out of his room and, almost without preparation or transition, placed on the heights of a great
mountain range, would feel something like that: an unequalled insecurity, an abandonment to the nameless,
would almost annihilate him.

He would feel he was falling or think he was being catapulted out into space or exploded into a thousand pieces:
what a colossal lie his brain would have to invent in order to catch up with and explain the situation of his senses.

That is how all distances, all measures, change for the person who becomes solitary; many of these changes
occur suddenly and then, as with the man on the mountaintop, unusual fantasies and strange feelings arise,
which seem to grow out beyond all that is bearable. But it is necessary for us to experience that too. We must
accept our reality as vastly as we possibly can; everything, even the unprecedented, must be possible within it."

This is in the end the only kind of courage that is required of us: the courage to face the strangest, most unusual,
most inexplicable experiences that can meet us. The fact that people have in this sense been cowardly has done
infinite harm to life; the experiences that are called apparitions, the whole so-called ‘spirit world’, death, all these
things that are so closely related to us, have through our daily defensiveness been so entirely pushed out of life
that the senses with which we might have been able to grasp them have atrophied. To say nothing of God.

But the fear of the inexplicable has not only impoverished the reality of the individual; it has also narrowed the
relationship between one human being and another, which has as it were been lifted out of the riverbed of
infinite possibilities and set down in a fallow place on the bank, where nothing happens.

For it is not only indolence that causes human relationships to be repeated from case to case with such
unspeakable monotony and boredom; it is timidity before any new, inconceivable experience, which we don’t
think we can deal with.

But only someone who is ready for everything, who doesn’t exclude any experience, even the most
incomprehensible, will live the relationship with another person as something alive and will himself sound the
depths of his own being."
—Letter 8

It must be immense, this silence, in which sounds and movements have room, and if one thinks that along with
all this the presence of the distant sea also resounds, perhaps as the innermost note in this prehistoric harmony,
then one can only wish that you are trustingly and patiently letting the magnificent solitude work upon you, this
solitude which can no longer be erased from your life; which, in everything that is in store for you to experience
and to do, will act an anonymous influence, continuously and gently decisive, rather as the blood of our ancestors
incessantly moves in us and combines with our own to form the unique, unrepeatable being that we are at every
turning of our life.
—Letter 10

Prepared by: Arabel T. Giron

AY2021-2022