INTRODUCTION TO RHETORIC 1

Rhetoric Defined 2500 years ago, Aristotle defined rhetoric as “the ability to discover, in any given situation, the available means of persuasion.” This means, basically, looking at the situation you’re in, figuring out what you want in that situation, and how you can act and speak (or write) to get what you want.

The Rhetorical Situation As human beings, we “do rhetoric” all the time. In every situation where you are attempting to persuade someone of something, you are using rhetoric. One important thing to understand about rhetoric is that you’re already very good at it – in some situations. You can adapt your rhetorical strategies depending on the audience and the exact situation.

The Rhetorical Situation Our goal here is to make you more conscious of rhetoric and its tools and to help you transfer your success in the situations you’ve already mastered to new situations. One common rhetorical situation you might have already mastered is: Talking a friend into seeing a movie instead of staying home. A rhetorical situation that this course will help you succeed in is: Writing a paper for a college course.

PURPOSE IS ESSENTIAL The first thing you want to do in any rhetorical situation is to figure out what your PURPOSE is. What do you want to accomplish, what do you want to get out of that situation? And the first thing you want to do when you’re reading something is to figure out YOUR PROPOSE for reading, and the WRITER’S PURPOSE for writing.

In ANY Rhetorical Situation You set up a relationship among 3 elements: SUBJECT SPEAKER AUDIENCE 6

This relationship takes place in a particular social and physical context. In other words, it happens in a particular point in our relationships with other people (social context), and a particular place and time (physical context). 7

Example: Social Context It’s usually much easier to talk with somebody we’ve known for a long time than with somebody we’ve just met. (And so, when we do talk with somebody we’ve just met, that talk is often about “safe” topics like the weather.) One extremely difficult rhetorical situation is when we don’t know our audience well, and the stakes of the conversation are high: for example, a first date or a job interview. 8

Example: Physical Context If you were talking about the weather on Friday, June 23, 2017, and you were in Playa del Rey where it was cloudy and 66°, you’d be saying very different things than if you were in Phoenix, where it was 119° and the street signs were melting. 9

Three Modes of Persuasion Defined by Aristotle, these are: LOGOS – persuasion based upon logic; ETHOS – persuasion based upon the credibility of the speaker (compare our word ethics); and PATHOS – persuasion based on emotion (compare our words empathy and pathetic). 10

These three modes Also correspond to the points of the rhetorical triangle: Logos -- SUBJECT Ethos -- Pathos -- SPEAKER AUDIENCE 11

LOGOS Appeals to logic (The Mind) The use of facts and logical argument to persuade. Logical argument requires a CLAIM backed up by EVIDENCE In ads, logos focuses on FEATURES of the product FAVORED IN ACADEMIC SETTINGS, BUSINESS DOCUMENTS, LAW

ETHOS Appeals to character, group values/social relations) Presents author or speaker as being reliable, interesting, intelligent: somebody worth emulating; or someone that cares about us Appeals to our herd instinct: desire to be accepted in a group OFTEN USED IN POLITICS, ADS

PATHOS Emotion Can use any emotion – love, fear, hatred, envy, patriotism, pity, etc. Look for God terms and Devil terms In ads, focuses on BENEFITS of the product. The most powerful appeal, but also the most likely to backfire.

BUT In practical terms, these three “artistic appeals” (as Aristotle calls them) get mixed together all the time. The most effective messages use all three of them. For instance, a car salesperson might be able to sell me a car because she seems like she’s not trying to rip me off (ETHOS), because she convinces me the car is a good deal and fits my needs (LOGOS), and because she tells me other people will envy me for my cool new convertible (PATHOS).

This is Peitho, the goddess of rhetoric “Peitho” in Greek means “persuasion.” She is often depicted as a close companion of Aphrodite – the goddess of love. Why?

The bank loan Say you need a loan for $500 (PURPOSE). Your first rhetorical choice is who to ask for the money (AUDIENCE). You determine that none of your friends have $500 just lying around, so you need to go to a bank. What kind of rhetorical strategies should you use to get the loan?

A Final Example

That example Is from a rhetor who works in the genre of air guitar. There are enormous numbers of other genres that you already know, and we’ll look at a lot of them during this course. We use different genres – different types of speaking and writing – to meet our goals in different situations.

Genre Examples