What is Rhetoric?
You already know that every good argument has three parts: a claim, evidence, and a warrant. Those are what you need to do when you make an argument. But there's more than that to a good persuasive argument—there's also rhetoric.
Rhetoric has a lot of different definitions, depending on who you talk to. Here's a pretty simple definition for you: Rhetoric is HOW you present or make an argument. In other words, rhetoric deals with the choices you make about how to present information—the words you use, the way you choose to express your ideas. To get a good grip on the concept of rhetoric, take a look at this short movie:
What changed between the first sign and the second sign in the movie? It was only the words. The argument (or information) was still the same; "I am blind and I need money from you." However, changing the words of the message completely changed its effect on the people who saw the sign. This movie shows how powerful effective rhetoric can be.
Of course, rhetoric is much more than just word choice, as you will see in the other sections of this web site. The more you know about rhetoric, the smarter you will be, and the better you will be at persuading others. Knowing about rhetoric will also help you to better recognize how other people and messages (especially advertisements and commercials) try to influence or manipulate you to do things.
There are three kinds of rhetoric: ethos, pathos, and logos. You can learn more about them on the next section of this web site.