When I ask people what rhetoric means, many aren’t sure, but they’ve heard the word before, usually in reference to rhetorical questions—you know, those obnoxious questions people ask for effect, but they really don’t want an answer, like, “How could I have been so stupid?” (Trust me: if someone asks that, don’t answer!)
The other thing they often mention is politics, where rhetoric is a negative term referring to the lies, deceit, and doublespeak of corrupt officials. This doesn’t surprise me. The term rhetoric is often bandied about by political pundits who are usually accusing someone of dishonesty. I recently heard someone lament that a certain presidential candidate was offering “too much rhetoric and not enough answers.” This sentiment doesn’t tell me, however, that the candidate is corrupt; it tells me that the lamenter doesn’t know what the word rhetoric means.
A professor at the University of Chicago, Wayne Boothe, coined a great term that might have better served the lamenter: rhetrickery (if it isn’t obvious, this combines rhetoric with trickery). I wish more people would use the word rhetrickery when talking about political doublespeak and stop harshing on the word rhetoric, which simply means the art of persuasion or the art of good communication.
I like to think of rhetoric as the art of persuasion because it is a broad and encompassing definition. It explains everything from how a presidential candidate uses biblical cadences while asking constituents for a vote to how a four-year-old child carefully selects her words while asking mom for a cookie.
Many textbooks try to narrowly define rhetoric as the art of argumentation, and they relegate it to chapters on how to write arguments, which makes sense, I suppose, but crafting an argument isn't the only time you’ll need to rely on rhetoric. If ever you put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard with the intent of getting someone to actually read what you are about to write, you are engaging in the art of rhetoric. Even personal essays rely on rhetoric. You are, after all, trying to do something with your writing: making the reader laugh or cry; making them consider something they haven’t before; helping them learn a new principle; explaining a complex process; describing something they haven’t seen.
Two simple yet effective elements of rhetoric that are worth remembering are audience and purpose. Whenever you write, you should have a good understanding of who you’re writing to (your audience), and what you hope they do with that information (your purpose). That doesn’t mean you have to actually know the people who will read your writing, but you should have a general, abstract idea of who they are. For example, if you are going to write a letter to the editor about why your town needs stricter leash laws, then you’ll need to decide to whom you are writing. You can’t convince everyone, after all. Are you, therefore, going to write to dog owners? Are you going to write to non-dog owners? Once you know to whom you are writing, it is then a good idea to establish your purpose. Ask yourself, “What do I want these people to do with this information?” If you decided that you are writing to dog owners, then perhaps what you want them to do is to voluntarily use leashes so that a restrictive leash law doesn’t have to be put into effect. Your overall message might be along the lines of, “Hey, if you don’t take it upon yourselves to leash your animal, then get ready for lots of fines and penalties!” (perhaps in different words, though).
When your instructor or the tutor at the writing center reads your draft, don’t be surprised if the first thing they ask is, “Who’s your audience?” quickly followed by, “What’s your purpose?” They don’t do this to be annoying; they do this because once you have decided these two things, it will be so much easier to decide what to include and what to exclude in your writing. If, for example, you chose to write to dog owners, then you know not to waste your time writing about how annoying dogs are—you’re smart enough to know that will alienate the readers, causing them to take a defensive stance, and you’ll never persuade them to do anything. Instead, you might share a story about your own dog. Knowing your audience and having a clear purpose makes it so much easier to be persuasive. That’s the long and short of rhetoric: knowing your audience and your purpose.
The following chapters discuss several rhetorical modes that we commonly incorporate into our writing to help us achieve our purpose, such as telling stories, describing people, comparing things, and providing examples. All of these rhetorical modes are different devices we use to make our writing persuasive, whether we’re writing a personal essay, a blog post, an analysis, a research paper, a proposal, a reading response, or an argument. As you read, keep in mind that rhetoric—the art of persuasion—is at the heart of all of these.