Theory of Rhetoric

What is rhetoric?

Let's ask the experts.

Dr. Herrick

Rhetoric is in part the systematic study of persuasion” but that to acknowledge this is not to “condemn persuasion or rhetoric. Rather, it is to begin to appreciate the centrality of this activity to much of life, and to recognize that human beings are rhetorical beings” (Herrick 6).

Plato

Like cooking tasty food, which is "pandering disguised as doctoring," so is "rhetoric to justice" (Sachs "Gorgias" 49). Rhetoric as it's used is not an artful pursuit, but a manipulative pandering. In the Phaedrus, Socrates describes rhetoric as it should be as "a certain guiding of the souls through words" (Plato 45).

Aristotle

Rhetoric is "not confined to any one branch of knowledge" (Sachs "Rhetoric" 133). It is the power to see "what is capable of being persuasive on each subject" (Sachs "Rhetoric" 137). It is a socially useful art for the purposes of advocating ideas, instructing difficult audiences, thinking in pros and cons, and defending oneself.

Quintilian

Rhetoric is divided into the art, the artist, and the work. The art "has to be acquired by study: is the science of speaking well" (Quintilian "Book 2" 351). Thus, if rhetoric is the science of speaking well, "its end and highest aim is 'to speak well'" (Quintilian "Book 2" 369).

What does rhetoric do?

According to Herrick, modern students "expect their writing to change the world they live in" (3). Good writing "changes something. It doesn't just sit on the page. It gets up, walks off the pape and changes something" (Herrick 3). My theory of rhetoric maintains that writing, speechmaking, interpersonal communication, and other forms of rhetoric do something. Rhetoric is an act of creation. Herrick claims that rhetoric has six social functions: it tests ideas, assists advocacy, distributes power, discovers facts, shapes knowledge, and builds community (17-23). While all of these are important aspects of rhetoric, I'd like to focus on a few in particular that shape my theory of rhetoric.

Rhetoric tests ideas. Herrick writes that "the better equipped an audience is to test ideas advanced for their consideration, and the more care that goes into that testing, the better check we have on the quality of ideas" (17). Clearly, this is a process that helps to advance society, so "training in the art of rhetoric is just as important for audience members as it is for advocates" (Herrick 17). Kenneth Burke, in "The Rhetoric of Hitler's 'Battle,'" emphasizes the importance of rhetorical understanding for each person as a way of evaluating ideas. Burke analyzes Hitler's rhetoric in a way that no other scholar had done before by taking it seriously and paying attention to it. By taking a systematic and analytical approach such that he tries “to discover that kind of ‘medicine’ this medicine-man has concocted, that we may know… exactly what to guard against,” Burke shows how crucial it is for people to be equipped to evaluate rhetoric (164). Rhetorical training equips us to recognize manipulation and other abuses of power through our testing of ideas.

Rhetoric also distributes power. Herrick writes that "due to its capacity for influencing decisions, rhetoric is a form of social power" (19). Hélène Cixous examines the social power of rhetoric in her essay "The Laugh of the Medusa." In reckoning with a history of rhetoric and literature that is extraordinarily patriarchal and phallologocentric and that has enabled men to lead women to hate women, Cixous views language as an opportunity for a redistribution of power. She calls for women to "write her self" as a form of "new insurgent writing" (Cixous 1235). The history of rhetoric is overwhelmingly male. Not only are most studied rhetoricians male, but the development of language and rhetoric has largely been shaped by men, and many of these men (for example, Aristotle) viewed women as less than human. So, in an effort to change how male-dominated rhetoric is, Cixous proclaims that "It is time to liberate the New Woman from the Old by coming to know her-- by loving her for getting by" (1234). Rhetoric provides an opportunity for liberation and a redistribution of power.

Cixous also helps to explain how rhetoric builds community. Herricks notes that often members of a community (for example, feminists or Orthodox Jews) do not know all the other members of their community. How, then, is a sense of community maintained when the members do not know each other personally? Herrick writes that the group's "symbols, metaphors, and ways of reasoning function to create a common bond... Moreover, communities are sustained over time by the rhetorical interactions of their members" (23). In the conclusion of "The Laugh of the Medusa," Cixous writes: "When I write, it’s everything that we don’t know we can be that is written out of me, without exclusions, without stipulation, and everything we will be calls us to the unflagging, intoxicating, unappeasable search for love. In one another we will never be lacking” (1245). When we engage with or create through rhetoric, we build community amongst ourselves. Together, "we will never be lacking." We nurture one another.

My theory posits rhetoric as:

Democratic

Rhetoric is and should be democratic in nature. There is a relationship between the orator and the audience which is crucial to the way that rhetoric operates. Aristotle's concept of the enthymeme, a rhetorical type of syllogism, a deductive argument at the heart of rhetoric that must connect with audiences’ convictions and emotions, illustrates this point well (Herrick 88). The connection that an enthymeme creates is reached through the efforts of both the orator and audience-- it need not be explicitly stated, but understood all together in the same moment, and it is rooted in transaction between speaker and audience.

Since effective rhetoric involves awareness of public values and convictions, enthymemes are at its heart: enthymemes require the orator to attend to the beliefs, convictions, emotions, and experiences of the audience. This reinforces the idea that rhetoric is democratic in nature. Furthermore, Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca "emphasized the audience as crucial to grounding rational discourse" (Herrick 217). Their definition of rhetoric posits it as audience-focused and democratic in nature due to the orator's need to find common ground with the audience. Rhetoric is, at its heart, democratic.

Persuasive

Rhetoric is inherently concerned with persuasion. There is a long-standing and historic tie between both practices, which in truth are not separate practices at all. In Gorgias, Gorgias offers a definition of rhetoric, which is that the subject matter of rhetoric is being able to persuade the masses: it is the "greatest good" of being able to "persuade people" (Sachs "Gorgias" 36). Dating at least back to ancient Greece, there has always been an inseparable tie between rhetoric and its acknowledged subject matter, persuasion. The audience may change-- the jury in a court of law, the legislators in a body of government, even a teacher or student-- but the goal is the same: to persuade.

Herrick puts this concept into a more modern context: he plainly states that “rhetoric is in part the systematic study of persuasion” (6). In fact, it is this association between rhetoric and persuasion that "has been at the heart of the conflict over whether rhetoric is a neutral tool for bringing about agreements, or an immoral activity that ends in manipulation" (Herrick 4). While this might worry us, and rightfully so, persuasion isn't inherently bad: "a moment's thought suggests that all of us seek to persuade others on a regular basis" (Herrick 4).

Interpersonal and Public

This is controversial, I know. The majority of rhetoric's history has positioned it as something that happens in the public. In Plato's Gorgias, the titular character Gorgias defines rhetoric as being able to "persuade people by speeches, jurors in a lawcourt, legislators in a council chamber, and those assembled in a deliberative assembly and in every other gathering, whatever civic gathering may occur" (Sachs "Gorgias" 36). Rhetoric took place in civic (public) gatherings. This is generally how rhetoric has been defined. However, as Cicero notes, "the procedures of oratory lie within everyone’s reach, and are concerned with everyday experience and with human nature and speech” ("Book 1" 60). Rhetoric and oratory often take place publicly-- press conferences, arguments in a courtroom, academic lectures, posts on social media-- but, as they are inherently concerned with everyday human experience, they occur interpersonally as well.

We have already explored the relationship between rhetoric and persuasion. Rhetoric is naturally concerned with persuading; rhetoric is working wherever persuasion is working, and vice versa. Thus, I believe that rhetoric operates on an interpersonal level. Herrick writes that in daily conversations, we “remain perpetual persuaders in our personal relationships” (4). As Dr. Jeremy Nicholson writes for Psychology Today, there are three broad categories of persuasive (rhetorical) techniques that people use within romantic relationships: coercion tactics, relationship referencing tactics, and logic and reasoning tactics. The study that Dr. Nicholson reviews found that relationship referencing tactics "were the most persuasive for both men and women," which was "particularly true for partners who felt they had a close romantic relationship." The existence of rhetoric working interpersonally should come as no surprise. For example, at the beginning of any romantic relationship, each partner strives to present the best version of themselves through their words and actions, all of which are rhetorical, in an attempt to persuade the other to fall in love. This attempt at presenting one's best self is not restricted to just romantic relationships-- burgeoning friendships use the same strategies-- and this is not the only manner in which rhetoric operates at the interpersonal level.

It is true that this definition of rhetoric differs from what much of rhetorical theory has proclaimed in the past. Rhetoric has often been understood as a public occurrence, but, as feminist theory has taught me, the personal is political. There are political, rhetorical things happening even at the interpersonal level. As Herrick writes, "It is difficult to imagine a relationship in which persuasion has no role, or an organization that does not depend to some degree on efforts to change other people's thoughts and thus to influence their actions" (4). Rhetoric works at both public and interpersonal level.

What does it mean to speak well?

Broadly speaking, the purpose of rhetoric is to advance knowledge and educate others.

I recognize that this definition is broad and that there are likely exceptions. But I am not Socrates, and I refuse to nitpick every single definition to death to the point that I am killed for being such a nuisance. That being said, an orator speaks well and rhetoric fulfills its purpose when it's used to advance knowledge and educate others.

Take this speech by Lady Gaga when she accepted her ELLE Women In Hollywood award in 2018. It's a beautiful speech, and it both advances knowledge and educates others. In this speech, Gaga uses her choice to wear a suit as a frame for a discussion about reclaiming one's voice. She speaks about her survival of sexual violence, the way that shame caused her to "shut down" and "hide," and how she's worked to find power within herself, and promotes mental health treatment and kindness as strategies for overcoming trauma (ELLE).

Her discussion about women in Hollywood is particularly moving: "We are not just objects to entertain the world. We are not simply images to bring smiles or grimaces to people's faces. We are not members of a giant beauty pageant... We women in Hollywood, we are voices. We have deep thoughts and ideas and beliefs and values about the world and we have the power to speak and be heard and fight back when we are silenced" (ELLE). Gaga's speech works to educate her audience by referencing her personal experiences within a sexist and exploitative industry. She advances knowledge about what women are: voices, with deep thoughts and ideas and beliefs, with power. In Gorgias, the character Socrates promotes rhetoric as when a good man speaks towards the best, with the goal of bringing about justice and ending injustice. Gaga's speech undoubtedly does the same when she calls for mental health resources and women's empowerment.

Her speech is democratic and works with the audience. Gaga meets the audience's values and level of knowledge to reach conclusions together. It is persuasive, also. Gaga gives out calls for action-- to fund mental health treatment in schools, to empower women to reclaims their own voices and power, and to be kind to one another. She employs persuasive rhetorical tools by sharing her experiences, providing statistics on mental health, and using her celebrity platform to not only reach a wider audience but have increased credibility as a speaker. Finally, it is both interpersonal and public. Obviously, this speech was given at a public (and recorded) event, making it public. It interacts with members of the public as Gaga references friends, coworkers, and inspirational people in the crowd. But it is also interpersonal. Gaga speaks about the power of interpersonal disclosures in terms of surviving sexual violence. We are not witness to these interpersonal conversations, but we can see how rhetoric is operating there, too, in bringing healing and building community around Gaga.


This is just one example, but I think it's effective in demonstrating how rhetoric is democratic, persuasive, interpersonal, and public, all while fulfilling its goal of advancing knowledge and educating others.


Works Cited

Burke, Kenneth. "The Rhetoric of Hitler's 'Battle.'" The Philosophy of Literary Form, Vintage Books, 1957.

Cicero. "Book 1." On the Ideal Orator.

Cixous, Hélène. "The Laugh of the Medusa."

ELLE. "Lady Gaga's Emotional Speech on Surviving Sexual Assault and Mental Health." YouTube, 17 Oct. 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14KX7xOJsqE.

Herrick, James A. The History and Theory of Rhetoric: an Introduction. Routledge, 2018.

Nicholson, Jeremy. "Effective Persuasion Strategies in Romantic Relationships." Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-attraction-doctor/201712/effective-persuasion-strategies-in-romantic-relationships.

Plato. Plato's Phaedrus. Translated by Stephen Scully, Focus Publishing/R. Pullins Company, 2003.

Quintilian. "Book 2."

Sachs, Joe, translator. “Gorgias.” Plato Gorgias and Aristotle Rhetoric, by Plato, Focus Publishing/R. Pullins, 2009, pp. 29–120.

Sachs, Joe, translator. “Rhetoric.” Plato Gorgias and Aristotle Rhetoric, by Aristotle, Focus Publishing/R. Pullins, 2009, pp. 133-284.