When was rhetoric invented

Almost anything related to the act of saying something to someone--in speech or in writing--can conceivably fall within the domain of rhetoric as a field of study. Young, Alton L. Becker, and Kenneth L. Pike, Rhetoric: Discovery and Change , Actively scan device characteristics for identification. Use precise geolocation data. Select personalised content. Create a personalised content profile.

Measure ad performance. Select basic ads. Create a personalised ads profile. Select personalised ads. Apply market research to generate audience insights. Measure content performance. Develop and improve products. List of Partners vendors. Share Flipboard Email. Richard Nordquist. English and Rhetoric Professor. Richard Nordquist is professor emeritus of rhetoric and English at Georgia Southern University and the author of several university-level grammar and composition textbooks. Updated April 27, Featured Video.

Cite this Article Format. Nordquist, Richard. However, he qualified this by saying that in making judgments we naturally know what is morally correct and that this should be our guide.

This could, in my opinion, have left many pupils with no guideline at all except to follow their self-interest and expediency. However, it must be pointed out that most commentators admit that not all Sophists were skeptics, although apparently a good number were. Regarding their view of society, there were many viewpoints. One group of Sophists held that man as a natural creature was subject to the laws of nature that he must obey physis.

On the other hand, man was a member of the Polis and the laws under which he lived were governed by convention or custom nomos. They were man made laws. These did not command the same degree of obedience. The example used by a number of writers is the case of traffic lights. If the government wished, it could change these to mean the opposite. Also there are special circumstances when a traffic light can be ignored. Man, on the other hand, cannot change the law of nature. Another view taught by some Sophists was that men have the same human nature and, therefore, any distinction between them should be abolished.

Others saw men as representative of the animal world, and human law as necessary to restrict their animal instincts. Protagoras, for example, believed that men left to their own natural instincts would destroy themselves.

Therefore, for him nomes were absolutely necessary for men to live in a civilized society. With regard to religion, most Sophists fell into one of two categories: those who believed that man was created by the gods, and those who were atheistic or agnostic. Protagoras was an agnostic. Many things prevent knowledge,including the obscurity of the subject and the brevity of human life. On the other hand, the Sophists were widely accepted by the young and had large numbers of followers.

Most of the great figures of the time had been trained by the Sophists. Pericles, for example, had been associated with Protagoras. He epitomized the rationalistic approach to politics and the legal system, and he opened up Athens to teachers from all over Greece.

Plato emerged as one of the chief critics of the Sophist movement and, perhaps, it is fair to say, that he saw his teacher, Socrates, as the restorer of values and morality. Plato based much of his philosophy on the idea of the immortality of the soul Phaedrus. He further argued that we should obey human law and that the true nature of justice does not depend on human convention nomas.

He did not like, therefore, the notion that followed from this, that people must be persuaded to obey convention, as it is artificial, rather than his idea of justice. Gorgias B. For as different drugs expel different humors from the body, and some put an end to sickness and others to life, so some words cause grief, others joy, some fear, others render their hearers bold, and still others drug and bewitch the soul through an evil passion.

Plato takes such a low view of rhetoric that he compares, in Gorgias one of his dialogues , the art of an orator with that of a pastry-cook and equates rhetoric with flattery. This was basically because the Sophists taught their students the clever use of words and sentences, which would make a favorable impression on their audiences. To achieve this end, the rhetor had to be clear and put his points in such a way that the audience understood exactly what he wanted them to understand. Cicero, Brutus , 46—48 and Isocrates.

Aristotle's book Topics lists some hundred topoi for the construction of dialectical arguments. These lists of topoi form the core of the method by which the dialectician should be able to formulate deductions on any problem that could be proposed. Most of the instructions that the Rhetoric gives for the composition of enthymemes are also organized as lists of topoi ; especially the first book of the Rhetoric essentially consists of topoi concerning the subjects of the three species of public speech.

It is striking that the work that is almost exclusively dedicated to the collection of topoi , the book Topics , does not even make an attempt to define the concept of topos. According to this definition, the topos is a general argumentative form or pattern, and the concrete arguments are instantiations of the general topos.

That the topos is a general instruction from which several arguments can be derived, is crucial for Aristotle's understanding of an artful method of argumentation; for a teacher of rhetoric who makes his pupils learn ready samples of arguments would not impart the art itself to them, but only the products of this art, just as if someone pretending to teach the art of shoe-making only gave samples of already made shoes to his pupils see Sophistical Refutations b36ff.

By recalling the houses along the street we can also remember the associated items. At least within the system of the book Topics , every given problem must be analyzed in terms of some formal criteria: Does the predicate of the sentence in question ascribe a genus or a definition or peculiar or accidental properties to the subject?

Does the sentence express a sort of opposition, either contradiction or contrariety, etc.? Does the sentence express that something is more or less the case? Does it maintain identity or diversity? Are the words used linguistically derived from words that are part of an accepted premise? Depending on such formal criteria of the analyzed sentence one has to refer to a fitting topos. For this reason, the succession of topoi in the book Topics is organized in accordance with their salient formal criteria; and this, again, makes a further mnemotechnique superfluous.

More or less the same is true of the Rhetoric —except that most of its topoi are structured by material and not by formal criteria, as we shall see in section 7. Other topoi often include the discussion of iv examples; still other topoi suggest v how to apply the given schemes. Often Aristotle is very brief and leaves it to the reader to add the missing elements. In a nutshell, the function of a topos can be explained as follows.

First of all, one has to select an apt topos for a given conclusion. The conclusion is either a thesis of our opponent that we want to refute, or our own assertion we want to establish or defend. Accordingly, there are two uses of topoi : they can either prove or disprove a given sentence; some can be used for both purposes, others for only one of them. Most topoi are selected by certain formal features of the given conclusion; if, for example, the conclusion maintains a definition, we have to select our topos from a list of topoi pertaining to definitions, etc.

Once we have selected a topos that is appropriate for a given conclusion, the topos can be used to construe a premise from which the given conclusion can be derived. If the construed premise is accepted, either by the opponent in a dialectical debate or by the audience in public speech, we can draw the intended conclusion. It could be either, as some say, the premise of a propositional scheme such as the modus ponens, or, as others assume, as the conditional premise of a hypothetical syllogism.

Aristotle himself does not favor one of these interpretations explicitly. But even if he regarded the topoi as additional premises in a dialectical or rhetorical argument, it is beyond any doubt that he did not use them as premises that must be explicitly mentioned or even approved by the opponent or audience.

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. In the course of Rhet.

After an initial exploration of the field of delivery and style III. The following chapters III. Chapters III. 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. The philosophical core of Aristotle's treatise on style in Rhet. Originally the discussion of style belongs to the art of poetry rather than to rhetoric; the poets were the first, as Aristotle observes, to give an impulse for the study of style.

Clarity again matters for comprehension and comprehensibility contributes to persuasiveness. In prose speeches, the good formulation of a state of affairs must therefore be a clear one. However, saying this is not yet enough to account for the best or excellent prose style, since clear linguistic expressions tend to be banal or flat, while good style should avoid such banality. If the language becomes too banal it will not be able to attract the attention of the audience.

The orator can avoid this tendency of banality by the use of dignified or elevated expressions and in general by all formulations that deviate from common usage.

On the one hand, uncommon vocabulary has the advantage of evoking the curiosity of an audience. On the other hand the use of such elevated vocabulary bears a serious risk: Whenever the orator makes excessive use of it, the speech might become unclear, thus failing to meet the default requirement of prose speech, namely clarity. Moreover, if the vocabulary becomes too sublime or dignified in relation to prose's subject matter Aristotle assumes it is mostly everyday affairs , the audience will notice that the orator uses his words with a certain intention and will become suspicious about the orator and his intentions.

Hitting upon the right wording is therefore a matter of being clear, but not too banal; In trying not to be too banal, one must use uncommon, dignified words and phrases, but one must be careful not to use them excessively or inappropriately in relation to prose style and the typical subject matter of prose speeches. Bringing all these considerations together Aristotle defines the good prose style, i. In this respect the definition of stylistic virtue follows the same scheme as the definition of ethical virtues in Aristotle's ethical writings, insofar as both the stylistic virtue and the virtue of character are defined in terms of a mean that lies between two opposed excesses.

If the virtue of style is defined as a mean between the banality involving form of clarity and overly dignified and hence inappropriate speech, it is with good reason that Aristotle speaks of only one virtue of prose style, and not of clarity, ornament by dignified expressions and appropriateness as three distinct virtues of style.

However, from the times of Cicero and Quintilianus on, these three, along with the correctness of Greek or Latin, became the canonical four virtues of speech virtutes dicendi. Reading Aristotle through the spectacles of the Roman art of rhetoric, scholars often try to identify two, three or four virtues of style in his Rhetoric.

Finally, if the virtue of style is about finding a balance between banal clarity, which is dull, and attractive dignity, which is inappropriate in public speeches, how can the orator manage to control the different degrees of clarity and dignity?

Most examples that Aristotle gives of this latter class are taken from the different Greek dialects, and most examples of this type are in turn taken from the language of the Homeric epos. Further classes are defined by metaphors and by several expressions that are somehow altered or modified, e. Sometimes Aristotle also uses the term kosmos under which he collects all epithets and otherwise ornamental expressions.

These different types of words differ in accordance with their familiarity. The best established words, the kuria , make their subject clear, but do not excite the audience's curiosity, whereas all other types of words are not established, and hence have the sort of attraction that alien or foreign things used to have.

Since remote things are admirable thaumaston and the admirable is pleasant, Aristotle says, one should make the speech admirable and pleasant by the use of such unfamiliar words. However one has to be careful not to use inappropriately dignified or poetic words in prose speech. Thus the virtue of style is accomplished by the selection and balanced use of these various types of words: Fundamental for prose speech is the use of usual and therefore clear words.

In order to make the speech pleasant and dignified and in order to avoid banality the orator must make moderate use of non-familiar elements. Metaphor plays an important role for prose style, since metaphors contribute, as Aristotle says, clarity as well as the unfamiliar, surprising effect that avoids banality and tediousness.

These four types are exemplified as follows:. Most of the examples Aristotle offers for types i to iii would not be regarded as metaphors in the modern sense; rather they would fall under the headings of metonomy or synecdoche. The examples offered for type iv are more like modern metaphors. Aristotle himself regards the metaphors of group iv , which are built from analogy, as the most important type of enthymemes.

An analogy is given if the second term is to the first as the fourth to the third. Correspondingly, an analogous metaphor uses the fourth term for the second or the second for the fourth. This principle can be illustrated by the following Aristotelian examples:.

Examples a and b obey the optional instruction that metaphors can be qualified by adding the term to which the proper word is relative cp. In example c , there is no proper name for the thing that the metaphor refers to. Metaphors are closely related to similes; but as opposed to the later tradition, Aristotle does not define the metaphor as an abbreviated simile, but, the other way around, the simile as a metaphor.

While in the later tradition the use of metaphors has been seen as a matter of mere decoration, which has to delight the hearer, Aristotle stresses the cognitive function of metaphors. Metaphors, he says, bring about learning Rhet. In order to understand a metaphor, the hearer has to find something common between the metaphor and the thing the metaphor refers to. Thus, a metaphor not only refers to a thing, but simultaneously describes the thing in a certain respect. Rapp lmu. Works on Rhetoric 2.

The Agenda of the Rhetoric 3. Rhetoric as a Counterpart to Dialectic 4. The Purpose of Rhetoric 4. The Three Means of Persuasion 6.

The Enthymeme 6. The Topoi 7. Style: How to Say Things with Words 8. The Agenda of the Rhetoric The structure of Rhet. Rhetoric as a Counterpart to Dialectic Aristotle stresses that rhetoric is closely related to dialectic. This analogy between rhetoric and dialectic can be substantiated by several common features of both disciplines: Rhetoric and dialectic are concerned with things that do not belong to a definite genus or are not the object of a specific science. Rhetoric and dialectic rely on accepted sentences endoxa.

Rhetoric and dialectic are not dependent on the principles of specific sciences. Rhetoric and dialectic are concerned with both sides of an opposition.

Rhetoric and dialectic rely on the same theory of deduction and induction. Rhetoric and dialectic similarly apply the so-called topoi. This is why there are also remarkable differences between the two disciplines: Dialectic can be applied to every object whatsoever, rhetoric is useful especially in practical and public matters.

Dialectic proceeds by questioning and answering, while rhetoric for the most part proceeds in continuous form. Dialectic is concerned with general questions, while rhetoric is concerned for the most part with particular topics i. Certain uses of dialectic apply qualified endoxa , i. Rhetoric must take into account that its target group has only restricted intellectual resources, whereas such concerns are totally absent from dialectic.

While dialectic tries to test the consistency of a set of sentences, rhetoric tries to achieve the persuasion of a given audience. Non-argumentative methods are absent from dialectic, while rhetoric uses non-argumentative means of persuasion. The Three Means of Persuasion The systematical core of Aristotle's Rhetoric is the doctrine that there are three technical means of persuasion.

Supplement on The Brevity of the Enthymeme 6. But there are several types of sign-arguments too; Aristotle offers the following examples: Rhetoric I. Wise men are good, since Pittacus is good. This woman has a child, since she has milk. She is pregnant, since she is pale. Supplement on the Topoi of the Rhetoric 8. This principle can be illustrated by the following Aristotelian examples: Analogy Metaphor a The cup to Dionysus as shield to Ares.

Bibliography Allen, James. Barnes, Jonathan. Berti ed. Padua: Antenore.