Rhetoric

Rhetoric Oratory is `the art of persuading an audience by means of oral discourse'. Other methods include bribery, intimidation, and violence, but oratory is the least damaging to one's own and others' self esteem and bodily parts. Rhetoric is both an art and a science: as an art it is `the process of composing an oral discourse so as to pursuade'; as a science it embraces the rules and system by which persuasive speech operates. Rhetoric is part of oratory. Oratory has five parts: • • • • • invention (what) disposition (when) [exordium, narratio, proof, rebuttal, peroration] expression (how) memory elocution Rhetoric is concerned with the first three; Public speaking with the last two. Oratory has three classes: • • • deliberative (for public assemblies) dealing with laws and policies judicial (court trials) [forensic] general the principal subspecies is epideictic, but there is also ceremonial, sermonizing, panegyrical, after-dinner speechifying, etc. INVENTIO: (in + venio: discovery of useful lines of argument) Arguments may be discovered according to three principles: • • • (1) according to their purpose proof, sympathy, motive, illustrative, pleasurable, amusing, etc. (2) according to their value in convincing certain / probable (3) according to the principles called TOPICS (systematized by Aristotle) TOPICS: (A) Intrinsic: • • (1) Nature and name of what is being discussed: definition, genus-and-species, parts (enumeration) (2) Connections existing between things: cause/effect, antecedent/consequence, circumstances (B) Extrinsic: • • (1) Testimony (witnesses, documents, artifacts) (2) Authority (psychiatric evaluation, expert testimony, coroner's autopsy, proverbial wisdom, `common knowledge', `common sense', 50,000,000 Frenchmen, etc.)