title: The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon

text: The show's opening sequence, directed by filmmaker Spike Lee, features Fallon visiting various New York City landmarks, including Grand Central Terminal and Katz's Delicatessen. Steve Higgins introduces the show with "From Studio 6B in Rockefeller Center, in the heart of New York City, it's "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon"!" and announces that night's guests and "the legendary Roots crew". The show's theme song is "energetic with jazzy overtones" with "Hey Jimmy", designed to match the shots of the city. Just before Higgins introduces Fallon, the camera cuts to a shot of The Roots, and Questlove shouts the numbers symbolizing the episode number of "The Tonight Show". Higgins then introduces Fallon with a drawn-out "And now, here's your host/here he is, Jimmy Fallon!", and Fallon begins his brief monologue. On March 20, 2019, the title sequence was dropped and replaced by an abbreviated version of the introduction, which begins with a shot of the curtain and Higgins introducing Fallon with “Welcome to "The Tonight Show"! And here’s your host, Jimmy Fallon!”, with a condensed version of "Hey Jimmy" played by The Roots as he walks out. In an exclusive interview with "Variety", Fallon stated that the change was inspired by Netflix’s “skip intro” feature, which allows viewers to bypass television shows' opening sequences on its streaming platform. On June 11, 2019, the introduction was modified to include shots of New York City from the original title sequence, with Higgins introducing the show with “From 30 Rockefeller Center, here in New York City, it’s "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon"!”, along with a new extended score of “Hey Jimmy”, just before the camera cuts to a shot of The Roots and pans to the curtain (later changed to a pan of the audience on June 13). Another later change included replacing the show's moon logo with a shot of "The Tonight Show"'s marquee outside of 30 Rockefeller Plaza. On October 7, 2019, the original opening sequence returned in its entire form.


title: The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon

text: Prior to composing an entirely new theme song, bandleader Questlove noted to "Vanity Fair" that they were considering a variation on "Late Night" theme, which itself is a sped-up adaptation of The Roots' 2006 song "Here I Come". For their transition to "The Tonight Show", The Roots added two horn players from Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings ("You can't be "The Tonight Show" without a horn section," said Questlove). As he did on "Late Night", Jonathan Cohen supervises the show's musical guest bookings.


title: The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon

text: Following the monologue, the main segments are a mix of interviews and performances—examples of the latter include musical impressions, lip-syncing contests, games of Pictionary and egg Russian roulette. Journalist Richard Zoglin described Fallon's interview style as more deferential than Letterman's, writing that Fallon "resurrected... Merv Griffin-style celebrity gush."


title: The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon

text: Before the first airing of the show, Fallon expressed that it was essentially an extension of his tenure at "Late Night", explaining that his "Tonight Show" would be "the best of the best of what we do". The show has carried over some of "Late Night"s well-known performance bits, such as "Egg Russian Roulette", a game in which Fallon challenges guests to pick random eggs and then smash them against their forehead to see whether the eggs are raw or hard-boiled. Each week, Fallon has carried over a popular sketch from his "Late Night" days: the absurdist "Thank You Notes" segment, in which "he dutifully composes notes of gratitude to abstract concepts and inanimate objects." Another recurring segment, ""Tonight Show" Superlatives", features Fallon presenting yearbook-style superlatives relating to athletes (particularly, NFL players from the teams being featured that week on "Sunday Night Football", or NHL players during the Stanley Cup playoffs).


title: The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon

text: While the vast majority of episodes are produced at the show's New York home base, Fallon's "Tonight Show" has gone on the road to produce episodes remotely in its first year, spending four nights at Universal Orlando in Florida in June 2014 to promote the new Diagon Alley expansion of The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios Florida. Four nights of shows from Universal Studios Hollywood in Los Angeles aired February 2015, in the days immediately following a special Sunday night show from Phoenix, Arizona airing after NBC's coverage of Super Bowl XLIX on February 1, using the Stage One facility previously utilized for Conan O'Brien's tenure at "The Tonight Show". The L.A. shows brought "Tonight" back to the locale where it had been based since Johnny Carson relocated the program from New York in 1972 until the start of Fallon's tenure, and echoes Carson himself hosting special broadcasts from the L.A. region prior to the relocation. Fallon hosted "The Tonight Show" again from Universal Orlando Resort, April 3–6, 2017, in anticipation of the opening of Race Through New York Starring Jimmy Fallon, a motion simulator attraction based on his tenure at the show. Fallon once again aired a special episode after Super Bowl LII, from Minneapolis' Orpheum Theatre.


title: The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon

text: A special episode of "The Tonight Show" was broadcast on January 15, 2019, filmed in Puerto Rico, rather than a typical remote broadcast, in which Fallon described it as a "love letter" to Puerto Rico, which was severely hit by Hurricane Maria in September 2017. The episode included guests Lin-Manuel Miranda and Chef José Andrés, a musical performance of "The Story of Tonight" with Miranda reprising the role of Alexander Hamilton alongside Fallon in the same role and the company of the third national tour of "Hamilton", Bad Bunny performing "Mia" in the streets of the Old San Juan, and José Feliciano performing "En Mi Viejo San Juan" alongside Ozuna in the gardens of La Fortaleza. The episode also included a segment where Fallon and Tariq Trotter took on the second-longest zip-line in the world and a tour and food tasting nearby Piñones State Forest with Chef José Andrés. Miranda reprised the role of Alexander Hamilton exclusively for the three-week Puerto Rico engagement of "Hamilton"'s third US tour at the Luis A. Ferré Performing Arts Center before the company continues their tour in the United States.


title: The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon

text: On November 7, 2019, "The Tonight Show" aired at the University of Texas–Austin. This was the first time the show had been filmed on a university campus.


title: The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon

text: In March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the show suspended production. On March 18, after having used this format for special webisodes of the series, "The Tonight Show" began airing "At-Home Edition" episodes on NBC; Fallon presented the program from his home, with filming assisted by family members, new interviews conducted via videoconferencing, and reruns of segments from past episodes.


title: The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon

text: On July 13, the program returned to NBC Studios for the first time since March 12, with limited staff on-site (wearing masks and having been tested and screened before being on-set), and no studio audience. The move made "The Tonight Show" the first U.S. late-night talk show to return to tapings in a studio setting. The program was filmed from Studio 6-A (which had previously been used by past incarnations of "Late Night"—including Fallon's while Studio 6-B was being renovated for "The Tonight Show"), using the set of the former NBC talk show "Megyn Kelly Today" modified with a darker atmosphere inspired by Fallon's home, and conducting his monologue from a stool rather than behind a desk. His first episode in the format featured an interview with Governor of New York Andrew Cuomo, an "It's Beginning to Look a Bit Like Normal" musical number, and a sketch featuring a parody ad for "Masculine Man Masks".


title: The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon

text: On March 22, 2021, Fallon returned to Studio 6-B with a smaller audience, making it the first major U.S. late-night talk show to resume tapings in front of a studio audience. For the first week, the audience would consist exclusively of frontline workers. Fallon noted that the first week's audience was 58 people and jokingly compared the experience to performing a sold-out Madison Square Garden after a year without crowds. The show officially opened to a full capacity audience on June 7, 2021.


title: The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon

text: In the show's debut episode, Fallon introduced his supporting stars and gave a brief history of his life and career, following it up with a sketch, "The Evolution of Hip-Hop Dancing", with actor Will Smith and a musical performance by U2 at the Top of the Rock. Following the show's premiere, many notable episodes of the show have produced segments that went viral on sites like Facebook and YouTube. Among the show's most popular bits are lip sync battles; one featuring actress Emma Stone aired in April 2014, which became a popular viral video. In October 2014, actor Daniel Radcliffe recited rapper Blackalicious' "Alphabet Aerobics", which has become the most-viewed online video of the show. Other clips, including the "Wheel of Musical Impressions" with singers Ariana Grande and Christina Aguilera have been widely viewed, as has a clip of Fallon and comedian Kevin Hart riding the Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit roller coaster during the show's first remote broadcast at Universal Studios Florida. Sketches that reunite casts of television shows, such as "Saved by the Bell", in addition to a cappella versions of popular songs performed by Fallon and the Roots, have also been popular. The show's most widely circulated interview segment was one aired in January 2015 with actress Nicole Kidman, who jokingly revealed that she once had a crush on Fallon, to which, at the time, he was oblivious.


title: The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon

text: On February 1, 2015, the show aired its first live show from the Orpheum Theatre in Phoenix, Arizona as a lead-out program from NBC's broadcast of Super Bowl XLIX. The show included an appearance by Arnold Schwarzenegger, a lip-sync battle with Kevin Hart and Will Ferrell, appearances by Super Bowl Champion New England Patriots players, and a performance by Ariana Grande.


title: The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon

text: In September 2016, Fallon faced criticism after an interview with the Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Critics accused Fallon of humanizing Trump, who had made controversial statements during the presidential campaign. Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton had also appeared on the show prior that year. Fallon responded to the controversy claiming that nobody should have expected him to ask difficult questions since he is never hard on anyone. Fallon acknowledged that the interview was a setback, three months after Trump was inaugurated.


title: The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon

text: On February 4, 2018, the show aired its second live show from the Orpheum Theatre in Minneapolis, Minnesota as a lead-out program to NBC's broadcast of Super Bowl LII. The show included guests Justin Timberlake (who was the featured performer at that year's halftime show), the cast of "This Is Us" including Milo Ventimiglia, Mandy Moore, Sterling K. Brown, Chrissy Metz, and Justin Hartley, and Dwayne Johnson, with performances by Timberlake featuring Chris Stapleton.


title: The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon

text: On February 20, 2019, during that night's episode, "The Tonight Show"s YouTube channel reached 20 million subscribers, making it the first late-night talk show to achieve such a milestone.


title: The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon

text: On March 26, 2021, TikTok celebrity Addison Rae appeared on the show. During a segment, she taught Fallon how to do some popular TikTok dances. The segment faced much backlash due to its failure to credit all the many Black creators of the dances, despite NBC's later crediting of the creators in the description of the video on YouTube. In lieu of an apology, on April 6, Fallon interviewed virtually all of the creators of the dances.


title: The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon

text: On April 1, 2022, both Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel swapped places as part of April Fools' Day with the former hosting "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" from Los Angeles and the latter in Studio 6B for "The Tonight Show".


title: The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon

text: The debut episode received mixed but generally positive reviews. "The New York Times" Alessandra Stanley referred to the show's premiere as "more sweet than sassy", calling Fallon "the grateful heir, the eager freshman, the class clown with top grades and a good heart, someone older viewers can embrace without fear of being mocked or overlooked." Tim Goodman of "The Hollywood Reporter" was positive in his assessment of the evening, but noted the older fanbase used to Leno may not latch on as quickly. "Indeed, Fallon comes across as eager to please almost to a fault, and he treated his "Tonight Show" launch very much like a guy auditioning to be accepted into homes," said Brian Lowry of "Variety", who considered the premiere episode a demonstration in Fallon's strengths and weaknesses.


title: The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon

text: The first season of the show was deemed "wildly successful". "Entertainment Weekly" summarized the show's inaugural year: "In his first year as host of "The Tonight Show", [Fallon] turned the revered late-night franchise into the hottest party in town, a celebrity playpen full of games, music, surprise guests, and good vibes all around." Nevertheless, detractors of the show, such as John Walters of "Newsweek", criticized Fallon for his weakness in interviews. Andrés du Bouchet, a writer for "Conan", a fellow late-night show, criticized Fallon for creating what he dubbed "Prom King Comedy"—eschewing odder, more clever material for an over-reliance on games and celebrity cameos. "Rolling Stone" Rob Sheffield opined that Fallon's effect led the medium to become overly friendly.


title: The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon

text: The debut episode of "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon" averaged a 3.8 rating in adults 18–49 and 11.31 million viewers overall in Nielsen's fast-national estimates. This made it the second-largest audience for "The Tonight Show" since May 2009, behind Leno's final farewell two weeks earlier and the transition to Conan O'Brien nearly five years prior. The program's first full week averaged 8.490 million viewers, making it the franchise's most-watched week in 20 years. Following its premiere, "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon" has consistently won its timeslot in ratings, routinely beating "Late Show with David Letterman" and "Jimmy Kimmel Live!". Despite this, the ratings for competitors never significantly fell, with Fallon winning due to a surge in younger viewers. In his first year as host, Fallon's "Tonight Show" improved on ratings delivered by his predecessor Jay Leno.


title: The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon

text: The series' post-Super Bowl episode in 2015 averaged 9.8 million viewers despite its late 12:13 a.m. start time. The following week's shows from Los Angeles maintained its highest ratings since its premiere. The show fell to second place on the debut night of "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" that September, though it quickly rebounded and has remained in first place. In 2016, a "New York Times" study of the 50 TV shows with the most Facebook Likes found that "Tonight" is more popular in cities than in the surrounding countryside; however, beginning in early 2017, "The Tonight Show" lost total viewership to "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" for sixteen consecutive weeks beginning from the week of inauguration of Donald Trump, and also marked the first time that "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" became the highest-rated late-night TV show by total viewership. Despite this loss, "The Tonight Show" led in the 18–49 year old demographic. "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" became the highest-rated late-night talk show for the September 2016 to May 2017 season, averaging 3.2 million nightly viewers, beating "The Tonight Show". His ratings fall has been ascribed to his pursuit of "broad appeal rather than political criticism" on divisive issues.


title: The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon

text: For the full 2020–21 television season, "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon" fell to third in overall ratings with an average 1.54 million viewers. Losing to "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" with an average 2.95 million viewers, 5th year in a row with most overall viewers, and "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" with an average 1.75 million viewers, first time beating "The Tonight Show".


title: The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon

text: Much like Fallon's preceding tenure on "Late Night", many clips of the show have been made available on YouTube, Facebook, and other services shortly after its television broadcast. Many clips have gone on to become viral videos, which, along with widely viewed videos from competitor "Jimmy Kimmel Live!", had an effect on the entire state of late-night television. Media pundits have predicted that future programs' accessibility online will be more important than their television ratings. David Letterman, a thirty-year veteran of the format who was the first host of "Late Night" and then hosted "Late Show" on CBS until 2015, partly retired due to his inability to produce viral bits.


title: The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon

text: In February 2015, Ben & Jerry's released a new flavor of ice cream called The Tonight Dough. It consists of caramel and chocolate ice creams topped with chocolate cookie swirls, chocolate chip cookie dough, and peanut butter cookie dough.


title: The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon

text: On October 27, 2015, it was announced that the attraction Twister...Ride it Out, at Universal Studios Florida, would be closing on November 2, 2015 to be replaced with Race Through New York Starring Jimmy Fallon, a ride based on Fallon's "Tonight Show", which opened on April 6, 2017.


title: The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon

text: In Australia, "The Tonight Show" premiered on The Comedy Channel on February 18, 2014 – airing the same day as its U.S. broadcast. It also airs on free-to-air network ABC Comedy (as opposed to The Comedy Channel which is a subscription television network) on a two-day delay, premiering on March 24, 2014. On September 21, 2014 The Comedy Channel dropped "The Tonight Show", making ABC Comedy the exclusive broadcaster of the show in Australia at the time. Beginning March 2, 2015, the series returned to pay television, this time, however, airing on E! – airing within hours of the American broadcast. On September 17, 2019, E! channel dropped the show and the program did not return to Australian television for over three years until it was announced that the new FTA multichannel 7Bravo would air the show from its launch in January 2023.


title: The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon

text: In Belgium, the show airs with a delay of several days on Vier at midnight CET every Monday through Friday, and at 11:05 pm CET every Sunday. The show's first broadcast took place on October 12, 2015.


title: The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon

text: In Brazil, the show aired on the subscription channel GNT, debuting on February 24, 2014 under the title "The Tonight Show com Jimmy Fallon". GNT broadcasts the show on a three-day delay at 1 am with Portuguese subtitles. The show's broadcast continued until September 2017, when GNT did not reach an agreement with NBC, which disallowed the channel to host the "Tonight Show" episodes on its on-demand video platform and by the one-week broadcast delay in relation to the United States, with the show's videos reaching the Brazilian public first through YouTube.


title: The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon

text: In MENA Countries, the show airs on OSN First Comedy HD, And re-two hours after the presentation on OSN First Comedy +2.


title: The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon

text: In Germany, the show was aired every Monday to Friday on One from 2016 to 2017. It included German subtitles.


title: The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon

text: In Hong Kong, since April 1, 2019, the show began airing on free-to-air channel ViuTVsix at 10:30 p.m. HKT on Monday through Thursday nights.


title: The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon

text: In Italy, the show airs Monday through Friday at 10:45pm CET on pay television network FOX the next day from the original NBC broadcast. It started airing on September 19, 2016 .


title: The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon

text: In Portugal, "The Tonight Show" airs on the subscription channel SIC Radical every Monday through Friday at 10 pm.


title: The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon

text: In Southeast Asia, "The Tonight Show" airs on CNBC Asia with back-to-back editions of the show on weekends, and on Blue Ant Entertainment within 12 hours after the U.S.


title: The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon

text: In the United Kingdom, the show airs a day after broadcast on E! at 10pm local time. An edited-down 30-minute version airs on CNBC Europe at 11 pm GMT, airing on a one-show delay from NBC. A selection of the best episodes are shown on Saturdays and Sundays from 9 pm CET in a 45-minute format. The two channels dropped the series when new sister network Sky Comedy launched with the series as part of its debut lineup in January 2020.


title: Cynthia Rhodes

text: Cynthia Rhodes (born November 21, 1956) is a retired American actress, singer and dancer. Her film roles include Tina Tech in "Flashdance" (1983), Jackie in "Staying Alive" (1983), officer Karen Thompson in "Runaway" (1984), and Penny in "Dirty Dancing" (1987).


title: Cynthia Rhodes

text: Born in Nashville, Tennessee, Rhodes began her show business career working at Opryland USA as a singer and dancer while attending Glencliff High School during the 1970s. Raised in a Baptist family, Rhodes tried to maintain a clean-cut image in her acting roles and in the media, turning down scripts that required nudity and refusing offers to pose for pictorials in "Playboy" magazine. Sylvester Stallone, the director of "Staying Alive", stated that Rhodes "would sooner quit the business before doing anything to embarrass her parents."


title: Cynthia Rhodes

text: Rhodes played a small role in the fantasy musical "Xanadu" (1980). In 1982 she appeared in a video production called "The Tubes Video" directed by Russell Mulcahy and choreographed by Kenny Ortega. This 52-minute long-form music video featured Rhodes as one of three backup dancers for the San Francisco-based rock band The Tubes and includes hits such as "Talk to You Later", "Sushi Girl", "Sports Fans" and "Mondo Bondage". Her next role was as Tina Tech in the musical film "Flashdance". After "Flashdance", Rhodes was cast opposite John Travolta in Sylvester Stallone's 1983 film "Staying Alive", a sequel to the 1977 hit film "Saturday Night Fever". Rhodes's character, Jackie, was an ensemble dancer, bar band singer, and sometime love interest of Travolta's character. While poorly reviewed, the film was commercially successful.


title: Cynthia Rhodes

text: Rhodes garnered her first non-dance related role in Michael Crichton's 1984 science fiction thriller "Runaway" with Tom Selleck, Kirstie Alley and Gene Simmons. Her most notable role was as dance instructor Penny Johnson in the hit 1987 motion picture "Dirty Dancing" with Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze. Rhodes's final motion picture role was the character of Vickie Phillips, playing opposite Jameson Parker, in the sleeper action-adventure movie "Curse of the Crystal Eye".


title: Cynthia Rhodes

text: Rhodes also appeared as a dancer in a number of music videos, including "Rosanna" by the band Toto, "The Woman in You" by the Bee Gees, and "Don't Mean Nothing" by Richard Marx. She was a dancer for the glam rock band The Tubes when they toured in the early 1980s. Rhodes later joined the pop group Animotion, replacing their lead singer Astrid Plane, for the recording of their third album of original material. Though the group's single "Room to Move" (from the film "My Stepmother Is an Alien") rose to No. 9 on the Billboard charts, the album failed to match the group's earlier success, peaking at only No. 110 on the pop charts; shortly thereafter, the group disbanded. In 2002, Rhodes co-wrote the smooth jazz track "Perfect Day" with then-husband Richard Marx for "December", trumpeter Chris Botti's holiday album.


title: Cynthia Rhodes

text: Rhodes was married to singer-songwriter Richard Marx. They met in 1983 while Marx was working on the motion picture soundtrack for "Staying Alive". Rhodes, who was seven years older than Marx, thought Marx was much too young for her to date at the time. Marx and Rhodes did not start their relationship until two years later, when they were reacquainted at a party. After a four-year courtship, the couple married on January 8, 1989. After marrying Marx and giving birth to three boys, Rhodes retired from her performing career to raise her family. In an "Us Weekly" article dated April 4, 2014, Marx's representative confirmed that he and Rhodes were divorcing after 25 years of marriage.


title: Rhetoric

text: Rhetoric () is the art of persuasion, which along with grammar and logic (or dialectic), is one of the three ancient arts of discourse. Rhetoric aims to study the techniques writers or speakers utilize to inform, persuade, or motivate particular audiences in specific situations. Aristotle defines rhetoric as "the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion" and since mastery of the art was necessary for victory in a case at law, for passage of proposals in the assembly, or for fame as a speaker in civic ceremonies, he calls it "a combination of the science of logic and of the ethical branch of politics". Rhetoric typically provides heuristics for understanding, discovering, and developing arguments for particular situations, such as Aristotle's three persuasive audience appeals: logos, pathos, and ethos. The five canons of rhetoric or phases of developing a persuasive speech were first codified in classical Rome: invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery.


title: Rhetoric

text: From Ancient Greece to the late 19th century, rhetoric played a central role in Western education in training orators, lawyers, counsellors, historians, statesmen, and poets.


title: Rhetoric

text: Scholars have debated the scope of rhetoric since ancient times. Although some have limited rhetoric to the specific realm of political discourse, many modern scholars liberate it to encompass every aspect of culture. Contemporary studies of rhetoric address a much more diverse range of domains than was the case in ancient times. While classical rhetoric trained speakers to be effective persuaders in public forums and institutions such as courtrooms and assemblies, contemporary rhetoric investigates human discourse writ large. Rhetoricians have studied the discourses of a wide variety of domains, including the natural and social sciences, fine art, religion, journalism, digital media, fiction, history, cartography, and architecture, along with the more traditional domains of politics and the law.


title: Rhetoric

text: Because the ancient Greeks highly valued public political participation, rhetoric emerged as a crucial tool to influence politics. Consequently, rhetoric remains associated with its political origins. However, even the original instructors of Western speech—the Sophists—disputed this limited view of rhetoric. According to the Sophists, such as Gorgias, a successful rhetorician could speak convincingly on any topic, regardless of his experience in that field. This method suggested rhetoric could be a means of communicating any expertise, not just politics. In his "Encomium to Helen", Gorgias even applied rhetoric to fiction by seeking for his own pleasure to prove the blamelessness of the mythical Helen of Troy in starting the Trojan War.


title: Rhetoric

text: Looking to another key rhetorical theorist, Plato defined the scope of rhetoric according to his negative opinions of the art. He criticized the Sophists for using rhetoric as a means of deceit instead of discovering truth. In "Gorgias", one of his Socratic Dialogues, Plato defines rhetoric as the persuasion of ignorant masses within the courts and assemblies. Rhetoric, in Plato's opinion, is merely a form of flattery and functions similarly to cookery, which masks the undesirability of unhealthy food by making it taste good. Thus, Plato considered any speech of lengthy prose aimed at flattery as within the scope of rhetoric. Some scholars, however, contest the idea that Plato despised rhetoric and instead view his dialogues as a dramatization of complex rhetorical principles.


title: Rhetoric

text: Aristotle both redeemed rhetoric from his teacher and narrowed its focus by defining three genres of rhetoric—deliberative, forensic or judicial, and epideictic. Yet, even as he provided order to existing rhetorical theories, Aristotle extended the definition of rhetoric, calling it the ability to identify the appropriate means of persuasion in a given situation, thereby making rhetoric applicable to all fields, not just politics. When one considers that rhetoric included torture (in the sense that the practice of torture is a form of persuasion or coercion), it is clear that rhetoric cannot be viewed only in academic terms. However, the enthymeme based upon logic (especially, based upon the syllogism) was viewed as the basis of rhetoric.


title: Rhetoric

text: However, since the time of Aristotle, logic has changed. For example, Modal logic has undergone a major development that also modifies rhetoric. Yet, Aristotle also outlined generic constraints that focused the rhetorical art squarely within the domain of public political practice. He restricted rhetoric to the domain of the contingent or probable: those matters that admit multiple legitimate opinions or arguments.


title: Rhetoric

text: The contemporary neo-Aristotelian and neo-Sophistic positions on rhetoric mirror the division between the Sophists and Aristotle. Neo-Aristotelians generally study rhetoric as political discourse, while the neo-Sophistic view contends that rhetoric cannot be so limited. Rhetorical scholar Michael Leff characterizes the conflict between these positions as viewing rhetoric as a "thing contained" versus a "container". The neo-Aristotelian view threatens the study of rhetoric by restraining it to such a limited field, ignoring many critical applications of rhetorical theory, criticism, and practice. Simultaneously, the neo-Sophists threaten to expand rhetoric beyond a point of coherent theoretical value.


title: Rhetoric

text: Over the past century, people studying rhetoric have tended to enlarge its object domain beyond speech texts. Kenneth Burke asserted humans use rhetoric to resolve conflicts by identifying shared characteristics and interests in symbols. By nature, humans engage in identification, either to assign oneself or another to a group. This definition of rhetoric as identification broadened the scope from strategic and overt political persuasion to the more implicit tactics of identification found in an immense range of sources.


title: Rhetoric

text: Among the many scholars who have since pursued Burke's line of thought, James Boyd White sees rhetoric as a broader domain of social experience in his notion of constitutive rhetoric. Influenced by theories of social construction, White argues that culture is "reconstituted" through language. Just as language influences people, people influence language. Language is socially constructed, and depends on the meanings people attach to it. Because language is not rigid and changes depending on the situation, the very usage of language is rhetorical. An author, White would say, is always trying to construct a new world and persuading his or her readers to share that world within the text.


title: Rhetoric

text: People engage in the rhetorical process anytime they speak or produce meaning. Even in the field of science, the practices of which were once viewed as being merely the objective testing and reporting of knowledge, scientists must persuade their audience to accept their findings by sufficiently demonstrating that their study or experiment was conducted reliably and resulted in sufficient evidence to support their conclusions.


title: Rhetoric

text: The vast scope of rhetoric is difficult to define; however, political discourse remains, in many ways, the paradigmatic example for studying and theorizing specific techniques and conceptions of persuasion, considered by many a synonym for "rhetoric".


title: Rhetoric

text: Throughout European History, rhetoric has concerned itself with persuasion in public and political settings such as assemblies and courts. Because of its associations with democratic institutions, rhetoric is commonly said to flourish in open and democratic societies with rights of free speech, free assembly, and political enfranchisement for some portion of the population. Those who classify rhetoric as a civic art believe that rhetoric has the power to shape communities, form the character of citizens and greatly affect civic life.


title: Rhetoric

text: Rhetoric was viewed as a civic art by several of the ancient philosophers. Aristotle and Isocrates were two of the first to see rhetoric in this light. In his work, Antidosis, Isocrates states, "We have come together and founded cities and made laws and invented arts; and, generally speaking, there is no institution devised by man which the power of speech has not helped us to establish." With this statement he argues that rhetoric is a fundamental part of civic life in every society and that it has been necessary in the foundation of all aspects of society. He further argues in his piece Against the Sophists that rhetoric, although it cannot be taught to just anyone, is capable of shaping the character of man. He writes, "I do think that the study of political discourse can help more than any other thing to stimulate and form such qualities of character." Aristotle, writing several years after Isocrates, supported many of his arguments and continued to make arguments for rhetoric as a civic art.


title: Rhetoric

text: In the words of Aristotle, in the "Rhetoric", rhetoric is "... the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion". According to Aristotle, this art of persuasion could be used in public settings in three different ways. He writes in Book I, Chapter III, "A member of the assembly decides about future events, a juryman about past events: while those who merely decide on the orator's skill are observers. From this it follows that there are three divisions of oratory – (1) political, (2) forensic, and (3) the ceremonial oratory of display". Eugene Garver, in his critique of "Aristotle's Rhetoric", confirms that Aristotle viewed rhetoric as a civic art. Garver writes, "Rhetoric articulates a civic art of rhetoric, combining the almost incompatible properties of techne and appropriateness to citizens." Each of Aristotle's divisions plays a role in civic life and can be used in a different way to affect cities.


title: Rhetoric

text: Because rhetoric is a public art capable of shaping opinion, some of the ancients including Plato found fault in it. They claimed that while it could be used to improve civic life, it could be used equally easily to deceive or manipulate with negative effects on the city. The masses were incapable of analyzing or deciding anything on their own and would therefore be swayed by the most persuasive speeches. Thus, civic life could be controlled by the one who could deliver the best speech. Plato explores the problematic moral status of rhetoric twice: in "Gorgias", a dialogue named for the famed Sophist, and in "The Phaedrus", a dialogue best known for its commentary on love.


title: Rhetoric

text: More trusting in the power of rhetoric to support a republic, the Roman orator Cicero argued that art required something more than eloquence. A good orator needed also to be a good man, a person enlightened on a variety of civic topics. He describes the proper training of the orator in his major text on rhetoric, "De Oratore", modeled on Plato's dialogues.


title: Rhetoric

text: Modern day works continue to support the claims of the ancients that rhetoric is an art capable of influencing civic life. In his work "Political Style", Robert Hariman claims, "Furthermore, questions of freedom, equality, and justice often are raised and addressed through performances ranging from debates to demonstrations without loss of moral content". James Boyd White argues further that rhetoric is capable not only of addressing issues of political interest but that it can influence culture as a whole. In his book, "When Words Lose Their Meaning", he argues that words of persuasion and identification define community and civic life. He states that words produce "the methods by which culture is maintained, criticized, and transformed". Both White and Hariman agree that words and rhetoric have the power to shape culture and civic life.


title: Rhetoric

text: In modern times, rhetoric has consistently remained relevant as a civic art. In speeches, as well as in non-verbal forms, rhetoric continues to be used as a tool to influence communities from local to national levels.


title: Rhetoric

text: Rhetoric as a course of study has evolved significantly since its ancient beginnings. Through the ages, the study and teaching of rhetoric has adapted to the particular exigencies of the time and venue. The study of rhetoric has conformed to a multitude of different applications, ranging from architecture to literature. Although the curriculum has transformed in a number of ways, it has generally emphasized the study of principles and rules of composition as a means for moving audiences. Generally speaking, the study of rhetoric trains students to speak and/or write effectively, as well as critically understand and analyze discourse.


title: Rhetoric

text: Rhetoric began as a civic art in Ancient Greece where students were trained to develop tactics of oratorical persuasion, especially in legal disputes. Rhetoric originated in a school of pre-Socratic philosophers known as the Sophists circa 600 BC. Demosthenes and Lysias emerged as major orators during this period, and Isocrates and Gorgias as prominent teachers. Rhetorical education focused on five particular canons: "inventio" (invention), "dispositio" (arrangement), "elocutio" (style), "memoria" (memory), and "actio" (delivery). Modern teachings continue to reference these rhetorical leaders and their work in discussions of classical rhetoric and persuasion.


title: Rhetoric

text: Rhetoric was later taught in universities during the Middle Ages as one of the three original liberal arts or trivium (along with logic and grammar). During the medieval period, political rhetoric declined as republican oratory died out and the emperors of Rome garnered increasing authority. With the rise of European monarchs in following centuries, rhetoric shifted into the courtly and religious applications. Augustine exerted strong influence on Christian rhetoric in the Middle Ages, advocating the use of rhetoric to lead audiences to truth and understanding, especially in the church. The study of liberal arts, he believed, contributed to rhetorical study: "In the case of a keen and ardent nature, fine words will come more readily through reading and hearing the eloquent than by pursuing the rules of rhetoric." Poetry and letter writing, for instance, became a central component of rhetorical study during the Middle Ages. After the fall of the Republic in Rome, poetry became a tool for rhetorical training since there were fewer opportunities for political speech. Letter writing was the primary form through which business was conducted both in state and church, so it became an important aspect of rhetorical education.


title: Rhetoric

text: Rhetorical education became more restrained as style and substance separated in 16th-century France with Peter Ramus, and attention turned to the scientific method. That is, influential scholars like Ramus argued that the processes of invention and arrangement should be elevated to the domain of philosophy, while rhetorical instruction should be chiefly concerned with the use of figures and other forms of the ornamentation of language. Scholars such as Francis Bacon developed the study of "scientific rhetoric". This concentration rejected the elaborate style characteristic of the classical oration. This plain language carried over to John Locke's teaching, which emphasized concrete knowledge and steered away from ornamentation in speech, further alienating rhetorical instruction, which was identified wholly with this ornamentation, from the pursuit of knowledge.


title: Rhetoric

text: In the 18th century, rhetoric assumed a more social role, initiating the creation of new education systems. "Elocution schools" arose (predominantly in England) in which females analyzed classic literature, most notably the works of William Shakespeare, and discussed pronunciation tactics.


title: Rhetoric

text: The study of rhetoric underwent a revival with the rise of democratic institutions during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Scotland's author and theorist Hugh Blair served as a key leader of this movement during the late 18th century. In his most famous work "Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres", he advocates rhetorical study for common citizens as a resource for social success. Many American colleges and secondary schools used Blair's text throughout the 19th century to train students of rhetoric.


title: Rhetoric

text: Political rhetoric also underwent renewal in the wake of the US and French revolutions. The rhetorical studies of ancient Greece and Rome were resurrected in the studies of the era as speakers and teachers looked to Cicero and others to inspire defense of the new republic. Leading rhetorical theorists included John Quincy Adams of Harvard who advocated the democratic advancement of rhetorical art. Harvard's founding of the Boylston Professorship of Rhetoric and Oratory sparked the growth of rhetorical study in colleges across the United States. Harvard's rhetoric program drew inspiration from literary sources to guide organization and style. Recently, there have been studies conducted examining the rhetoric used in political speech acts to illustrate how political figures will persuade audiences for their own purposes.


title: Rhetoric

text: Debate clubs and lyceums also developed as forums in which common citizens could hear speakers and sharpen debate skills. The American lyceum in particular was seen as both an educational and social institution, featuring group discussions and guest lecturers. These programs cultivated democratic values and promoted active participation in political analysis.


title: Rhetoric

text: Throughout the 20th century, rhetoric developed as a concentrated field of study with the establishment of rhetorical courses in high schools and universities. Courses such as public speaking and speech analysis apply fundamental Greek theories (such as the modes of persuasion: ethos, pathos, and logos) as well as trace rhetorical development throughout the course of history. Rhetoric has earned a more esteemed reputation as a field of study with the emergence of Communication Studies departments as well as Rhetoric and Composition programs within English departments in universities and in conjunction with the linguistic turn. Rhetorical study has broadened in scope, and is especially utilized by the fields of marketing, politics, and literature.


title: Rhetoric

text: Rhetoric, as an area of study, is concerned with how humans use symbols, especially language, to reach agreement that permits coordinated effort of some sort. Harvard University, the first university in the United States, based on the European model, taught a basic curriculum, including rhetoric. Rhetoric, in this sense, how to properly give speeches, played an important role in their training. Rhetoric was soon taught in departments of English as well.


title: Rhetoric

text: Having enjoyed a resurgence during the Renaissance nearly every author who wrote about music before the Romantic era discussed rhetoric. Joachim Burmeister wrote in 1601, "there is only little difference between music and the nature of oration". Christoph Bernhard in the latter half of the century said "...until the art of music has attained such a height in our own day, that it may indeed be compared to a rhetoric, in view of the multitude of figures".


title: Rhetoric

text: The relationship between rhetoric and knowledge is an old and interesting philosophical problem, partly because of our different assumptions on the nature of knowledge. But it is fairly clear that while knowledge is primarily concerned with what is commonly known as "truth", rhetoric is primarily concerned with statements and their effects on the audience. The word "rhetoric" may also refer to "empty speak", which reflects an indifference to truth, and in this sense rhetoric is adversarial to knowledge. Plato famously criticized the Sophists for their rhetoric which had persuaded people to sentence his friend Socrates to death regardless of what was true. However, rhetoric is also used in the construction of true arguments, or in identifying what is relevant, the crux of the matter, in a selection of true but otherwise trivial statements. Hence, rhetoric is also closely related to knowledge.


title: Rhetoric

text: Rhetoric has its origins in Mesopotamia. Some of the earliest examples of rhetoric can be found in the Akkadian writings of the princess and priestess Enheduanna (c. 2285–2250 BC). As the first named author in history, Enheduanna's writing exhibits numerous rhetorical features that would later become canon in Ancient Greece. Enheduanna's "The Exaltation of Inanna," includes an exordium, argument, and peroration, as well as elements of ethos, pathos, and logos, and repetition and metonymy. She is also known for describing her process of invention in "The Exaltation of Inanna," moving between first- and third-person address to relate her composing process in collaboration with the goddess Inanna, reflecting a mystical enthymeme in drawing upon a Cosmic audience. Later examples of early rhetoric can be found in the Neo-Assyrian Empire during the time of Sennacherib (704–681 BC).


title: Rhetoric

text: In ancient Egypt, rhetoric had existed since at least the Middle Kingdom period (c. 2080–1640 BC). The five canons of eloquence in ancient Egyptian rhetoric include silence, timing, restraint, fluency, and truthfulness. The Egyptians held eloquent speaking in high esteem, and it was a skill that had a very high value in their society. The "Egyptian rules of rhetoric" also clearly specified that "knowing when not to speak is essential, and very respected, rhetorical knowledge". Their "approach to rhetoric" was thus a "balance between eloquence and wise silence". Their rules of speech also strongly emphasized "adherence to social behaviors that support a conservative status quo" and they held that "skilled speech should support, not question, society". In ancient China, rhetoric dates back to the Chinese philosopher, Confucius (551–479 BC), and continued with later followers. The tradition of Confucianism emphasized the use of eloquence in speaking. The use of rhetoric can also be found in the ancient Biblical tradition.


title: Rhetoric

text: In ancient Greece, the earliest mention of oratorical skill occurs in Homer's "Iliad", where heroes like Achilles, Hector, and Odysseus were honored for their ability to advise and exhort their peers and followers (the "Laos" or army) in wise and appropriate action. With the rise of the democratic "polis", speaking skill was adapted to the needs of the public and political life of cities in ancient Greece, much of which revolved around the use of oratory as the medium through which political and judicial decisions were made, and through which philosophical ideas were developed and disseminated. For modern students today, it can be difficult to remember that the wide use and availability of written texts is a phenomenon that was just coming into vogue in Classical Greece. In Classical times, many of the great thinkers and political leaders performed their works before an audience, usually in the context of a competition or contest for fame, political influence, and cultural capital; in fact, many of them are known only through the texts that their students, followers, or detractors wrote down. As has already been noted, "rhetor" was the Greek term for "orator:" A "rhetor" was a citizen who regularly addressed juries and political assemblies and who was thus understood to have gained some knowledge about public speaking in the process, though in general facility with language was often referred to as "logôn techne", "skill with arguments" or "verbal artistry".


title: Rhetoric

text: Rhetoric thus evolved as an important art, one that provided the orator with the forms, means, and strategies for persuading an audience of the correctness of the orator's arguments. Today the term "rhetoric" can be used at times to refer only to the form of argumentation, often with the pejorative connotation that rhetoric is a means of obscuring the truth. Classical philosophers believed quite the contrary: the skilled use of rhetoric was essential to the discovery of truths, because it provided the means of ordering and clarifying arguments.


title: Rhetoric

text: In Europe, organized thought about public speaking began in ancient Greece. Possibly, the first study about the power of language may be attributed to the philosopher Empedocles (d. c. 444 BC), whose theories on human knowledge would provide a newfound basis for many future rhetoricians. The first written manual is attributed to Corax and his pupil Tisias. Their work, as well as that of many of the early rhetoricians, grew out of the courts of law; Tisias, for example, is believed to have written judicial speeches that others delivered in the courts.


title: Rhetoric

text: Teaching in oratory was popularized in the 5th century BC by itinerant teachers known as sophists, the best known of whom were Protagoras (c. 481–420 BC), Gorgias (c. 483–376 BC), and Isocrates (436–338 BC). Aspasia of Miletus is believed to be one of the first women to engage in private and public rhetoric activities as a Sophist. The Sophists were a disparate group who travelled from city to city, teaching in public places to attract students and offer them an education. Their central focus was on logos or what we might broadly refer to as discourse, its functions and powers. They defined parts of speech, analyzed poetry, parsed close synonyms, invented argumentation strategies, and debated the nature of reality. They claimed to make their students "better", or, in other words, to teach virtue. They thus claimed that human "excellence" was not an accident of fate or a prerogative of noble birth, but an art or ""techne"" that could be taught and learned. They were thus among the first humanists.


title: Rhetoric

text: Several sophists also questioned received wisdom about the gods and the Greek culture, which they believed was taken for granted by Greeks of their time, making them among the first agnostics. For example, they argued that cultural practices were a function of convention or "nomos" rather than blood or birth or "phusis". They argued even further that morality or immorality of any action could not be judged outside of the cultural context within which it occurred. The well-known phrase, "Man is the measure of all things" arises from this belief. One of their most famous, and infamous, doctrines has to do with probability and counter arguments. They taught that every argument could be countered with an opposing argument, that an argument's effectiveness derived from how "likely" it appeared to the audience (its probability of seeming true), and that any probability argument could be countered with an inverted probability argument. Thus, if it seemed likely that a strong, poor man were guilty of robbing a rich, weak man, the strong poor man could argue, on the contrary, that this very likelihood (that he would be a suspect) makes it unlikely that he committed the crime, since he would most likely be apprehended for the crime. They also taught and were known for their ability to make the weaker (or worse) argument the stronger (or better). Aristophanes famously parodies the clever inversions that sophists were known for in his play "The Clouds".


title: Rhetoric

text: The word "sophistry" developed strong negative connotations in ancient Greece that continue today, but in ancient Greece sophists were nevertheless popular and well-paid professionals, widely respected for their abilities but also widely criticized for their excesses.


title: Rhetoric

text: Isocrates (436–338 BC), like the sophists, taught public speaking as a means of human improvement, but he worked to distinguish himself from the Sophists, whom he saw as claiming far more than they could deliver. He suggested that while an art of virtue or excellence did exist, it was only one piece, and the least, in a process of self-improvement that relied much more heavily on native talent and desire, constant practice, and the imitation of good models. Isocrates believed that practice in speaking publicly about noble themes and important questions would function to improve the character of both speaker and audience while also offering the best service to a city. In fact, Isocrates was an outspoken champion of rhetoric as a mode of civic engagement. He thus wrote his speeches as "models" for his students to imitate in the same way that poets might imitate Homer or Hesiod, seeking to inspire in them a desire to attain fame through civic leadership. His was the first permanent school in Athens and it is likely that Plato's Academy and Aristotle's Lyceum were founded in part as a response to Isocrates. Though he left no handbooks, his speeches (""Antidosis"" and ""Against the Sophists"" are most relevant to students of rhetoric) became models of oratory (he was one of the canonical "Ten Attic Orators") and keys to his entire educational program. He had a marked influence on Cicero and Quintilian, and through them, on the entire educational system of the west.


title: Rhetoric

text: Plato (427–347 BC) famously outlined the differences between true and false rhetoric in a number of dialogues; particularly the "Gorgias" and "Phaedrus" dialogues wherein Plato disputes the sophistic notion that the art of persuasion (the sophists' art, which he calls "rhetoric"), can exist independent of the art of dialectic. Plato claims that since sophists appeal only to what seems probable, they are not advancing their students and audiences, but simply flattering them with what they want to hear. While Plato's condemnation of rhetoric is clear in the "Gorgias", in the "Phaedrus" he suggests the possibility of a true art wherein rhetoric is based upon the knowledge produced by dialectic, and relies on a dialectically informed rhetoric to appeal to the main character, Phaedrus, to take up philosophy. Thus Plato's rhetoric is actually dialectic (or philosophy) "turned" toward those who are not yet philosophers and are thus unready to pursue dialectic directly. Plato's animosity against rhetoric, and against the sophists, derives not only from their inflated claims to teach virtue and their reliance on appearances, but from the fact that his teacher, Socrates, was sentenced to death after sophists' efforts.


title: Rhetoric

text: Some scholars, however, see Plato not as an opponent of rhetoric but rather as a nuanced rhetorical theorist who dramatized rhetorical practice in his dialogues and imagined rhetoric as more than just oratory.


title: Rhetoric

text: Aristotle (384–322 BC) was a student of Plato who famously set forth an extended treatise on rhetoric that still repays careful study today. In the first sentence of The Art of Rhetoric, Aristotle says that "rhetoric is the counterpart [literally, the antistrophe] of dialectic". As the "antistrophe" of a Greek ode responds to and is patterned after the structure of the "strophe" (they form two sections of the whole and are sung by two parts of the chorus), so the art of rhetoric follows and is structurally patterned after the art of dialectic because both are arts of discourse production. Thus, while dialectical methods are necessary to find truth in theoretical matters, rhetorical methods are required in practical matters such as adjudicating somebody's guilt or innocence when charged in a court of law, or adjudicating a prudent course of action to be taken in a deliberative assembly. The core features of dialectic include the absence of determined subject matter, its elaboration on earlier empirical practice, the explication of its aims, the type of utility and the definition of the proper function.


title: Rhetoric

text: For Plato and Aristotle, dialectic involves persuasion, so when Aristotle says that rhetoric is the antistrophe of dialectic, he means that rhetoric as he uses the term has a domain or scope of application that is parallel to, but different from, the domain or scope of application of dialectic. In "Nietzsche Humanist" (1998: 129), Claude Pavur explains that "[t]he Greek prefix 'anti' does not merely designate opposition, but it can also mean 'in place of.'" When Aristotle characterizes rhetoric as the antistrophe of dialectic, he no doubt means that rhetoric is used in place of dialectic when we are discussing civic issues in a court of law or in a legislative assembly. The domain of rhetoric is civic affairs and practical decision making in civic affairs, not theoretical considerations of operational definitions of terms and clarification of thought. These, for him, are in the domain of dialectic.


title: Rhetoric

text: Aristotle's treatise on rhetoric systematically describes civic rhetoric as a human art or skill (techne). It is more of an objective theory than it is an interpretive theory with a rhetorical tradition. Aristotle's art of rhetoric emphasizes persuasion as the purpose of rhetoric. His definition of rhetoric as "the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion", essentially a mode of discovery, limits the art to the inventional process, and Aristotle heavily emphasizes the logical aspect of this process. In his account, rhetoric is the art of discovering all available means of persuasion. A speaker supports the probability of a message by logical, ethical, and emotional proofs. Some form of logos, ethos, and pathos is present in every possible public presentation that exists. But the treatise in fact also discusses not only elements of style and (briefly) delivery, but also emotional appeals (pathos) and characterological appeals (ethos).


title: Rhetoric

text: Aristotle identifies three steps or "offices" of rhetoric—invention, arrangement, and style—and three different types of rhetorical proof: ethos (Aristotle's theory of character and how the character and credibility of a speaker can influence an audience to consider him/her to be believable—there being three qualities that contribute to a credible ethos: perceived intelligence, virtuous character, and goodwill); pathos (the use of emotional appeals to alter the audience's judgment through metaphor, amplification, storytelling, or presenting the topic in a way that evokes strong emotions in the audience.); and, logos (the use of reasoning, either inductive or deductive, to construct an argument).


title: Rhetoric

text: Aristotle emphasized "enthymematic reasoning" as central to the process of rhetorical invention, though later rhetorical theorists placed much less emphasis on it. An "enthymeme" would follow today's form of a syllogism; however it would exclude either the major or minor premise. An enthymeme is persuasive because the audience is providing the missing premise. Because the audience is able to provide the missing premise, they are more likely to be persuaded by the message.


title: Rhetoric

text: Aristotle identified three different types or genres of civic rhetoric. "Forensic" (also known as judicial), was concerned with determining the truth or falseness of events that took place in the past and issues of guilt. An example of forensic rhetoric would be in a courtroom. "Deliberative" (also known as political), was concerned with determining whether or not particular actions should or should not be taken in the future. Making laws would be an example of deliberative rhetoric. "Epideictic" (also known as ceremonial), was concerned with praise and blame, values, right and wrong, demonstrating beauty and skill in the present. Examples of epideictic rhetoric would include a eulogy or a wedding toast.


title: Rhetoric

text: India has a deep and enriching past in the art of rhetoric. In "India's Struggle for Independence", Chandra et al. offer a vivid description of the culture that sprang up around the newspaper in village India of the early 1870s:


title: Rhetoric

text: This reading and discussion was the focal point of origin of the modern Indian rhetorical movement. Much before this, ancient greats such as Kautilya, Birbal, and the likes indulged themselves in a great deal of discussion and persuasion.


title: Rhetoric

text: Keith Lloyd in his 2007 article "Rethinking Rhetoric from an Indian perspective: Implications in the "Nyaya Sutra"" said that much of the recital of the Vedas can be likened to the recital of ancient Greek poetry. Lloyd proposed including the "Nyāya Sūtras" in the field of rhetorical studies, exploring its methods within their historical context, comparing its approach to the traditional logical syllogism, and relating it to the contemporary perspectives of Stephen Toulmin, Kenneth Burke, and Chaim Perelman.


title: Rhetoric

text: "Nyaya" is a Sanskrit word which means just or right and refers to "the science of right and wrong reasoning" (Radhakrishnan & Moore, 1957, p. 356). "Sutra" is also a Sanskrit word which means string or thread. Here sutra refers to a collection of aphorism in the form of a manual. Each sutra is a short rule usually consisted of one or two sentences. An example of a sutra is: "Reality is truth, and what is true is so, irrespective of whether we know it is, or are aware of that truth." The "Nyāya Sūtras" is an ancient Indian Sanskrit text composed by Aksapada Gautama. It is the foundational text of the Nyaya school of Hindu philosophy. The date when the text was composed, and the biography of its author is unknown. It is estimated that the text was composed between 6th-century BC and 2nd-century AD. Zimmer (2013) has said that the text may have been composed by more one author, over a period of time. Radhakrishan and Moore (1957) placed its origin in the "third century BC ... though some of the contents of the Nyaya Sutra are certainly a post-Christian era" (p. 36). Vidyabhusana (1930) stated that the ancient school of Nyaya extended over a period of one thousand years, beginning with Gautama about 550 BC and ending with Vatsyayana about 400 AD.


title: Rhetoric

text: Nyaya provides significant insight into the Indian rhetoric. Nyaya presents an argumentative approach that works a rhetor how to decide about any argument. In addition, it proposes a new approach of thinking of a cultural tradition which is different from the Western rhetoric. It also broadens the view of rhetoric and the relationship among human beings. Nyaya proposes an enlightenment of reality which is associated with situations, time, and places. Toulmin emphasizes the situational dimension of argumentative genre as the fundamental component of any rhetorical logic. On the contrary, Nyaya views this situational rhetoric in a new way which offers context of practical arguments.


title: Rhetoric

text: Some of India's famous rhetors include Kabir Das, Rahim Das, Chanakya, Chandragupt Maurya, and so on.


title: Rhetoric

text: The serve as a guide to creating persuasive messages and arguments. These are invention (the process of developing arguments); arrangement (organizing the arguments for extreme effect); style (determining how to present the arguments); memory (the process of learning and memorizing the speech and persuasive messages), and delivery (the gestures, pronunciation, tone and pace used when presenting the persuasive arguments).


title: Rhetoric

text: In the rhetoric field, there is an intellectual debate about Aristotle's definition of rhetoric. Some believe that Aristotle defines rhetoric in "On Rhetoric" as the art of persuasion, while others think he defines it as the art of judgment. Rhetoric as the art of judgment would mean the rhetor discerns the available means of persuasion with a choice. Aristotle also says rhetoric is concerned with judgment because the audience judges the rhetor's ethos.


title: Rhetoric

text: One of the most famous of Aristotelian doctrines was the idea of topics (also referred to as common topics or commonplaces). Though the term had a wide range of application (as a memory technique or compositional exercise, for example) it most often referred to the "seats of argument"—the list of categories of thought or modes of reasoning—that a speaker could use to generate arguments or proofs. The topics were thus a heuristic or inventional tool designed to help speakers categorize and thus better retain and apply frequently used types of argument. For example, since we often see effects as "like" their causes, one way to invent an argument (about a future effect) is by discussing the cause (which it will be "like"). This and other rhetorical topics derive from Aristotle's belief that there are certain predictable ways in which humans (particularly non-specialists) draw conclusions from premises. Based upon and adapted from his dialectical Topics, the rhetorical topics became a central feature of later rhetorical theorizing, most famously in Cicero's work of that name.


title: Rhetoric

text: For the Romans, oration became an important part of public life. Cicero (106–43 BC) was chief among Roman rhetoricians and remains the best known ancient orator and the only orator who both spoke in public and produced treatises on the subject. "Rhetorica ad Herennium", formerly attributed to Cicero but now considered to be of unknown authorship, is one of the most significant works on rhetoric and is still widely used as a reference today. It is an extensive reference on the use of rhetoric, and in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, it achieved wide publication as an advanced school text on rhetoric.


title: Rhetoric

text: Cicero is considered one of the most significant rhetoricians of all time, charting a middle path between the competing Attic and Asiatic styles to become considered second only to Demosthenes among history's orators. His works include the early and very influential "De Inventione" (On Invention, often read alongside the "Ad Herennium" as the two basic texts of rhetorical theory throughout the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance), "De Oratore" (a fuller statement of rhetorical principles in dialogue form), "Topics" (a rhetorical treatment of common topics, highly influential through the Renaissance), "Brutus" (a discussion of famous orators) and "Orator" (a defense of Cicero's style). Cicero also left a large body of speeches and letters which would establish the outlines of Latin eloquence and style for generations to come.


title: Rhetoric

text: It was the rediscovery of Cicero's speeches (such as the defense of Archias) and letters (to Atticus) by Italians like Petrarch that, in part, ignited the cultural innovations that is known as the Renaissance. He championed the learning of Greek (and Greek rhetoric), contributed to Roman ethics, linguistics, philosophy, and politics, and emphasized the importance of all forms of appeal (emotion, humor, stylistic range, irony and digression in addition to pure reasoning) in oratory. But perhaps his most significant contribution to subsequent rhetoric, and education in general, was his argument that orators learn not only about the specifics of their case (the "hypothesis") but also about the general questions from which they derived (the "theses"). Thus, in giving a speech in defense of a poet whose Roman citizenship had been questioned, the orator should examine not only the specifics of that poet's civic status, he should also examine the role and value of poetry and of literature more generally in Roman culture and political life. The orator, said Cicero, needed to be knowledgeable about all areas of human life and culture, including law, politics, history, literature, ethics, warfare, medicine, even arithmetic and geometry. Cicero gave rise to the idea that the "ideal orator" be well-versed in all branches of learning: an idea that was rendered as "liberal humanism", and that lives on today in liberal arts or general education requirements in colleges and universities around the world.


title: Rhetoric

text: Quintilian (35–100 AD) began his career as a pleader in the courts of law; his reputation grew so great that Vespasian created a chair of rhetoric for him in Rome. The culmination of his life's work was the "Institutio Oratoria" ("Institutes of Oratory," or alternatively, "The Orator's Education"), a lengthy treatise on the training of the orator, in which he discusses the training of the "perfect" orator from birth to old age and, in the process, reviews the doctrines and opinions of many influential rhetoricians who preceded him.


title: Rhetoric

text: In the Institutes, Quintilian organizes rhetorical study through the stages of education that an aspiring orator would undergo, beginning with the selection of a nurse. Aspects of elementary education (training in reading and writing, grammar, and literary criticism) are followed by preliminary rhetorical exercises in composition (the progymnasmata) that include maxims and fables, narratives and comparisons, and finally full legal or political speeches. The delivery of speeches within the context of education or for entertainment purposes became widespread and popular under the term "declamation". Rhetorical training proper was categorized under five canons that would persist for centuries in academic circles:


title: Rhetoric

text: This work was available only in fragments in medieval times, but the discovery of a complete copy at the Abbey of St. Gall in 1416 led to its emergence as one of the most influential works on rhetoric during the Renaissance.


title: Rhetoric

text: Quintilian's work describes not just the art of rhetoric, but the formation of the perfect orator as a politically active, virtuous, publicly minded citizen. His emphasis was on the ethical application of rhetorical training, in part a reaction against the growing tendency in Roman schools toward standardization of themes and techniques. At the same time that rhetoric was becoming divorced from political decision making, rhetoric rose as a culturally vibrant and important mode of entertainment and cultural criticism in a movement known as the "second sophistic", a development that gave rise to the charge (made by Quintilian and others) that teachers were emphasizing style over substance in rhetoric.


title: Rhetoric

text: After the breakup of the western Roman Empire, the study of rhetoric continued to be central to the study of the verbal arts; but the study of the verbal arts went into decline for several centuries, followed eventually by a gradual rise in formal education, culminating in the rise of medieval universities. But rhetoric transmuted during this period into the arts of letter writing ("ars dictaminis") and sermon writing ("ars praedicandi"). As part of the "trivium", rhetoric was secondary to the study of logic, and its study was highly scholastic: students were given repetitive exercises in the creation of discourses on historical subjects ("suasoriae") or on classic legal questions ("controversiae").


title: Rhetoric

text: Although he is not commonly regarded as a rhetorician, St. Augustine (354–430) was trained in rhetoric and was at one time a professor of Latin rhetoric in Milan. After his conversion to Christianity, he became interested in using these "pagan" arts for spreading his religion. This new use of rhetoric is explored in the Fourth Book of his "De Doctrina Christiana", which laid the foundation of what would become homiletics, the rhetoric of the sermon. Augustine begins the book by asking why "the power of eloquence, which is so efficacious in pleading either for the erroneous cause or the right", should not be used for righteous purposes (IV. 3).


title: Rhetoric

text: One early concern of the medieval Christian church was its attitude to classical rhetoric itself. Jerome (d. 420) complained, "What has Horace to do with the Psalms, Virgil with the Gospels, Cicero with the Apostles?" Augustine is also remembered for arguing for the preservation of pagan works and fostering a church tradition that led to conservation of numerous pre-Christian rhetorical writings.


title: Rhetoric

text: Rhetoric would not regain its classical heights until the Renaissance, but new writings did advance rhetorical thought. Boethius (480?–524), in his brief "Overview of the Structure of Rhetoric", continues Aristotle's taxonomy by placing rhetoric in subordination to philosophical argument or dialectic. The introduction of Arab scholarship from European relations with the Muslim empire (in particular Al-Andalus) renewed interest in Aristotle and Classical thought in general, leading to what some historians call the 12th century Renaissance. A number of medieval grammars and studies of poetry and rhetoric appeared.


title: Rhetoric

text: Late medieval rhetorical writings include those of St. Thomas Aquinas (1225?–1274), Matthew of Vendome ("Ars Versificatoria", 1175?), and Geoffrey of Vinsauf ("Poetria Nova", 1200–1216). Pre-modern female rhetoricians, outside of Socrates' friend Aspasia, are rare; but medieval rhetoric produced by women either in religious orders, such as Julian of Norwich (d. 1415), or the very well-connected Christine de Pizan (1364?–1430?), did occur if not always recorded in writing.


title: Rhetoric

text: In his 1943 Cambridge University doctoral dissertation in English, Canadian Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) surveys the verbal arts from approximately the time of Cicero down to the time of Thomas Nashe (1567–1600?). His dissertation is still noteworthy for undertaking to study the history of the verbal arts together as the trivium, even though the developments that he surveys have been studied in greater detail since he undertook his study. As noted below, McLuhan became one of the most widely publicized thinkers in the 20th century, so it is important to note his scholarly roots in the study of the history of rhetoric and dialectic.


title: Rhetoric

text: Another interesting record of medieval rhetorical thought can be seen in the many animal debate poems popular in England and the continent during the Middle Ages, such as The Owl and the Nightingale (13th century) and Geoffrey Chaucer's Parliament of Fowls.


title: Rhetoric

text: Walter J. Ong's article "Humanism" in the 1967 "New Catholic Encyclopedia" surveys Renaissance humanism, which defined itself broadly as disfavoring medieval scholastic logic and dialectic and as favoring instead the study of classical Latin style and grammar and philology and rhetoric. (Reprinted in Ong's "Faith and Contexts" (Scholars Press, 1999; 4: 69–91.))


title: Rhetoric

text: One influential figure in the rebirth of interest in classical rhetoric was Erasmus (–1536). His 1512 work, "De Duplici Copia Verborum et Rerum" (also known as ""), was widely published (it went through more than 150 editions throughout Europe) and became one of the basic school texts on the subject. Its treatment of rhetoric is less comprehensive than the classic works of antiquity, but provides a traditional treatment of "res-verba" (matter and form): its first book treats the subject of elocutio, showing the student how to use schemes and tropes; the second book covers inventio. Much of the emphasis is on abundance of variation ("copia" means "plenty" or "abundance", as in copious or cornucopia), so both books focus on ways to introduce the maximum amount of variety into discourse. For instance, in one section of the "De Copia", Erasmus presents two hundred variations of the sentence "" Another of his works, the extremely popular The Praise of Folly, also had considerable influence on the teaching of rhetoric in the later 16th century. Its orations in favour of qualities such as madness spawned a type of exercise popular in Elizabethan grammar schools, later called adoxography, which required pupils to compose passages in praise of useless things.


title: Rhetoric

text: Juan Luis Vives (1492–1540) also helped shape the study of rhetoric in England. A Spaniard, he was appointed in 1523 to the Lectureship of Rhetoric at Oxford by Cardinal Wolsey, and was entrusted by Henry VIII to be one of the tutors of Mary. Vives fell into disfavor when Henry VIII divorced Catherine of Aragon and left England in 1528. His best-known work was a book on education, ', published in 1531, and his writings on rhetoric included ' (1533), ' (1533), and a rhetoric on letter writing, ' (1536).


title: Rhetoric

text: It is likely that many well-known English writers were exposed to the works of Erasmus and Vives (as well as those of the Classical rhetoricians) in their schooling, which was conducted in Latin (not English) and often included some study of Greek and placed considerable emphasis on rhetoric. See, for example, T.W. Baldwin's "", 2 vols. (University of Illinois Press, 1944).


title: Rhetoric

text: The mid-16th century saw the rise of vernacular rhetorics—those written in English rather than in the Classical languages; adoption of works in English was slow, however, due to the strong orientation toward Latin and Greek. Leonard Cox's "The Art or Crafte of Rhetoryke" (c. 1524–1530; second edition published in 1532) is considered to be the earliest text on rhetorics in English; it was, for the most part, a translation of the work of Philipp Melanchthon. A successful early text was Thomas Wilson's ' (1553), which presents a traditional treatment of rhetoric. For instance, Wilson presents the five canons of rhetoric (Invention, Disposition, Elocutio, Memoria, and Utterance or Actio). Other notable works included Angel Day's ' (1586, 1592), George Puttenham's ' (1589), and Richard Rainholde's ' (1563).


title: Rhetoric

text: During this same period, a movement began that would change the organization of the school curriculum in Protestant and especially Puritan circles and led to rhetoric losing its central place. A French scholar, Pierre de la Ramée, in Latin Petrus Ramus (1515–1572), dissatisfied with what he saw as the overly broad and redundant organization of the trivium, proposed a new curriculum. In his scheme of things, the five components of rhetoric no longer lived under the common heading of rhetoric. Instead, invention and disposition were determined to fall exclusively under the heading of dialectic, while style, delivery, and memory were all that remained for rhetoric. See Walter J. Ong, "Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue: From the Art of Discourse to the Art of Reason" (Harvard University Press, 1958; reissued by the University of Chicago Press, 2004, with a new foreword by Adrian Johns). Ramus was martyred during the French Wars of Religion. His teachings, seen as inimical to Catholicism, were short-lived in France but found a fertile ground in the Netherlands, Germany and England.


title: Rhetoric

text: One of Ramus' French followers, Audomarus Talaeus (Omer Talon) published his rhetoric, "Institutiones Oratoriae", in 1544. This work provided a simple presentation of rhetoric that emphasized the treatment of style, and became so popular that it was mentioned in John Brinsley's (1612) "Ludus literarius; " as being the "". Many other Ramist rhetorics followed in the next half-century, and by the 17th century, their approach became the primary method of teaching rhetoric in Protestant and especially Puritan circles. John Milton (1608–1674) wrote a textbook in logic or dialectic in Latin based on Ramus' work.


title: Rhetoric

text: Ramism could not exert any influence on the established Catholic schools and universities, which remained loyal to Scholasticism, or on the new Catholic schools and universities founded by members of the religious orders known as the Society of Jesus or the Oratorians, as can be seen in the Jesuit curriculum (in use right up to the 19th century, across the Christian world) known as the Ratio Studiorum (that Claude Pavur, S.J., has recently translated into English, with the Latin text in the parallel column on each page (St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 2005)). If the influence of Cicero and Quintilian permeates the Ratio Studiorum, it is through the lenses of devotion and the militancy of the Counter-Reformation. The "Ratio" was indeed imbued with a sense of the divine, of the incarnate logos, that is of rhetoric as an eloquent and humane means to reach further devotion and further action in the Christian city, which was absent from Ramist formalism. The Ratio is, in rhetoric, the answer to St Ignatius Loyola's practice, in devotion, of "spiritual exercises". This complex oratorical-prayer system is absent from Ramism.


title: Rhetoric

text: In New England and at Harvard College (founded 1636), Ramus and his followers dominated, as Perry Miller shows in "The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century" (Harvard University Press, 1939). However, in England, several writers influenced the course of rhetoric during the 17th century, many of them carrying forward the dichotomy that had been set forth by Ramus and his followers during the preceding decades. Of greater importance is that this century saw the development of a modern, vernacular style that looked to English, rather than to Greek, Latin, or French models.


title: Rhetoric

text: Francis Bacon (1561–1626), although not a rhetorician, contributed to the field in his writings. One of the concerns of the age was to find a suitable style for the discussion of scientific topics, which needed above all a clear exposition of facts and arguments, rather than the ornate style favored at the time. Bacon in his "The Advancement of Learning" criticized those who are preoccupied with style rather than "the weight of matter, worth of subject, soundness of argument, life of invention, or depth of judgment". On matters of style, he proposed that the style conform to the subject matter and to the audience, that simple words be employed whenever possible, and that the style should be agreeable.


title: Rhetoric

text: Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) also wrote on rhetoric. Along with a shortened translation of Aristotle's "Rhetoric", Hobbes also produced a number of other works on the subject. Sharply contrarian on many subjects, Hobbes, like Bacon, also promoted a simpler and more natural style that used figures of speech sparingly.


title: Rhetoric

text: Perhaps the most influential development in English style came out of the work of the Royal Society (founded in 1660), which in 1664 set up a committee to improve the English language. Among the committee's members were John Evelyn (1620–1706), Thomas Sprat (1635–1713), and John Dryden (1631–1700). Sprat regarded "fine speaking" as a disease, and thought that a proper style should "reject all amplifications, digressions, and swellings of style" and instead "return back to a primitive purity and shortness" ("History of the Royal Society", 1667).


title: Rhetoric

text: While the work of this committee never went beyond planning, John Dryden is often credited with creating and exemplifying a new and modern English style. His central tenet was that the style should be proper "to the occasion, the subject, and the persons". As such, he advocated the use of English words whenever possible instead of foreign ones, as well as vernacular, rather than Latinate, syntax. His own prose (and his poetry) became exemplars of this new style.


title: Rhetoric

text: Arguably one of the most influential schools of rhetoric during this time was Scottish Belletristic rhetoric, exemplified by such professors of rhetoric as Hugh Blair whose Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres saw international success in various editions and translations.


title: Rhetoric

text: Another notable figure in 18th century rhetoric was Maria Edgeworth, a novelist and children's author whose work often parodied the male-centric rhetorical strategies of her time. In her 1795 "An Essay on the Noble Science of Self-Justification," Edgeworth presents a satire of Enlightenment rhetoric's science-centrism and the Belletristic Movement. She was called "the great Maria" by Sir Walter Scott, with whom she corresponded, and by contemporary scholars is noted as "a transgressive and ironic reader" of the 18th century rhetorical norms.


title: Rhetoric

text: William G. Allen became the first American college professor of rhetoric, at New-York Central College, 1850–1853.


title: Rhetoric

text: At the turn of the 20th century, there was a revival of rhetorical study manifested in the establishment of departments of rhetoric and speech at academic institutions, as well as the formation of national and international professional organizations. Jim A. Kuypers and Andrew King suggest that the early interest in rhetorical studies was a movement away from elocution as taught in departments of English in the United States, and was an attempt to refocus rhetorical studies away from delivery only to civic engagement. Collectively, they write, twentieth century rhetorical studies offered an understanding of rhetoric that demonstrated a "rich complexity" of how rhetorical scholars understood the nature of rhetoric. Theorists generally agree that by the 1930s a significant reason for the revival of the study of rhetoric was the renewed importance of language and persuasion in the increasingly mediated environment of the 20th century (see Linguistic turn) and through the 21st century, with the media focus on the wide variations and analyses of political rhetoric and its consequences. The rise of advertising and of mass media such as photography, telegraphy, radio, and film brought rhetoric more prominently into people's lives. More recently the term rhetoric has been applied to media forms other than verbal language, e.g. Visual rhetoric. Scholars have also recently highlighted the importance of "temporal rhetorics" and the "temporal turn" to rhetorical theory and practice.


title: Rhetoric

text: Rhetoric can be analyzed by a variety of methods and theories. One such method is criticism. When those using criticism analyze instances of rhetoric what they do is called rhetorical criticism (see section below). According to rhetorical critic Jim A. Kuypers, "The use of rhetoric is an art; as such, it does not lend itself well to scientific methods of analysis. Criticism is an art as well; as such, it is particularly well suited for examining rhetorical creations." He asserts that criticism is a method of generating knowledge just as the scientific method is a method for generating knowledge:


title: Rhetoric

text: Edwin Black (rhetorician) wrote on this point that, "Methods, then, admit of varying degrees of personality. And criticism, on the whole, is near the indeterminate, contingent, personal end of the methodological scale. In consequence of this placement, it is neither possible nor desirable for criticism to be fixed into a system, for critical techniques to be objectified, for critics to be interchangeable for purposes of [scientific] replication, or for rhetorical criticism to serve as the handmaiden of quasi-scientific theory. [The] idea is that critical method is too personally expressive to be systematized.


title: Rhetoric

text: Jim A. Kuypers sums this idea of criticism as art in the following manner: "In short, criticism is an art, not a science. It is not a scientific method; it uses subjective methods of argument; it exists on its own, not in conjunction with other methods of generating knowledge (i.e., social scientific or scientific). [I]nsight and imagination top statistical applications when studying rhetorical action."


title: Rhetoric

text: There does not exist an analytic method that is widely recognized as "the" rhetorical method, partly because many in rhetorical study see rhetoric as merely produced by reality (see dissent from that view below). It is important to note that the object of rhetorical analysis is typically discourse, and therefore the principles of "rhetorical analysis" would be difficult to distinguish from those of "discourse analysis". However, rhetorical analytic methods can also be applied to almost anything, including objects—a car, a castle, a computer, a comportment.


title: Rhetoric

text: Generally speaking, rhetorical analysis makes use of rhetorical concepts (ethos, logos, kairos, mediation, etc.) to describe the social or epistemological functions of the object of study. When the object of study happens to be some type of discourse (a speech, a poem, a joke, a newspaper article), the aim of rhetorical analysis is not simply to describe the claims and arguments advanced within the discourse, but (more important) to identify the specific semiotic strategies employed by the speaker to accomplish specific persuasive goals. Therefore, after a rhetorical analyst discovers a use of language that is particularly important in achieving persuasion, she typically moves onto the question of "How does it work?" That is, what effects does this particular use of rhetoric have on an audience, and how does that effect provide more clues as to the speaker's (or writer's) objectives?


title: Rhetoric

text: There are some scholars who do partial rhetorical analysis and defer judgments about rhetorical success. In other words, some analysts attempt to avoid the question of "Was this use of rhetoric successful [in accomplishing the aims of the speaker]?" To others, however, that is the preeminent point: is the rhetoric strategically effective and what did the rhetoric accomplish? This question allows a shift in focus from the speaker's objectives to the effects and functions of the rhetoric itself.


title: Rhetoric

text: "Rhetorical strategies" are the efforts made by authors to persuade or inform their readers. Rhetorical strategies are employed by writers and refer to the different ways they can persuade the reader. According to Gray, there are various argument strategies used in writing. He describes four of these as argument from analogy, argument from absurdity, thought experiments, and inference to the best explanation.


title: Rhetoric

text: Modern rhetorical criticism explores the relationship between text and context; that is, how an instance of rhetoric relates to circumstances. Since the aim of rhetoric is to be persuasive, the level to which the rhetoric in question persuades its audience is what must be analyzed, and later criticized. In determining the extent to which a text is persuasive, one may explore the text's relationship with its audience, purpose, ethics, argument, evidence, arrangement, delivery, and style. In his "Rhetorical Criticism: A Study in Method", scholar Edwin Black states, "It is the task of criticism not to measure ... discourses dogmatically against some parochial standard of rationality but, allowing for the immeasurable wide range of human experience, to see them as they really are." While the language "as they really are" is debatable, rhetorical critics explain texts and speeches by investigating their rhetorical situation, typically placing them in a framework of speaker/audience exchange. The antithetical view places the rhetor at the center of creating that which is considered the extant situation; i.e., the agenda and spin.


title: Rhetoric

text: Following the neo-Aristotelian approaches to criticism, scholars began to derive methods from other disciplines, such as history, philosophy, and the social sciences. The importance of critics' personal judgment decreased in explicit coverage while the analytical dimension of criticism began to gain momentum. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, methodological pluralism replaced the singular neo-Aristotelian method. Methodological rhetorical criticism is typically done by deduction, where a broad method is used to examine a specific case of rhetoric. These types include:


title: Rhetoric

text: By the mid-1980s, however, the study of rhetorical criticism began to move away from precise methodology towards conceptual issues. Conceptually driven criticism operates more through abduction, according to scholar James Jasinski, who argues that this emerging type of criticism can be thought of as a back-and-forth between the text and the concepts, which are being explored at the same time. The concepts remain "works in progress", and understanding those terms develops through the analysis of a text.


title: Rhetoric

text: Criticism is considered rhetorical when it focuses on the way some types of discourse react to situational exigencies—problems or demands—and constraints. This means that modern rhetorical criticism is based in how the rhetorical case or object persuades, defines, or constructs the audience. In modern terms, what can be considered rhetoric includes, but it is not limited to, speeches, scientific discourse, pamphlets, literary work, works of art, and pictures. Contemporary rhetorical criticism has maintained aspects of early neo-Aristotelian thinking through close reading, which attempts to explore the organization and stylistic structure of a rhetorical object. Using close textual analysis means rhetorical critics use the tools of classical rhetoric and literary analysis to evaluate the style and strategy used to communicate the argument.


title: Rhetoric

text: Rhetorical criticism serves several purposes or functions. First, rhetorical criticism hopes to help form or improve public taste. It helps educate audiences and develops them into better judges of rhetorical situations by reinforcing ideas of value, morality, and suitability. Rhetorical criticism can thus contribute to the audience's understanding of themselves and society.


title: Rhetoric

text: According to Jim A. Kuypers, a dual purpose for performing criticism should be primarily to enhance our appreciation and understanding. "[W]e wish to enhance both our own and others' understanding of the rhetorical act; we wish to share our insights with others, and to enhance their appreciation of the rhetorical act. These are not hollow goals, but quality of life issues. By improving understanding and appreciation, the critic can offer new and potentially exciting ways for others to see the world. Through understanding we also produce knowledge about human communication; in theory this should help us to better govern our interactions with others." Criticism is a humanizing activity in that it explores and highlights qualities that make us human."


title: Rhetoric

text: Rhetoric is practiced by social animals in a variety of ways. For example, birds use song, various animals warn members of their species of danger, chimpanzees have the capacity to deceive through communicative keyboard systems, and deer stags compete for the attention of mates. While these might be understood as rhetorical actions (attempts at persuading through meaningful actions and utterances), they can also be seen as rhetorical fundamentals shared by humans and animals. The study of animal rhetoric has been described as biorhetorics.


title: Rhetoric

text: The self-awareness required to practice rhetoric might be difficult to notice and acknowledge in some animals. However, some animals are capable of acknowledging themselves in a mirror, and therefore, they might be understood to be self-aware and engaged in rhetoric when practicing some form of language, and therefore, rhetoric.


title: Rhetoric

text: Anthropocentrism plays a significant role in human-animal relationships, reflecting and perpetuating binaries in which humans are assumed to be beings that "have" extraordinary qualities while animals are regarded as beings that "lack" those qualities. This dualism is manifested through other forms as well, such as reason and sense, mind and body, ideal and phenomenon in which the first category of each pair (reason, mind, and ideal) represents and belongs to only humans. By becoming aware of and overcoming these dualistic conceptions including the one between humans and animals, human knowledge of themselves and the world is expected to become more complete and holistic. The relationship between humans and animals (as well as the rest of the natural world) is often defined by the human rhetorical act of naming and categorizing animals through scientific and folk labeling. The act of naming partially defines the rhetorical relationships between humans and animals, though both may be understood to engage in rhetoric beyond human naming and categorizing.


title: Rhetoric

text: Contrary to the binary assumptions deriving from anthropocentrism, which regarded animals as creatures without extraordinarily qualities, it does exist some specific animals with a sort of phrónēsis which confers them capabilities to "learn and receive instruction" with rudimentary understanding of some significant signs. Those animals do practice deliberative, judicial, and epideictic rhetoric deploying ethos, logos, and pathos with gesture and preen, sing and growl. Since animals offer models of rhetorical behavior and interaction that are physical, even instinctual, but perhaps no less artful, getting rid of our accustomed focus on verbal language and consciousness concepts will help people interested in rhetoric and communication matters promote human-animals' rhetoric.