Plato: 

Rhetoric is "the art of winning the soul by discourse."

Aristotle: Rhetoric is "the faculty of discovering in any particular case all of the available means of persuasion."

BREAKDOWN!

Rhetoric = the art of persuasion

Analysis = the breaking down of some thing into its parts and interpreting how those parts fit together

In other words, in rhetorical analysis we examine how authors attempt to persuade their audiences by looking at the various components that make up the art of persuasion.

What are the components of Rhetoric?

• Rhetoric is often divided into the following areas:– Exigence

• The urgent need or demand that gives rise to a text. – Purpose

• What the text, created in response to the exigence, is intended to do

– Audience• The importance of knowing your audience can not be

overstated. You need to know their background, knowledge, bias, socioeconomic level, political and religious affinities, etc. in order to understand how best to persuade and not antagonize!

– Appeals• Ethos• Pathos• Logos

For example

• A eulogy is written in response to an exigence, a community’s grief.

• The purpose of the eulogy is to honor the deceased

• The audience for the eulogy is the friends and family of the deceased– Of course, this changes depending on the

person and their notoriety

Ethos Pathos

Logos

ToneStyle

TONE

Rhetorical Situation

Appeals

Surface Features

Arrangement

Steps to Analysis Success

Aristotle’s Definition of Rhetoric

• The faculty of finding all the available means of persuasion in a particular case

Let’s break it down in order to better understand the definition. . .

• The faculty– Aristotle calls it an improvable art– That means, it’s a teachable art and people

can get better at it

• Of finding– Not necessarily using, but certainly finding– Aristotle used the Greek noun heuresis (hyu5 -

ris-sis), or “a finding”– Both rhetors and rhetorical analysts must be

consistently and systematically searching

Searching for what????

• All the available means – Everything a writer might do with language

• Of persuasion – Writers and speakers aim to shape people’s

thoughts and actions

• In a particular case.– Rhetoric capitalizes on specific situations

• What are all those available means of persuasion?

• The appeals and parts of a text that work together to achieve meaning, purpose and effect

The Appeals: Logos

• The embodied thought of the text

• The central and subsidiary ideas that the text develops for the reader to “take home”

• Formal arguments, reasons, facts and logical appeals developed in a text

The Appeals: Logos

• A writer or speaker builds logos using reasoning and examples– How the writer or speaker capitalizes on unspoken

assumptions he or she things the audience already believes about the issue at hand

– How the writer or speaker incorporates facts, data, reasoning and perspectives about the issue

– How the writer or speaker substantiates a claim, a generalization or a point about the issue

• Logos is the central and indispensable proof

The Appeals: Ethos

• A text emphasizes the good sense, the good will, and the good character of the writer

• A text emphasizes the knowledge and authority of the author to speak about the subject

• Text becomes more credible because of these points

For example

• Following advice in an article by Michael Jordan on ways to motivate high school basketball players would be useful

• Following advice in an article by Michael Jordan on the appropriateness of standardized testing for college admissions criteria may be naive

Ethos

• In an analysis, assess how effectively a text is delivered by analyzing the attributes of the speaker projected in the text– His or her knowledge– Tone– Level of sincerity– Vested interest in the topic

The Appeals: Pathos

• Almost all texts do something to appeal to the emotions or states of life of readers

• Although an argument that appeals only to the emotions is by definition weak, an effective speaker or writer understands the power of evoking an audience’s emotions.

Pathos

• In an analysis, look closely for the emotional appeals present in the argument– Emotionally charged language and ideas– Personal examples

• Are these manipulative or appropriate?

For example

• https://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-february-4-2010/the-blogs-must-be-crazy

Tone

• Tone gets established by the prevalence of each appeal. – For example, is the argument stronger on

logos or pathos?

• You, the rhetorical analyst, make inferences based on the arrangement and style and the use of logos, ethos, pathos and tone.– Diction, syntax, imagery, figurative language

The Appeals and Tone

• When you make claims about these, you are making arguments– The details of the text provide evidence to

support these claims

Huh?

• Aren’t you just making mountains out of molehills? Or arguments out of nothing??

• Aren’t these just words on a page?

Precisely!

• A rhetorical analyst’s (that’s you in this class) job is to focus on and scrutinize words to see how they forge logos, ethos, pathos and tone

How?• Study the arrangement, organization and

structure of the text • How can it be divided into parts and what is the

function of each of these parts?– To introduce a central idea– To narrow the text’s focus– To divide the text into smaller parts– To compare or contrast material that has come before

with what will come after– To address possible objections to what has been said

so far– To promote the author’s credentials (ethos)– To add a piece of emotionally evocative material

(pathos)

So What?

• What difference does the structure of the text make?

• The analyst shows how the organization influences the appeals and the establishment of tone.

• Connect Structure to Appeals and Tone

• That’s analysis

Now we look at Style

• Diction

• Syntax

• Imagery

• Figurative Language

Diction

• Formal or informal, academic or casual

• Does the writer use I or you or we?

• Does the text use any specialized jargon?

Syntax

• Are the sentences long, short, varied, periodic, loose?

• Are they primarily in active voice?

• If there are any passive voice sentences, how do they function?

Imagery

• Are there any visual, auditory or tactile images?

Figurative Language

• Are there any tropes (fancy word for figurative language)?

• What are the principal metaphors being used?

• How are comparisons and contrasts brought about by tropes other than metaphor?

• Can we detect any irony or sarcasm?

So What?

• What do the diction, syntax, imagery and figurative language do to the establishment of logos, ethos, pathos and/or tone?

• Answering that is analysis

Taking So What to Analysis

• Determine what the text means, what its primary intentions or purposes are, what effect you think its author intended it to have on its audience, why you think the author was compelled to write it, and who you think its audience is

• Then, explain HOW the author creates meaning– HOW the text realizes its purpose – HOW it achieves its effects – HOW it makes clear its exigency– HOW it addresses or evokes its audience – HOW it announces its intentions.

In the end,

• You must construct a discussion/argument concerning what you conclude is the meaning/purpose/effect of the text and how you perceive its parts working together to achieve these ends.

• How does an entity’s parts (organization, syntax, diction) constitute its whole (meaning, purpose, effect)?