Audience in Rhetorical Theory

Audience in Rhetorical Theory

Burke, Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Booth

Plato

In the Phaedrus, Plato articulates that good rhetoric is the art of influencing the soul (for the better, toward truth) through words. Thus, he also outlines how the good rhetor must catalog the various kinds of human soul so that s/he can adapt the discourse to an audience. Some people may be persuaded in one manner, but others would be persuaded in a different way, so the rhetorician must be able to perceive and adapt to each kind of person in order to help lead them to truth.

Aristotle

In his Rhetoric, Aristotle defines rhetoric as the study of “all of the available means of persuasion.” But he also clarifies that, even if the orator has mastered every available mean of persuasion, said orator must also be able to appeal to his/her audience. In all three kinds of oratory (forensic, deliberative, epideictic), the audience is addressed and must be persuaded. Persuasion is only successful, Aristotle contends, when the audience believes that the speaker has goodwill toward them, when they believe that the orator has their best interests in mind. Thus, the orator must establish this goodwill with his/her audience, preferably early in the speech. Aristotle explains that one way to establish a rapport with and audience is to argue from common values, from notions possessed by everyone. Aristotle also methodically defines and explores each significant emotion in order to instruct future orators how best to appeal to them.

Augustine

Augustine argues that the only rhetoric that matters is that used by a preacher to preach to his congregation, so the only audience with which he is concerned are the members of a church. He has distinguished three offices of rhetoric (adapted from Cicero)—to please, to instruct, to move to action—that correspond to the three style—plain, middle, and grand, respectively. He emphasizes that teaching through the plain style is the most important, since the preacher must convey the Scripture so that his congregation will understand right from and how to correct wrongs. Thus, preachers must also be very clear in their speaking; eloquence is not nearly as important as clarity since it is imperative that the congregation understand their teachings. Augustine finishes by explaining that the preacher must be genuinely virtuous in order to serve as an example to his congregation.

Burke

Kenneth Burke outlines his theory of identification in The Rhetoric of Motives. Identification occurs when a speaker appeals to his/her audience through the invocation of a commonality; the audience, believing themselves to consubstantial at the intersection of the invoked identities, identifies with the speaker and is thus more likely to be persuaded by the argument presented. For example, if a politician speaking before a farming community declares that he grew up on a farm, that farming community will perceive a similarity and identify themselves as just like the politician. However, Burke points out that identification does not need to be sincere (though, of course, it may) in order to enact persuasion. In other words, Burke is not concerned with conveying truth to his audience; he is instead concerned with the possibility of persuasion through identification. Thus, a speaker may outright lie to his/her audience, as long as s/he successfully persuades them.

This is in stark contrast to Plato, Aristotle, and Augustine, all three of whom are concerned with conveying truth to an audience while also taking their best interests into account.

Booth

In Modern Dogma and the Rhetoric of Assent, Booth takes a completely different approach to audience than Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Burke. He argues that rhetoric is tainted by its concern for audience; it can never be pure because it alters itself according to audiences; opinions. Booth redefines “good” rhetoric as that which moves its audience with good reasons, not audience-based persuasion. We have been taught that “being reasonable” means remaining neutral until solid proof is given. But Booth thinks we have been taught wrong. Remaining neutral is the same thing as doubting, so he argues that we tend to approach new arguments always already suspicious of them. He outlines motivism as an explanation for why this happens: motivism is the belief that we are constantly influenced by our values and present motives or desires. Therefore, we only need to look for a rhetorician’s secret motive (influenced by their own selfish values and motives; based in Burke’s pentad) in order to discover the real reason they are making an argument. Once you find that reason, you have explained away the surface reasons for accepting it. The problem with motivism is that it is self-affirming: any attempt to refute it can by dismissed by its hypothesis.

Booth’s response to this motivism is that we need to look for a philosophy of “good reasons.” We need a way of discovering how motives becomes reasons and how they sometimes can and should influence our choices. Thus, Booth argues that we should approach arguments with assent rather than doubt; that way, we discover new beliefs that fit our structure of perception rather than reject them outright. This new approach of assent would also allow us to think of ourselves a community of persons who have more in common than we previously thought, and language becomes the medium in which selves grow.

How I would answer a question on this theme

[This could also be an answer to an Aristotle’s Time Machine question]

I would point out that Plato, Aristotle, and Augustine all follow similar notions of how to appeal to and convey truth to an audience in a persuasive manner. Burke differs from the three because he is not concerned with truth. Booth differs from all four because his rhetoric of assent is not only a call for rhetoricians to change how they address audiences; it is also, and uniquely, a call for audiences to change how they respond to discourse and rhetoric. Whereas Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Burke provided methods for rhetoricians to appeal to and persuade audiences, Booth puts some of the impetus on the audience themselves by asking them to change how they approach a rhetorical situation.