Classical Canons in Rhetoric

Classical Canons in Rhetoric

Aristotle, Plato, Cicero, Augustine, Blair, Ridolfo and DeVoss

The five classical canons are invention (thinking of what to say), arrangement (saying it in the order you want to), style (saying it in the way you want to), memory (memorizing it), and delivery (conveying it to the audience).

Plato

Plato makes his views on memory clear in the Phaedrus. Memory is the most important facility to exercise. Delivering a speech from memory to an audience show more skill than writing one and reading it to them. Such delivery is boring, whereas the delivery of a memorized speech can be more exciting and dynamic because the orator is able to improvise more freely. Plato is against writing because he says it cripples memory.

 

Aristotle

In the Rhetoric, Aristotle only focuses on three canons: invention, arrangement, and style. For invention, he offers the general and special lines of argument (such as questions of conduct), five matters on which everyone debates (such as ways and means), the common topics (example, enthymeme, and maxim), and the 28 lines of proof (such as defining your terms) as resources from which an orator may draw in order to determine what to say. Aristotle also determines four parts for arrangement: introduction, thesis, proof, and conclusion; since the audience is the primary target of the oratory, they should be the deciding factor in how best to arrange those four parts to mirror their thought process. Finally, Aristotle argues that good style should be clear and appropriate; thus, its foundation is correctness.

Cicero

For Cicero, style is amplification: saying the same thing in 2-3 different ways by adding to, elaborating, or qualifying clauses. Delivery is also important. Cicero talks about how the orator must sound and move naturally while speaking, and not exaggerate his tone and/or body movements. They must train like the best actors in order to master using their body while speaking in a way that does not seem rehearsed or robotic.

Augustine

For Augustine, invention is not important because God will tell the preacher what to say. Style should be clear so that the congregation will be able to understand him. Memory and delivery are also important: the preacher should not read a pre-written sermon, but should instead trust that God will give him the right words to say at the right moment.

Blair

Blair also largely ignores invention, claiming that genius is far more important: in other words, writers and orators do not invent new ideas, but learn to manage them; therefore, they need the intelligence to be able to do so, not the ability to come up with new topics on which to write or speak. Blair argues that good style has perspicuity and ornament: it requires purity, propriety, and precision, which means words that belong to our language, selecting pure words, and distinctiveness and accuracy.

Ridolfo and DeVoss

With the prominence of writing over oratory, the canons of memory and delivery fell by the wayside because fewer people were orally presenting their rhetorical artifacts. However, with the rise of digital technologies (part of what Ong refers to as a period of secondary orality), the need for attention to delivery becomes apparent again (some refer to memory as the ability for our computers to store our compositions, but that seems to me like a pretty lame way to re-include memory). Ridolfo and DeVoss argue in “Composition for Recomposition” that because digital artifacts are often used as part(s) of new compositions, it is important for composers to consider their audience and how they may receive the composition; then they must consider how best to compose their artifact in order to have the intended impact (in in order to be potentially useful to those audience members who decide to take elements of composition and use them in their own artifacts in a process that Alexander Reid refers to as “Rip. Mix. Burn.”). Thus, delivery carries many of the same implications it always has, but in the digital realm it necessarily includes some new aspects, such as deciding where or if to place a video, image, sound clip, or other artifact that can be used in composition.

How I would answer a question on this theme

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

I would spend the majority of the time tracing delivery through history, perhaps briefly touching on the other canons. Delivery has undergone the most interesting change from being a main part of the oral rhetorical tradition, to disappearing when writing came to the fore (because delivery mostly meant 12pt, Times New Roman font, on 8 ½ x 11 paper), to completely changing with the introduction of digital rhetoric. I briefly mentioned Reid above, but I could draw on him and Yancey as well as Ridolfo and DeVoss for a fruitful discussion of delivery in new media.

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.

Purposes/Conceptions of Rhetoric

Purposes/Conceptions of Rhetoric

Plato: Rhetoric is “the art of winning the soul by discourse.” Although technically, Plato is referring to dialectic (the Socratic dialogue), not rhetoric. In fact, Plato distrusts rhetoric because he thinks it misleads the soul. Instead, two people should engage in a dialogue and work together to correct error and discover truth.

Aristotle: Rhetoric is “the faculty of discovering in any particular case all of the available means of persuasion.” As such, his Rhetoric outlines many of those “available means” in order to help the orator train.

Quintilian: “Oratory is the art of speaking well.” It’s also being a good person (“good man speaking well”). He also believes that rhetoric and grammar should be united because they complement each other. The good orator invents on the spot, but has many examples and precedents memorized for instant recall.

Cicero: Rhetoric is “speech designed to persuade.” He also talks about legal oratory leads to advancement in Rome. Cicero also unites the study of rhetoric and philosophy; both need each other in order to be useful and effective. True skill in oratory comes from the combination of natural talent and learned skill. Eloquence is the most important aspect of oratory? There are three purposes of rhetoric: pleasing, teaching, moving to action. Three levels of style: plain, middle, grand.

Augustine: Rhetoric is preaching God’s word to a congregation. Clearness is more important than eloquence. There are three purposes (taken from Cicero) and three levels of style (inspired by Cicero): subdued, temperate, and grand. Also, there are only three subjects of oratory: justice, holiness, and a good life. Like Cicero and Quintilian, Augustine also believes that the orator must be virtuous.

George Campbell: Rhetoric is “that art or talent by which discourse is adapted to its end. The four ends of discourse are to enlighten the understanding, please the imagination, move the passion, and influence the will.

I.A. Richards: Rhetoric is the study of misunderstanding and its remedies; the goal of rhetoric is to learn so much about words that they will tell us how our minds work. He calls for us to renounce the view that words are only their meaning and that discourse is only the composition of those meanings. Most words change meanings in different contexts; thus, no word can be judged good/bad or correct/incorrect in isolation (interinanimation of words).

Kenneth Burke: “Wherever there is persuasion, there is rhetoric, and wherever there is rhetoric, there is meaning.” Rhetoric is winning an argument at (nearly) all costs. Anything written for a purpose with an audience in mind. Identification is a way of enacting persuasion, not just gaining audience assent.

Wayne Booth: Rhetoric “includes all forms of communication short of physical violence, even such gestures as raising an eyebrow or giving the finger.” He specifically discusses the rhetoric of assent, which he defines as coming into an argument prepared to accept any good reasons, rather than coming in with a neutral or antagonistic attitude.

James Crosswhite: A rhetoric of reason has the task of explaining how reasoning can have effect/force, while forgoing violence and furthering respect.

George Kennedy: Rhetoric is the art of effective expression: it is mental and emotional energy. To Kennedy, rhetoric is almost equivalent to communication; all communication is rhetorical. Even animals can engage in rhetoric.

Locations of Rhetoric

Mapping Locations of Rhetoric

 

Aristotle/Plato/Cicero: Oral

Dillon/Bazerman: Writing

Plato and Augustine: Anti-Writing

Bolter: New Media/Digital

Ong: Orality vs. Literacy

 

 

Oral Rhetoric

Plato: dialectic

• Rhetoric should be a dialogue between two people that searches for the ultimate truth
  • It is not used to persuade, but only to correct error and help the other person come to their own internal realization about the nature of truth
    • Persuasion to belief is a bad kind of rhetoric that manipulates
  • The dialectic is between one person who knows the truth (a philosopher) and someone he is trying to help discover it as well
• Oral presentations must acknowledge the counterpart’s “soul” and adapt to it

 

Aristotle: rhetoric is the counterpart to dialectic

• Rhetorical study focuses on the modes of persuasion, which is a form of demonstration
  • He provides the first comprehensive account of how a rhetorician can be effective orally
  • He focuses on the orator balancing ethos, pathos, and logos in his demonstrations
  • He gives general and specific lines of argument
  • He lists five matters on which everyone deliberates: ways and means, peace and war, national defense, food supply, and legislation
  • He distinguishes between artistic and inartistic proofs
    • Artistic: proofs we can create – ethos, pathos, logos
    • Inartistic: those proofs available to the orator – contracts, laws, oaths, testimony
  • He lists 28 lines of proof
  • He lists three different genres in which rhetoric performs: deliberative (future), forensic (past), epideictic (praise and blame)
• In making a speech, he says to study three points:
  • Producing means of persuasion
  • Style must be clear an appropriate
    • It is important to say what we ought as we ought
  • Arrangement
• He also focuses on delivery
  • Pay attention to volume of sound
  • Be aware of the modulation of pitch
  • Be aware of the rhythm at which you are speaking
• Unlike Plato, Aristotle allows for rhetoric to be practiced when one speaker persuades others to agree with him (instead of dialectic)
  • But like Plato, Aristotle believes the orator should be backed by truth
• Good orality is adapted to the audience
  • The orator will present different proofs, etc and arrange and deliver a speech differently for different audiences

 

Cicero: imitate good models

• He wants aspiring orators to practice actual lawsuits
  • He specifies that the common topics must be grounded in social custom to be useful
    • They should focus on winning the audience’s favor
  • As far as delivery, orators should match thoughts to words
    • IE: everyday talk is “dignified”/plain style, or a middle ground between the two
  • True skill in oratory comes from a combination of natural talent and education
  • The “complete” orator upholds his own dignity (Quintilian’s “good man, speaking well”), but also the safety of his own country
  • “Doctus orator” = the good orator must have a wide background in many subjects
    • His harmonious, graceful style must be backed by knowledge and thought
      • This is different from Plato and Aristotle, who think the orator must be backed by truth
    • Wise thinking and elegant speaking are linked
      • Cicero seems to indirectly address Plato when he points out that philosophy is not the only aspect of good rhetoric – wide culture is needed too
      • In other words, one must be keen to both find the probable answer to the problem, but also to give it in an eloquent manner
    • Importantly, good orators realize that speaking in public is difficult
      • They are able to admit that a speech does not always work as well as they had hoped
      • They are fearful/nervous before a speech
    • The art of speaking relies on: proof of allegation, winning favor, and rousing the required impulses

 

Writing

Cicero: Writing is useful

• He thinks writing is how you develop skill in oratory
  • This is how one learns eloquence
  • One can also perfect their arrangement

 

Dillon: focuses on the differences in writing between scientists and scholars

• They are important because learning them is a traditional purpose of schooling
• Discursive terrain is not neutral or inert
  • It is like a culture – it embodies practices and values that conflict, not only within other disciplines, but within the discipline itself
• For Aristotle, orality was a demonstration – for Dillon, (academic) writing presents probable arguments, not demonstrations
• Disciplinary discourse is personal and engages the writer’s and reader’s interests, biases, and desires, even if it pretends not to
• Dillon wants rhetoricians to define rhetoric as the study of discursivity in general, encompassing both oral and written texts

 

Bazerman: must consider social and intellectual endeavors of a discipline in order to write in it

• Focuses on the importance of written genres
  • Students must understand and rethink rhetorical choices embedded in each generic habit to master the genre
  • Even though genre can stabilize the rhetorical situation and simplify the rhetorical choices to be made, the writer loses control of the writing when s/he does not understand the genre
• A writer’s self-consciousness about the power of words allows them to wield that power
  • The writer is self-conscious and reflexive by simply knowing what they are doing
  • Writing is choice making – it is evaluating the options
  • This seems to counter the Ancients’ orality – they focus on orators having immediately at their disposal all of the means of persuasion (Aristotle) and knowledge they need (Cicero), but Bazerman seems to assert that writers only need awareness of their potential power in order to be able to wield any of those things as needed
• The writer sees human consciousness created from nothing
  • Feels responsible to participate in creation of the human world
  • The choices a writer makes shape the contributions to knowledge
• Writing has the capacity to be citational
  • It draws on and ties together other writers, readers, prior texts, and experienced reality to constitute knowledge
  • Oral rhetoric can do this to, but not to as great of a degree given that it has not been recorded

 

 

Anti-Writing

Plato does not trust writing

• He thinks it leads to forgetfulness because writers are not practicing their memories
  • Writing discourages memory, one of the five rhetorical canons
    • (Indeed, it seems as if that particular canon has fallen out of style since the rise of writing)
  • He also points out that written word cannot defend itself like spoken word can
    • Written word never changes, but spoken word (ideally) happens in a dialogue, so it could be defended and/or clarified by the speaker

Augustine: sermons must be memorized, not delivered from writing

• Prayer will help the preacher learn rhetorical skill
  • Praying is more important than oratorical skill
• Writing is not necessary
• Information must be presented in several forms – writing inhibits this

 

New Media/Digital Rhetoric

• Bolter: still talking about writing, but now it’s in a new location – digital
  • Most people use computers as the primary medium for communication
• The impermanence and changeability of text in digital technology reduces the distance between author and reader, and even makes the reader into an author
• Ideally, the digital text can tailor itself to each reader’s needs
  • This is a huge revolution that mixes orality and writing
  • The product is still written, but the author is able to read his/her audience in a way that can accommodate them instantly (in much the same way an orator would be able to read the audience and adjust his tone, volume, subject, etc)
• Writing no longer needs to linear – it can be rhizomatic
• Digital writing can make use of remediation: this is where a newer medium takes the place of an older one, borrowing and reorganizing the characteristics of writing in the older medium and reforming its cultural space
  • It is both homage and rivalry
• Hypertext: each topic may participate in several paths – reader chooses which to take
  • This means the reader can be a sort of author that “writes” the text they are reading as they choose which path to take
  • Bazerman says writing is all about the writer making conscious choices
  • Bolter here suggests that it is also about the reader making conscious or unconscious choices about how to progress through the text
    • This means the reader can become an “adversary” by making the text in a way the author did not intend

 

Orality and Literacy

Ong: the literate mind is analytic/objective – the oral mind is aggregative/traditional/attached to context

• Writing makes it easier to see the logical relationships and to hierarchicalize ideas
• Writing enacts more genres than orality because it allows the “speaker” to maintain a train of thought longer, go back and revise, etc

 

If I had to answer a question on this theme:

I would start with Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero to establish some of their commonalities: all three focus on developing the skill necessary to be successful in oral speaking. Plato focuses on how good rhetoric is used in a dialectic where one person (a philosopher) helps another discover Truth for themselves through correction of error. Aristotle sees rhetoric as one orator coming to an oratory with all of the available means of persuasion (proofs, lines of argument, delivery, style, arrangement, etc) under his belt to be used at a given moment to persuade an audience to truth. Cicero thinks good oratory is a combination of natural skill and talent, and that the orator must be well-versed in both philosophy and wide culture. All three focus on the necessity of reading and responding to their audience.

Next, I would move on and contrast Plato and Augustine’s distaste for writing with Ong’s notion that literacy changed the way people think and gave rise to more genres. Plato distrusts writing because he thinks it decays memory. Augustine dislikes writing because he thinks prayer is more important (God will provide the necessary words at the right moment) and writing a speech ahead of time would damage the spontaneity of delivery. Ong contradicts both by pointing out that literacy allows anyone to think more analytically and objectively. Oral cultures are more aggregative, traditional, and dependent on context because they are not used to being able to step back and analyze their situations. Literature cultures are able to see logical relationships and hierarchicalize their ideas. They are able to write in more genres (Aristotle only lists three in his oral culture).

Next, I would discuss the importance of writing to developing knowledge. I probably wouldn’t bring up Dillon as I had originally planned; he’s not very interesting or as relevant as I thought. I would, however, focus on Bazerman and his notion that writing is key to developing human knowledge. Writing’s power comes from the writer realizing their power and wielding it in writing. Unlike the ancient orators (who needed to have immediately at their disposal all available means of persuasion [Aristotle] and the knowledge they may need [Cicero]) the writer is able to draw on these resources when/if they see fit; they only need to be aware of their potential in Bazerman’s construction. Bazerman’s notions of genres also fit nicely with Ong’s notion that writing changes the way people think. Now that there are more genres available, writers need to be aware of them. Writers must understand and rethink their rhetorical choices in order to master genre. The writer will lose control of his/her writing if s/he does not understand the genre. Genre, then, becomes much more important in written rhetorical situations than oral simply because there are more of them (than Aristotle’s three).

Finally, I would close with a discussion of Bolter’s notions of digital writing in order to discuss how it revolutionizes both written and oral discourse. Digital rhetoric is based in writing and so is able to draw on all of the genres and conventions of writing. However, it also hearkens back to orality. Ong mentions that the move from orality to literacy resulted in the ability to think hierarchically, but Bolter argues that hypertext, a digital means of writing, deconstructs hierarchicalization because the reader can choose which path s/he wants to take. Just as Bazerman’s writer makes conscious choices in writing, Bolter’s reader makes conscious or unconscious choices when moving through digital texts, thus becoming a sort of author. This collapses the differences between readers and authors, while also allowing readers more power to be adversaries since they can read/write the text in ways the author did not intend.