Rhetoric
Also known as the art of persuasion · oratory
The art of using language to persuade, inform or move an audience. Aristotle called it seeing the available means of persuasion in each case; in practice it is every choice a writer makes for a reader.
- Plain
- Please fix the streetlights on Elm Street.
- Rhetorical
- Three neighbors fell on Elm Street last winter in the dark. Fix the lights before the fourth.
In practice
Rhetoric is the art of using language to persuade, inform or move an audience. Aristotle, whose Rhetoric is the founding textbook, defined it as the ability to see, in any given case, the available means of persuasion. The word also has an everyday meaning, as in "that's just rhetoric," for speech that sounds good and promises little, but the study of rhetoric is about how any message works on the people it reaches.
Every rhetorical situation has the same parts: a speaker or writer, an audience, a purpose and a context, often called the exigence, that makes the message necessary. Rhetoric asks how those parts shape the message: which evidence a writer chooses, what order the points come in, how formal the language is and what the audience is assumed to know or feel already.
Classical rhetoric divided the work into five canons: invention (finding arguments), arrangement (ordering them), style (choosing the words), memory and delivery. It named three kinds of speech: deliberative, about what to do next; judicial, about what happened; and epideictic, about what deserves praise or blame. Those categories still describe a policy memo, a closing argument and a eulogy.
Rhetoric in a scene
INT. FACTORY BREAK ROOM - NIGHT
Forty workers on folding chairs, still in hairnets. ROSA (40s) stands on a milk crate holding a printed contract.
ROSA
Nineteen years on this line, same as Earl. Same as half of you.
She holds up the contract and turns to page six.
ROSA
Page six takes our overtime. Read it yourselves, then tell me if you want it signed by Friday.
Opens as a new Plot project once you sign in or create a free account. Inkwell keeps this copy for 24 hours.
Rosa opens with ethos, the years she shares with the room, moves to logos, a page anyone can check, and closes on a deadline that turns feeling into action. Rhetoric in a scene is the same reading of an audience a speechwriter does, made visible in what a character chooses to say first.
Rhetoric examples
A speech: Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" (1963) uses repetition, biblical allusion and the words of the Declaration of Independence to speak to two audiences at once, the crowd in Washington and the Americans watching on television. Its purpose was to make civil rights feel like the fulfillment of a national promise rather than a demand from outside it.
An advertisement: a car commercial that shows a family arriving safely through a snowstorm never lists brake specifications. It sells safety through feeling and trusts the viewer to fill in the argument. A fundraising letter that opens with one named child rather than a statistic is making the same rhetorical choice.
Everyday writing: a cover letter that leads with a result the employer cares about, a text that apologizes before it asks a favor, or a review that mentions the writer has stayed in forty hotels. Each one adapts its message to a particular reader, which is all rhetoric is.
Types of rhetoric
Aristotle's three modes of persuasion are the best-known division. Ethos appeals to the speaker's credibility, pathos to the audience's emotions and logos to reason and evidence. Later teachers added kairos, the sense of the right moment, because the same argument can succeed or fail depending on when it is made.
His three branches of speech sort rhetoric by purpose. Deliberative rhetoric argues about the future and what an audience should do, as in a legislative debate or a policy proposal. Judicial, or forensic, rhetoric argues about the past, as in a courtroom. Epideictic rhetoric praises or blames in the present, as in a eulogy, a toast or a commencement speech.
Modern teaching also names visual rhetoric, how images and design persuade; digital rhetoric, how messages work on social platforms; and the rhetorical modes taught in composition courses, such as narration, description, comparison and argument, which are ways of organizing a piece rather than kinds of appeal.
How to use rhetoric in your writing
Name your audience before you write. Decide what they already believe, what they need to hear first and what would make them stop reading. A paragraph written for a skeptical reader opens differently from one written for someone who already agrees.
State your purpose in one sentence: what should the reader think, feel or do when they finish? Every choice after that, from the evidence you include to the order of your points, is judged against that sentence.
Choose appeals that fit the occasion. A grant proposal leans on logos and ethos, a eulogy on pathos and a pitch on all three. Mixing them is normal; the mistake is relying on one the audience will not accept, such as emotion with a reader who wants numbers.
Revise for the reader, not for yourself. Read the draft as the audience would, cut what they do not need and move your strongest point to where they will be paying the most attention, usually the opening or the close.
Rhetoric vs. rhetorical devices
Rhetoric is the whole art: reading an audience, choosing a purpose, arranging an argument and choosing words. Rhetorical devices are specific techniques within the last of those, such as anaphora, antithesis, the rhetorical question and chiasmus, that shape how individual sentences sound and land.
That is why a rhetorical analysis essay asks for more than a list of devices. Naming a metaphor is a start; explaining how it serves the speaker's purpose with a particular audience in a particular situation is the analysis. The devices are evidence, and rhetoric is the claim they support.
Common questions
What is rhetoric?
Rhetoric is the art of using language to persuade, inform or move an audience, and the study of how a message is shaped by its speaker, audience, purpose and context.
What is an example of rhetoric?
Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, a charity letter that opens with one child's story, or a cover letter that leads with the result an employer wants. Each one shapes its message for a particular audience.
What are the types of rhetoric?
The classical answer has two parts: three appeals (ethos, pathos and logos) and three branches of speech (deliberative, judicial and epideictic). Modern teaching adds visual and digital rhetoric.
What are the five canons of rhetoric?
Invention, arrangement, style, memory and delivery: finding arguments, ordering them, choosing the words, remembering the speech and presenting it. Writers still use the first three every time they draft.
Why is rhetoric important?
Because every message has an audience. Understanding rhetoric helps you write arguments people actually accept, and notice when a speech, an ad or a post is working on you.
Is rhetoric a bad thing?
Not in itself. The phrase "empty rhetoric" means persuasive words without substance, but rhetoric as a discipline is neutral: the same skills serve a fair argument and a manipulative one.
Who invented rhetoric?
No one person. Greek teachers called sophists taught it in the fifth century BC, and Aristotle's Rhetoric, written in the fourth century BC, became its founding textbook. Cicero and Quintilian developed it in Rome.