Rhetoric

Plato’s belief that it is a practice of flattery and artifice, with little relationship to truth.

Aristotle defines rhetoric as the study of the means of persuasion.

Thirdly, persuasion is effected through the speech itself when we have proved a truth or an apparent truth by means of the persuasive arguments suitable to the case in question.

Secondly, persuasion may come through the hearers, when the speech stirs their emotions. Our judgements when we are pleased and friendly are not the same as when we are pained and hostile. It is towards producing these effects, as we maintain, that present-day writers on rhetoric direct the whole of their efforts. This subject shall be treated in detail when we come to speak of the emotions

style (diction) (good prose style defined); and (prose style and poetical style are distinct). Qualities of style (general: metaphor particularly); (correctness); (impressiveness); (appropriateness: including the expression of emotion and character and a due correspondence to subject-matter); (liveliness); (antithesis); (naturalness and artifice); iii, c. 9 (free run of the sentence and antithetic compactness). Bad taste (‘frigidity’) of style Appropriate style for each kind of oratory, whether written (literary, epideictic) or the oratory of debate (political or forensic). 12. The reason why oratorical prose at first took a poetical colour

Rhetoric is an art its relation to dialectic to ethical and political studies to logic and sophistic to eristic enthymemes, the substance of rhetorical persuasion, are neglected by current text-books in favour of non-essentials the enthymeme a rhetorical demonstration and a kind of syllogism political oratory neglected in favour of forensic which lends itself to less worthy methods use and abuse of rhetoric no separate name for the unscrupulous rhetorician definition of rhetoric rhetoric deals with the regular subjects of debate, which admit of alternative possibilities its three divisions subjects of political rhetoric the whole study of rhetoric is concerned with appearances

proverbs (proverbs as evidence); (as maxims); (as metaphors). Particular proverbs (in prose or verse), ‘evils draw men together’ (‘misery acquaints a man with strange bed-fellows,’ Tempest, Act ii, Sc. 2); ‘to break the pitcher at the door’ (‘labour lost,’ ‘many a slip,’ &c.): the verse-quotations in the same passage may also be regarded as proverbial; ‘benefits of all kinds on all occasions’; ‘sweet is variety,’ ‘gratae vices’; ‘mate delights mate,’ ‘like to like,’ ‘beast knows beast,’ ‘jackdaw to jackdaw’ (‘crabbed age,’ ‘birds of a feather,’ &c.) ‘Mysian prey’ (i.e. an easy prey, a helpless victim); ‘wickedness needs but a pretext’; ‘never show an old man kindness’; (and ), ‘Fool who slayeth the father,’ &c.; (and), ‘potter against potter’ (‘two of a trade’); , ‘to pick a corpse’s pocket,’ ‘to rob the dead’; ‘shame dwells in the eyes’; ‘kin can even be jealous of their kin’; and ‘cicalas chirping on the ground’; ‘the one best omen is our country’s cause’: this line, and perhaps the half-line in may be reckoned a proverb as well as a maxim; ‘the War-God showeth no favour’; ‘an Attic neighbour’; ‘to buy the marsh with the salt’ (‘to take the fat with the lean’); ‘fish need salt,’ and ‘olive-cakes need oil’; ‘the dog-less house,’ and ‘open-handed Hermes’ (‘Shares!’); ‘Caunian love’; ‘the Carpathian and the hare’; ‘the man who carries the beam’ (‘stiff as a poker,’ ‘the man who swallowed a poker

enthymeme a rhetorical demonstration a sort of syllogism a rhetorical syllogism two kinds of enthymemes apparent enthymemes Cp. also

amplification and depreciation (maximizing and minimizing, heightening and lowering, extolling and belittling, augmentation and lessening)

analogical (reciprocal, proportional) metaphor. See ‘metaphor.’

fallacious arguments, some causes of: (1) language; (2) confusion of parts and whole passionate exaggeration (4) a ‘sign,’ or single instance (5) an accident (6) the consequence (7) post hoc ergo propter hoc (8) omission of time and circumstance (9) confusion of the absolute with the particular