WHAT IS RHETORIC?

Rhetoric is a term that people use all the time, but not everyone knows what it means, in part because rhetoric has several different meanings. One sense of the word is speech that doesn’t convey anything of substance. Politicians who make appealing, but ultimately false, promises to voters in campaign speeches, for example, are said to use “empty  rhetoric.” Then there are those books that purport to teach people how to write. Called “rhetorics,” they represent another meaning of the term.

The Greek philosopher Aristotle defined rhetoric as “an ability, in each [particular] case, to see the available means of persuasion” (Kennedy, 1991, p. 36). Developing this ability, however, typically involved studying the structure of effective arguments, psychology, proof, and so forth, as well as practicing how to deliver a speech. In this text, rhetoric is defined in two ways—first, as a field of study that examines the means by which speakers and writers influence states of mind and actions in other people; and second, the application of those means. Thus, the discussions that follow explore rhetoric as something that people study and something that they apply to influence others. This definition treats rhetoric as an intellectual discipline as well as an art, skill, or ability that people may possess and use. Contemporary rhetoric is characterized by several specialties, such as public speaking and the history of rhetoric, but composition is by far the largest of these. The importance of composition is so great that many professionals today commonly refer to the field of rhetoric as “rhetoric and composition.” Note, however, that those who specialize in “composition” are not characterized as “writers” or “authors,” although many of them are, but as “teachers of composition.” This distinction is central to the field and to this book, which is not intended to help readers become better writers but is intended to help them become better teachers of writing.1 Also worth noting is that the pedagogical foundation of composition necessarily links it to such fields as education, linguistics, and psychology.

The multifaceted nature of rhetoric and composition causes many people to be suspicious of broad definitions like the ones just mentioned. They argue that the question “What is rhetoric?” is meaningful only in relation to the cultural characteristics of a given society in a specified period. There is much truth in this argument, especially insofar as rhetoric can be applied to garner support for a given position. In classical Greece, rhetoric was viewed primarily as the use of language for purposes of persuasion. But almost from the very beginning there existed different emphases and purposes, and thus slightly different notions not only of what rhetoric did but of what it was. These notions certainly changed over time, but through all the changes there was at least one constant—the focus on examining how people use language to attain certain ends.

In my view, this focus is crucially important today. American society is more diverse than ever, and the need to train young people to be leaders who can weave the many strands of this diversity into a cultural fabric is especially acute. Historically, leadership has been predicated on the ability to communicate effectively, yet over the last several decades, we’ve seen the oral and written communication skills of our students decline precipitously. Growing numbers of young people use what is called “restricted code”—language characterized by a limited vocabulary and an inability to communicate abstract ideas—that is painfully unsuited to conveying anything but the most shallow concepts. Restricted code does not inspire—it alienates and fails to serve as the common currency of leadership.