Rhetoric A–Z
What rhetoric is, where its concepts come from, and how they still shape the way we speak and listen. Short introductions written by a professor of rhetoric, for anyone who wants to understand it properly.
Hans Holbein the Younger, The Ambassadors, 1533. National Gallery, London.
Start here
What is rhetoric?
The origins of the word, Aristotle’s definition, and why rhetoric is more than the art of persuasion. After that, the guides follow rhetoric’s own order: from the situation, through the arguments and the style, to the analysis.
Part 1
The situation
Every speech responds to something. Before we can persuade, we have to understand the problem, the audience and the occasion.
The rhetorical situation
The exigence, the audience and the constraints: what a speech responds to, and how the speaker can shape the situation.
The three rhetorical genres
To advise, to judge and to praise: Aristotle’s three genres, and how they live on in parliament, the courtroom and the wedding toast.
Part 2
Persuasion
The modes of persuasion and the canons of rhetoric: where the arguments are found, and how a speech is built from first idea to delivery.
Ethos, pathos and logos
The three modes of persuasion: where they came from, how the Romans changed them, and how they are used today.
The five canons of rhetoric
Inventio, dispositio, elocutio, memoria and actio: rhetoric’s five steps, from finding the arguments to delivering the speech.
Part 3
Arrangement and style
How the speech is told and put into words: the power of the story over the audience’s expectations, and the images of language.
Narratio and storytelling
From Quintilian to Burke’s pentad: how the story sets the situation and steers what the audience expects to happen.
Tropes and figures
Metaphor, metonymy, irony and rhetorical questions: rhetoric’s stylistic devices, and why they are more than ornament.
Part 4
Analysis
Rhetoric is also a way of seeing: understanding how other people’s speeches, texts and images try to persuade.
What are rhetorical analysis and rhetorical criticism?
How to study the way a message is built, step by step, and how it becomes possible in its context.
Visual rhetoric
How images argue: denotation and connotation, Barthes’ pasta advertisement and the concepts of semiotics.
All concepts from A to Z
Agon ἀγών
The contest: speech as a struggle to be first.
Catachresis κατάχρησις
The “misuse” of a word to name what has no proper name.
Demos δῆμος
The people: both the political community and rhetoric’s greatest audience.
Dialectics διαλεκτική
Dialectics is originally the art of conversation.
Dissoi logoi δισσοὶ λόγοι
Twofold arguments: every matter can be argued both for and against.
Doxa δόξα
Opinion and common belief, the shared ground from which argument starts.
Enargeia ἐνάργεια
Vividness: speaking so that the audience sees events before their eyes.
Enthymeme ἐνθύμημα
A rhetorical deduction resting on probable rather than necessary premises.
Ethos ἦθος
Persuasion through the speaker’s character as it appears in the speech.
Example παράδειγμα
Argument by a real or invented case, the other proof Aristotle names.
Hegemony ἡγεμονία
The word denotes authority or sovereignty.
Irony εἰρωνεία
Saying one thing so that another is understood.
Isegoria ἰσηγορία
The equal right to speak in the assembly.
Kairos καιρός
The opportune moment: what can be said, fittingly, now.
Logos λόγος
Persuasion through the speech itself: its words, tropes and arguments.
Parrhesia παρρησία
Frank speech: saying what one holds true, at a risk to oneself.
Pathos πάθος
Persuasion through the emotions the speech arouses or calms in its audience.
Peitho πειθώ
Persuasion, and the goddess who embodied it.
Phantasy φαντασία
The Greek word for imagination and the imaginary.
Pharmakon φάρμακον
Remedy and poison at once: Gorgias’ image of the power of speech over the soul.
Sophistics σοφιστική
The art of the sophists, rhetoric’s rival and double since Plato.
Stasis στάσις
The doctrine of where a dispute stands: on fact, definition, quality or jurisdiction.
To prepon τὸ πρέπον
The fitting: form and content suited to the situation, in Latin decorum.
Topos τόπος
A “place” where arguments are found: a common line of reasoning.
Read further
Where to begin with the classical sources, and where rhetoric meets philosophy.
Aristotle, Rhetoric
Plato, Gorgias and Phaedrus
Barbara Cassin, Sophistical Practice