Rhetoric A–Z / Persuasion / The five canons of rhetoric

The five canons of rhetoric

The five canons of rhetoric, in Latin rhetorices partes, divide the work on a speech into five steps: inventio (finding the arguments), dispositio (arranging them), elocutio (putting them into words), memoria (remembering the speech) and actio (delivering it). The model comes from Roman rhetoric and is still used in speechwriting, teaching and rhetorical analysis.

From analysis to the art of speaking

For Aristotle, rhetoric was above all an analytical activity: the ability to see, in each particular case, what can persuade. In Roman times it became a practical art of speaking, systematised by Cicero and Quintilian among others, the latter usually counted as the world’s first state-salaried professor of rhetoric. The canons are a product of that development: an order for how to get from a situation to a finished speech.

Intellectio: understanding the situation

In late antiquity a step was sometimes added before the five: intellectio, the analysis of the situation. What is the problem? Who is the audience, and what can it decide? Which constraints cannot be changed? Without that analysis, the speaker does not know which arguments are needed. Read more about the rhetorical situation.

Inventio: finding the arguments

Inventio means “finding”, not “inventing”. The idea is that the arguments already exist, in what the audience believes, knows and values, and that the speaker’s task is to find them. To help, rhetoric has the doctrine of topoi, which points to “places” where arguments can be found, and stasis theory, which settles what the dispute is really about. This is also where the speaker chooses how to use the three modes of persuasion: ethos, pathos and logos.

A good selection starts from the analysis of the situation. Are there counterarguments that must be met, problems with the speaker’s credibility, or a mood in the audience that has to be handled? Which arguments carry the most weight with this particular audience?

Dispositio: arranging the arguments

Dispositio is about order. The classical model of the argumentative speech has eight parts, but it must always be adapted to the situation.

Barack Obama’s speech to the UN General Assembly in 2011 follows the model almost to the letter. After the greetings comes a partitio (“I would like to talk to you about a subject that is at the heart of the United Nations – the pursuit of peace in an imperfect world”), a short narrative about the wars of the twentieth century and then the thesis: “The fact is peace is hard. But our people demand it.” The speech ends with a call: “Together, let us make peace, but a peace, most importantly, that will last.”

Elocutio: putting it into words

Elocutio is the part concerned with language and style: choice of words, level of style, tropes and figures. Classical rhetoric made four demands on style: that it be correct, clear, appropriate and ornate. Read more about tropes and figures.

Memoria: remembering

A large part of ancient rhetoric was about memory techniques. Cicero tells of the poet Simonides, who performed his poems at a rich man’s dinner. He was called out into the courtyard by two young men, but no one was there. At that very moment the roof of the banqueting hall collapsed, and the dead could not be recognised. Simonides could nevertheless say who was who, because he remembered where each of them had been sitting when he left the hall.

The lesson was that memory thrives on order. The Romans built “memory palaces”, in which the parts of the speech were placed as images (imagines) in places (loci) that the speaker then walked through. A speech that is easy for the speaker to remember is often easy for the audience to remember as well.

Actio and pronuntiatio: delivering

The last step is the delivery: the body and gestures (actio) and the voice (pronuntiatio). Demosthenes is said to have answered that the most important thing in oratory was delivery, delivery and again delivery. Classical rhetoric had detailed rules for both, and the voice was to be correct, clear and ornate. Delivery affects the speaker’s ethos, but it is not everything. The most important advice is still to practise in conditions that resemble the real situation, and to remember that all speakers are nervous.

The canons as a tool for analysis

The model also works backwards. Someone analysing a speech can ask how the speaker has understood the situation, which arguments were chosen and which were left out, how they were arranged, and what the style and delivery do to the message. Read more about rhetorical criticism and rhetorical analysis.

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