The Term Rhetoric started a long time ago. It was considered the essential skill of leadership by the ancient Greeks and was placed at the center of higher education, the author of Thank You for Arguing explains. This taught them to persuasively read and, write, and give informative speeches. This creation of persuasion helped create the world's first democracies, helped Julius Caesar, and inspired William Shakespeare. Even the constitution uses Rhetoric principles.
The term Rhetoric has many different meanings and can be defined by many different terms. So what is Rhetoric? The book Thank You for Arguing explains rhetoric as the art of influence, friendship, eloquence, of ready wit, and irrefutable logic. All these meanings advert to to the topic of argument. The intention of using Rhetoric is to persuade your readers to believe in what you are arguing. You may not realize that when writing an argumentative piece of writing, you are using Rhetoric.
I disagree where you say that Rhetoric has many different meanings and can be defined by many different terms. In my opinion Rhetoric has one simple meaning and that is "a person who persuades others through manipulation to get their way." All of the meanings the book states are all referring to the same ultimate definition. I do however agree with you in your closing words when you state that Rhetoric is used to persuade your readers into what you are arguing.
ReplyDeleteMax, I can see where you are coming from but we also learned that rhetoric does have different meanings not necessarily relating to manipulation. If we can make the argument that rhetoric can be used in a good sense than manipulation which has a negative connotation should not be the word of choice in the definition of rhetoric.
ReplyDeleteI also believe that Rhetoric has many different meanings. Some view it as more of an art form, the art of persuasion. On the other hand I can see how people define it as manipulation. The definition is all how you perceive and use rhetoric; if you see it as bad it can be define as manipulation. If you see as good it will be seen as the art form of persuasion.
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