Rhetoric

… a core concept in Communication Skills and Atlas 109

Concept description

Merriam-Webster defines rhetoric as the art or skill of speaking or writing formally and effectively especially as a way to persuade or influence people.

Aristotle wrote On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse in 350 BC. See Logos, Ethos, and Pathos.

According to American Rhetoric, Aristotle defined rhetoric as “the faculty of discovering in any particular case all of the available means of persuasion” and Plato defined it as the “art of enchanting the soul.”

There are many sites on the internet that describe the classical components of rhetoric, such as that by LK Wheeler of Carson-Newman University at https://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/resource_rhet.html, accessed 21 January 2016.

Resources on the Atlas can be found under the topic page Narrative, Rhetoric, and Speaking Skills.

Source

Drawn from Merriam-Webster at http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/rhetoric and American Rhetoric at http://www.americanrhetoric.com/rhetoricdefinitions.htm, accessed 21 January 2016.

Normed topic and synthetic course with which the concept is primarily associated

This concept is primarily associated with the core normed topic Narrative, Rhetoric, and Public Speaking and is included in the synthetic course outline Atlas109 Leadership and Communication Skills.

Page created by: Ian Clark, last modified on 23 January 2016.

Image: Cover of Aristotle’s On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse, translated by George Kennedy, at http://www.amazon.com/dp/0195305094/?tag=6mbrp-20, accessed 20 January 2016.