Introduction to Rhetoric and Rhetorical Analysis Through the SOAPSTone Plus Method

Mr. JohnsonAustin High School

AP Language and Composition

Scholarly Definitions of Rhetoric

copyright 2007 James Nelson

• Plato:  [Rhetoric] is the "art of enchanting the soul." (The art of winning the soul by discourse.)

• Aristotle: Rhetoric is "the faculty of discovering in any particular case all of the available means of persuasion."

• Cicero:  "Rhetoric is one great art comprised of five lesser arts: inventio, dispositio, elocutio, memoria, and pronunciatio."  Rhetoric is "speech designed to persuade."

• Quintillian:  "Rhetoric is the art of speaking well."

• Source: American Rhetoric http://www.americanrhetoric.com/rhetoricdefinitions.htm

Rhetoric Defined

copyright 2007 James Nelson

• “the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion.”

--Aristotle

• A thoughtful, reflective activity leading to effective communication

A good rhetorician can resolve conflict without confrontation, persuade others of their position, or move an audience to take

action.

• Rhetoric is a key feature of a democratic society; in a nation that values differences of opinion, rhetoric is our means of bringing others to our point of view and accomplishing change.

• Positive connotations: rhetoric is the exchange of ideas, an ongoing dialogue, a civil argument, a discourse.

• Negative connotations: rhetoric is often misunderstood as manipulation, coercion, propaganda; these are possible (mis)uses, but they are not the primary goal.

The Definition You MUST Know

• Rhetoric: The act of choosing the most effective means of convincing or persuading an audience.

• Also, the choices made by the author in order to influence the audience and convey particular effects. What is said and how it is said are of equal importance.

• Rhetoric is, most importantly, about choice. The key question to ask is this; “Why did the author choose to use this strategy over any other? What is the intended effect on us as readers? How does this strategy help the author achieve his or her purpose?”

Aspects of Rhetoric That We Will Analyze

• Above all is the thesis, also known as the argument, major claim, proposition, and a variety of other terms. The overall message of the work. The argument.

• Lexical level: the diction, or word choice of a piece. Words and phrases only.

• Syntactical level: the syntax, or sentence structure of a piece. Clauses and sentences only.

• Appeals—logos, ethos, and pathos• Structural level: the organization and structure of the

piece. Paragraphs and larger segments; the work as a whole.

More Aspects For Analysis

• Appeals: logos, ethos, and pathos.• Tone: the author’s attitude• The context of the piece; when, where, why,

how it occurred.• The speaker: who is the author or speaker,

really? What do we know about him or her that can influence our perception of the text?– Also, the persona created by the speaker

The Rhetorical Triangle

copyright 2007 James Nelson

Another way to look at it…

copyright 2007 James Nelson

The Triangles

• What does the logos-ethos-pathos model imply about the relative position and importance of each of the three Aristotelian appeals?

• The speaker-audience-text paradigm also has important implications—what does this model suggest about the relative importance of each point of the triangle?

SOAPSTone Plus

• Speaker• Occasion• Audience• Purpose• Subject• Tone

PLUS…•Strategies•Stylistic Devices•Rhetorical Devices

Speaker/Author: Remember that the speaker cannot simply be the author/writer.

• A SPEAKER aims to create a particular persona. A persona (from “mask”) is the personality that the speaker projects and that the audience interprets from the work.

• A speaker also has a real-life background, a personal history.

• Analyze both persona and personal history to arrive at a complete understanding of a speaker.

QUESTIONS FOR ANALYZING SPEAKER

– What is the background of the speaker? This can include many things; age, gender, race, economic status/class, profession, political party, religious affiliation, personal philosophies and beliefs, etc.

– What persona is the speaker creating? That is, what personality is he trying to project to the reader/viewer?

– Speakers want to appear credible—they want us to believe them, trust them, maybe even like them.

– How does the speaker accomplish this?– If the persona is different from the “real” person behind the

mask, the actual author, why is this? – Appeals based on the persona of the speaker are known as

ethical appeals, or ethos.

Occasion: Remember that naming the occasion is not simply identifying the time/place.

• “…rhetorical transactions always take place in a context—a convergence of time, place, people, events, and motivating forces—that influences how the rhetor understands, analyzes, and generates the persona, the appeals, and the subject matter material. Second, every rhetorical transaction is designed to achieve an aim, a purpose, or an intention. Third, when rhetors consider what aim they hope to accomplish in a particular context, they select an appropriate type of text, or genre, to achieve that purpose” (Roskelly and Jolliffe 15).

More on Occasion• Context: “Every speech or written composition arises from a

context: the convergence of the immediate situation calling forth the text, and pertinent historical background information about the topic, the persona and identity of the rhetor, and the knowledge and beliefs of the audience. The context of a speech or written composition strongly shapes how rhetors argue their positions or explore their ideas. An effective speaker or writer knows how to allude to the context in his or her work; a careful reader understands how context affects a text he or she is analyzing…Knowing the cultural context thus will help a rhetor generate evidence and create an effective persona…Context, then, can be immediate or distant, bound by current events or ongoing events.” (Roskelly and Jolliffe 16-17)

QUESTIONS FOR ANALYZING OCCASION

– Ask:What is the genre of the piece? Is the text a memory? Speech? Letter? Critique? Argument? About what event? Where and when does the text take place?

– Also Ask: When was the piece written? What events occurred in the world at that time that may have influenced the speaker to create this piece? What were the prevailing beliefs at the time? What were the major philosophical outlooks? Scientific outlooks? Political outlooks? Social problems and trends?

– You will probably need to research the time period and/or the author to have enough information!

Audience: The speaker or writer appeals to the audience through the three Aristotelian appeals; logos, ethos, and pathos.

• Ask: Who is the intended audience? Whose attention does the speaker seek to gain? To whom is the writer speaking? For example, in MLK’s “I Have a Dream,” he is not speaking to African Americans, but to readers who may harbor racial prejudices—perhaps to policy makers. – Is the intended audience general or specific?

• Also treat this as the “flip-side” of the speaker: what does the audience believe? What are their biases—what do they like, dislike, want? What are the philosophies and belief systems among audience members?

• Look for evidence in the text (and via inference) to support your

interpretation of the intended audience.

QUESTIONS AND CONSIDERATIONS FOR ANALYZING AUDIENCE

• Audience groups can vary drastically and can fall into multiple categories. For example, we might group audiences by age, by reading habits, by ideological or political beliefs—it’s up to you to determine the intended audience based on the text, the context, and your knowledge of the speaker.

• Most audiences are not monolithic—that is, most audiences

include members of various groups, and so, belief and value structures may differ amongst members of the same audience. Is the speaker trying to reach all audience members equally? A particular segment of the audience only?

Purpose (also, Intention/Aim)

• “A rhetor’s intention is what he or she wants to happen as a result of the text, what he or she wants the audience to believe or do after hearing or reading the text. In some rhetorical situations, the rhetor knows his or her intention right from the start; in other situations, the intention becomes clear as the text evolves” (Roskelly and Jolliffe 17).

More on purpose

• “In one text, the writer may announce a purpose—in this case, a persuasive one—at the beginning of the essay: ‘We need to take the bus to work. And here’s why.’ …In another text, the writer might begin with a story and wait to announce the aim, or use the story to imply the aim” (Roskelly and Jolliffe 18).

Purposes: explicit and implicit, and theses

– Purposes may be explicit or implicit (stated in a thesis, for example, or merely implied.) In either case, base your analysis of the purpose on all of the information you have so far gathered on the speaker, audience, and occasion—these offer clues as to the purpose of the piece.

– If the piece contains a thesis, state the thesis (either explicit or implicit). Do the same for any claims you find.

Even More on Purpose

• Also, think about the modes and genres of writing and the purposes behind those modes. Authors write to entertain, to inform, to persuade, to critique, to complain, to explain, to reflect, to describe, sometimes to simply express a truth. Often, writers have a dual purpose as in Amy Tan’s “Fish Cheeks”—to entertain and to teach a lesson about accepting one’s culture.

• – It is not enough to say “to inform”—to inform about what? To

complain about what? To explain what? Why did the author use this type of communication and not some other to convey his or her point?

Subject

• The subjects of texts are often abstract—the right to die, racism, poverty, conformity, etc. They are concrete just as often—immigration reform laws, the Iraq War, application of the death penalty to a particular case, etc.

• When looking at concrete subject matter, it often helps to “look behind” the actual issue and try to peer into the speaker’s worldview, philosophies, assumptions, etc.—the abstracts behind the concrete.

More on Subject

• The subject is the issue or idea at hand, not the character or specific situation.

• Be specific about the subject in your own writing and in

your analysis; your claims must be arguable and supportable!

• What is said is intimately connected to why certain elements are included in a composition, whom the speaker or writer is communicating with, and what kind of text he or she is composing.

More on Subject• “To develop skill with treating subjects, a rhetor needs to understand

four essential concepts. First, he or she needs to recognize that any topic, proposition, question, or issue that might generate the subject of a text must offer at least two paths of interpretation, analysis, or argument—the subject must be an ‘open’ one…A successful speaker or writer generates effective material by capitalizing on what his or her audience already knows, making them curious to know more about the topic, and then satisfying their curiosity by providing facts, ideas, and interpretations that build on what they already know...the basic move of all effective rhetorical texts is claim-plus-support, and the central responsibility of a rhetor in developing a subject is to create ample, substantial material to support the points he or she wants to make.” (Roskelly and Jolliffe 13).

TONE

• Tone: Tone is the attitude of the speaker towards his subject and audience.

• What is the speaker’s attitude towards his subject? Towards his audience?

• Use the tone words in Fast Track to a 5 for reference.

• DO NOT confuse tone with mood—mood is the audience side of this coin, while tone is analyzed from the perspective of the author.

STYLISTIC DEVICES

• Stylistic Devices: DIDLS: diction, imagery, detail, figurative language (simile, metaphor, synecdoche, metonymy), syntax.

RHETORICAL DEVICES

• Rhetorical Devices: The writer’s use of mode—narration, exposition, description, and persuasion. The primary genre of the piece. The writer’s use of evidence such as personal experience, example, definition, statistics, research; the writer’s use of satire, sarcasm, irony, understatement.