Rhetorical Theory
This basic human activity uses words, pictures, and gestures to make sense of the world, create identities, and persuade others.
What is rhetoric?
This is the specific speech, song, commercial, building, or visual image that a rhetorical critic chooses to study.
What is an artifact?
This classical canon deals with picking the right words, sentence structures, and metaphors to make a message clear and powerful.
What is style?
In Stephen Toulmin’s argument model, this core part acts as the logical bridge or rationale that connects the data to the claim.
What is a warrant?
Kathleen Hall Jamieson created this term for the modern, conversational, telegenic style of public speaking made for TV and home screens.
What is electronic eloquence?
This central idea in modern rhetorical theory says that rhetoric actually creates new "truth" and knowledge through social interaction, rather than just reporting old facts.
What is rhetoric as epistemic?
Created in 1925 by Herbert Wichelns, this was the very first formal method of rhetorical criticism, designed to judge speeches using classical rules.
What is Neo-Aristotelian criticism?
Led by Hugh Blair in the 18th century, this movement focused on "taste" and the emotional pleasure people feel when enjoying beautiful art and speech.
What is the Belletristic movement?
According to Richard Whately, this concept means "pre-occupation of the ground," where the current status quo stays accepted until someone proves a need for change.
What is presumption?
This term means taking a huge, complex argument and boiling it down into a short, catchy sound bite where a tiny phrase stands for the whole big idea.
What is verbal distillation (or synecdoche)?
These paid public speaking teachers in ancient Greece believed that absolute Truth did not exist and taught students how to win arguments on any side.
Who are the Sophists?
This primary standard of criticism requires a critic to give plenty of real evidence from the artifact so readers know their claims are fair and valid.
What is justification?
Led by Thomas Sheridan and John Walker, this 18th-century movement focused strictly on vocal pronunciation and physical body gestures.
What is the Elocutionary movement?
This structural duty falls on the person arguing for a new rule or law, requiring them to prove why the current status quo should be replaced.
What is the burden of proof?
In Charles Sanders Peirce’s semiotics, this type of sign looks directly like the object it represents, such as a photograph of a dog.
What is an iconic sign (or icon)?
This famous Roman educator defined a true speaker as a "good person speaking well," insisting that rhetoric must always be tied to virtue and strong moral character.
Who is Quintilian?
In Neo-Aristotelian criticism, a critic studies this first by looking at the speaker, the audience, the occasion, and the historic background of the speech.
What is the context?
According to Longinus, grand and noble language produces this special feeling that temporarily lifts audience members out of themselves in moments of ecstasy.
What is the sublime?
Chaïm Perelman described this imaginary audience made of all reasonable human beings, which serves as an ethical test for valid arguments.
What is the universal audience?
In Peirce’s semiotics, this type of sign has a direct physical or causal connection to its cause, such as smoke indicating a fire.
What is an indexical sign (or index)?
During the Renaissance, this thinker split rhetoric away from logic, leaving rhetoric with only style and delivery while moving invention and arrangement to dialectic.
Who is Peter Ramus?
These three artistic proofs created during invention appeal to speaker credibility, audience emotion, and logical arguments.
What are ethos, pathos, and logos?
St. Augustine said Christian preachers must use three style levels to achieve three goals: to instruct, to please, and this third goal needed to win over stubborn hearts.
What is to persuade (or move to action)?
Francis Bacon gave this name to the traps and fallacies that happen when people misuse words or misunderstand language during everyday social conversations.
What are the Idols of the Marketplace?
In media framing theory, this concept refers to the official duty given to a government or leader to solve a public crisis, regardless of who originally caused it.
What is political responsibility (or problem ownership)?