Key Terms
The specific features of texts, written or spoken, that cause them to be meaningful, purposeful, and effective for readers or listeners in a given situation.
What is rhetoric?
A text becomes rhetorical only when this reads or listens to it and responds to it.
What is the audience/reader?
The character that a writer or speaker conveys to the audience.
What is persona?
Being skilled at rhetoric =
speaking and writing + these two skills.
What are reading and listening?
Taking notes within the text as you read.
What is annotate?
The speaker or writer who uses elements of rhetoric effectively in oral or written text.
What is a rhetor?
This component of the rhetorical triangle needs to be treated fairly, fully, and effectively.
What is the subject?
The attempt to pass off the work of others as your own.
What is plagiarism?
Being skilled at rhetoric =
understanding the main points of what you read + doing this.
What is analyzing why?
A figurative comparison that is used to structure a significant part of the composition or the whole essay.
What is an extended metaphor?
The appeal of a text based on the logical structure of its argument or central ideas.
What is logos?
Also known as intention or aim, this is what the rhetor wants to happen as a result of the text.
What is purpose?
An issue, problem, or situation that causes or prompts someone to write or speak.
What is exigence?
Being skilled at rhetoric =
doing this with compositions + writing them.
What is planning?
The humorous or critical treatment of a subject in order to expose the subject's vices, follies, stupidities, and so forth.
What is satire?
The appeal of a text to the emotions or interests of the audience.
What is pathos?
Rhetorical transactions always take place within this component—a convergence of time, place, people, events, and motivating forces.
What is context?
The writer or speaker's attitude toward the subject matter.
What is tone?
Being skilled at rhetoric =
Examining a situation + doing this to people.
What is persuading them to take action?
A set of similarly structured words, phrases, or clauses that appears in a sentence or paragraph.
What is parallelism?
The appeal of a text to the credibility and character of the speaker, writer, or narrator.
What is ethos?
This component is a text classified by its type—for example: email, essay, or advertisement.
What is genre?
The textual features, such as diction and sentence structure, that convey a writer's or speaker's persona.
What is voice?
The three main purposes in speaking/writing.
What is to inform, to persuade, and to entertain?
A conclusion that a reader or listener reaches by means of his or her own thinking rather than by direct statement in a text.
What is an inference?