Essay 2: The Rhetorical Analysis What is Rhetoric?

1. Essay 2: The Rhetorical AnalysisWhat is Rhetoric?

3. What is Rhetoric? • Rhetoric is the study and the practice of persuasion • Human beings need persuasion in order to live peacefully with each other • Cooperation

4. What is Rhetorical Analysis? • Rhetorical analysis is the study of persuasion in order to understand how people have been and can be persuasive

5. Why do we analyze rhetorically? • So that we may become better judges (often the hardest because we have to put off agreement or disagreement) • So that we may become better advocates and judges (because after an analysis we are more able to say why we agree or disagree) Rhetorically analyzing something requires the we judge its effectiveness.

6. What is the Rhetorical Perspective? • Rhetorical perspective cautions us against absolute conviction since so much in our lives is unknown • We therefore must acknowledge that however much we may believe an argument, it may be flawed (if not wrong), and however much we disapprove of an argument, it may be reasonable (if not right)

7. Thinking Rhetorically About how Messages Persuade

8. Angle of Vision • Angle of Vision is one way in which a writer persuades a reader to see from one perspective only – theirs.

9. Kairosand the Rhetorical Situation • The ancient word kairos means time, in the particular sense of a moment in time, and especially the right time or the opportune time • The moment in time that kairos refers to can be any size (an instant, a season, a year) • The idea of kairos includes a sense of the surrounding conditions (cultural, political, economic, technological, etc.)

10. Some terms defined: • Kairos in the context of discourse – both the occasion and the surrounding conditions that present the rhetor with opportunities and constraints • Opportunities are openings to say certain things in certain ways • Constraints limit what can be said or how

11. Rhetor – the speaker, writer, video maker, etc., who uses any symbolic means, such as words or images, with communicative and persuasive interest • Rhetorician – the analyst, theorist, or teacher of rhetoric • Discourse – any persuasive effort (speech, article, song, film) • Text – a piece of discourse

12. Kairotic – discourse that responds effectively or appropriately to the opportunities and constraints in its situation. • Unkairotic – discourse that is untimely, inappropriate, or just plain tasteless. • Occasion – typically some event that or circumstance that calls for a speech. • Exigence – something that the speaker and the audience want to discuss. In classic rhetoric, the exigence is usually presented as an issue – a question about which people may reasonably disagree.

13. The success of rhetoric depends on the audience and the circumstances • Besides the basic occasion for rhetoric, kairos also names the immediate, moment-by-moment opportunities and constraints that can arise as the discourse itself progresses. A skillful rhetor uses this to their advantage • The art of rhetoric comes down to the ability to say what is timely and appropriate to kairos at any moment