What is Rhetoric?

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Surely you've heard the term thrown around: "That's all just rhetoric!" We are usually speaking about someone, like a politician, who is attempting to persuade the audience with little respect for the truth. But that's too simple.
 

Let me explain.

The definitions of rhetoric have shifted significantly over the centuries. It was really Aristotle who first tried to really explain it, to write a book detailing its techniques, its effects, its uses. On Rhetoric, published about the 4th century B. C., is still the bread and butter of many composition 101 textbooks, offering concepts like "ethos, pathos, logos, and kairos" to writers as tools of analysis as well as a means of persuasion for their own texts. 

In Aristotle's time, teaching rhetoric was a commodity, a means for men to earn a living in the courts or in politics or in the military as leaders. Over the centuries, it would emerge as a focus on elaborate language, then on the details of grammar and punctuation, then on psychological elements of persuasion, then on composition as a way to learn "taste," which meant literature. 

In the 1960s, teaching writing was overturned like an apple cart. Writers became professors and those professors threw away the methods that had emerged that destroyed creativity and that ignored process. 

And today, once again, rhetoric gains attention as a commodity, but this time it's for students who wish to become technical writers, professional writers, or UX writers. AI has become a useful tool. But it’s also for poets and storytellers and dancers. It’s for business leaders and for preachers.

 

So what is rhetoric? 

It’s about creating an opportunity for persuasion.

It’s about dismantling the means others use to persuade you.

It’s about capitalizing on symbolic power (status, for example) to obtain a goal.

It’s body language and clothing and style. It is the way a room is decorated, a building is designed, a garden is laid out, a story is told. Visual, audial, textual, oral—rhetoric permeates communication. 

Today, we call it “epistemic” rhetoric because knowledge is built from these exchanges, and truth is validated (or not) through language –but also embedded, experienced language—the verbal and visual exchanges that happen. For a Christian, it’s built out of interaction with the Spirit.  

Power is negotiated using these many different avenues. Rhetoric is a network of paths to power and influence. 

So what is rhetoric? It is the body of knowledge that helps us to use language, navigate systems of power, and analyze persuasion in all its forms. It is art and it is technique. It is not just about editing, but it is about shaping ideas, shaping truth, shaping the reader and the writer. It is about the reader as much as the writer because identification and connection can’t be achieved in isolation. Rhetoric is dynamic, Aristotle once wrote. It is active, moving, and intertwined in our acts of communication.