English 576
History and Theories of Rhetoric
Questions to Ask about Rhetoricians
What is Rhetoric?
Aristotle: "the ability to discover, in any given situation, all of the
available means of persuasion."
Andrea Lunsford: "Rhetoric is the art, practice, and study of human communication."
Kenneth Burke: ""Rhetoric is rooted in an essential function of language itself, a function that is wholly realistic and continually born anew: the use of language as a symbolic means of inducing cooperation in beings that by nature respond to symbols."
Erika Lindemann: "Rhetoric is a form of reasoning about probabilities, based on assumptions people share as members of a community."
I. A. Richards: "the study of misunderstanding and its remedies."
George Kennedy: "Rhetoric in the most general sense may perhaps be identified with the energy inherent in communication: the emotional energy that impels the speaker to speak, the physical energy expended in the utterance, the energy level coded in the message, and the energy experienced by the recipient in decoding the message."
Charles Bazerman: "The study of how people use language and other symbols to realize human goals and carry out human activities . . . ultimately a practical study offering people great control over their symbolic activity."
Lloyd Bitzer: "In short, rhetoric is a mode of altering reality, not by the direct application of energy to objects, but by the creation of discourse which changes reality through the mediation of thought and action."