When talking about what a politician just said, people often say, “Oh, that’s just rhetoric.” What it means, of course, is that the politician is being deceitful, he is avoiding an issue, he is being less than honest. That common-sense attitude toward rhetoric is quite at odds with the Merriam-Webster online dictionary in its scholarly definition of rhetoric:
the art of speaking or writing effectively
That academic definition of rhetoric (who else but a professor of rhetoric, a true rhetoric expert, would Merriam-Webster go to for its definition?) clearly shows the wide gap between the formal, academic, and dictionary definition — the art of speaking or writing effectively — and daily experience and wisdom on Rhetoric — be deceitful and deceitful. But it’s not just ordinary people who see the strong negative aspects of the rhetoric; quite a few important and highly educated people have also pointed out the downside of the rhetoric.
Even rhetoric experts like Professor Wayne C. Booth (1921-2005), Professor of Rhetoric at the University of Chicago, have openly admitted the negative and misleading side of rhetoric. In his last book, The rhetoric of RHETORIC; (2004), Professor Booth points out many, many times that in the United States and certainly in much of the world we are harmed on a daily basis. by floods of careless rhetoric or even deliberately damaging media grid;.
Media Rhetrickery (which he abbreviates to “MR” throughout his book) is Booth’s unique term for the widespread abuse of rhetoric in the media, which incessantly employs rhetoric for misleading, misleading, and corrupt purposes. So Booth spends a great deal of time in his book apologizing for various forms of rhetoric (he clearly means exactly how the term sounds), apologizing for the corrupt use of rhetoric that occurs so often in all walks of life. life. Coming from Booth, this is really a harsh indictment of rhetoric. It seems to me that he does not intend this to be an indictment against rhetoric, as he has always been a highly respected advocate and authority on the positive values of rhetoric, but clearly is an indication.
At the beginning of his book, Booth recounts that in 1960 he was at a post-lecture reception in Oxford and was having a chat over drinks with an Oxford professor, when he asked what subject he taught. The Oxford professor replied: Mainly 18th century literature. What is your field? booth, replied It’s basically rhetoric, even though I’m officially in ‘English’. I am trying to complete a book to be called “The Rhetoric of Fiction.” The Oxford literature professor frowned, spat unpleasantly Rhetoric!He turned his back on her and walked quickly away. This experience is an example that shows the traditional academic lack of respect for Rhetoric maintained by the majority of the academy and the world for centuries, even millennia.
Another who agreed with Booth on the rhetorical quality of rhetoric was a Roman authority, Lucian of Samosata (AD 125-180). Lucian was formally trained as a rhetorician and stated that a Rhetor is a money pushing, driving and chasing operator who leaves any sense of decency, decorum, restraint and shame at home when he goes to work.
An even more important Roman rhetorician who could not deny the element of rhetoric in rhetoric was Quintilian. As one of the most renowned teachers of rhetoric of all time, Quintilian (35-100 AD) felt that the virtue of verecundia (Latin for a combination of modesty, decency, and restraint) was an absolute vice in a speaker. Because? Because, said Quintilian, it would make him hesitate, change his mind, or possibly even stop talking to think things through.! You can’t let that happen to respectable rhetoricians, now, can you? It might even result in turning them into honest men!
John Locke (1632-1704), the great English thinker and philosopher, voiced probably the strongest condemnation ever voiced against rhetoric. Locke pointed out that the purpose of rhetoric was imply wrong ideas, inflame passions, and thus mislead audience judgment. Locke asserted that the techniques of rhetoric are perfect traps… to be completely avoided… rhetoric, that powerful instrument of error and deceit..
Booth is clearly not a lone voice discussing the rhetorical side of rhetoric. I suppose the real question is: Why have Booth and other defenders of rhetoric stuck with such deceptive discipline, knowing full well its morally repulsive qualities?
Perhaps Steven Spender (1909-1995) — modern English poet, novelist, essayist — got the point right when he expressed the idea that, Rhetoric is the art of deception, right? And when you get good at using rhetoric on other people, you eventually unknowingly use it on yourself..
As the old adage goes, power corrupts, and Rhetoric — or should we call it by its proper name, Twisting— it is, indeed, powerful.
