1. Rhetoric
The art of persuasion

2. Why Art?
• Rhetoric has a ‘poetic’, ‘aesthetic’ and moral
element.
• What works in one circumstance will not work
in another
• Ambiguity of human speech is the key to
rhetoric

3. A brief history
• 5th BC teacher of Tisias (who Courtier of Hieron In
Syracuse.
• Introduction; narration; argument; digression and
epilogue
• Giorgias emigrated to Athens and worked as a rhetoric
teacher training ‘citizens’ for politics and court cases.
The first ‘sophist’
Corax
Giorgias
• Put some order to rhetoric as a ‘teachable’ skill’.
• Ethos, Pathos and LogosAristotle
Cicero

4. Ethos
• Ethos: the foundation, the connection between
you and your audience: Can I trust you? Are you
like us?
• JFK was a berliner;
• Bill Clinton: ‘I feel your pain’
• ‘Any woman who understands the problems of
running a home will be nearer to understanding
the problems of running a country.’ Margaret
Thatcher

5. Human, civic and community
• Friends, Romans, Countr
ymen, lend me your
ears………. I am no orator
as Brutus is, but as you
know me all, a plain
blunt man, that love my
friend,

6. Logos:
• Beyond reasonable doubt.
Logos is not always logic.
• For Aristotle, sounding
reasonable is not the same
as possessing reason.
• Enthymemes, cultural
scripts and beliefs are all
important…

7. Before the Iraq war
• Iraq was constantly compared to Nazi
Germany
• Party treasurers are compared to Andalucian
ERE’s
• Logos is about persuasion not truth.

8. Pathos: Make them laugh, make them
cry, make them agree…
• Pathos appeals to emotion, shared
emotion, and here’s a fine example:
• Emotions provide the structure for most
cognition. Without emotions, there is no
thought.
Blair on Diana's death

9. Pathos
• ‘Tricky Dickie’ Nixon
resorted to Checkers, the
dog the dog after being
accused of illegal financing

10. • Winston Churchill famously spent ‘most of his
adult life preparing impromptu (spontaneous)
speeches.’

11. Activity
Mind
Heart
Hand