Plenty of politicians give speeches promising to bring change.
Sometimes their words might evoke strong feelings, but other times they might be dismissed as
“just empty rhetoric.”
This use of the word rhetoric suggests that a speech is just an empty pie crust, with
no valuable apple-y evidence to fill it.
Basically, some kind of language trickery.
But rhetoric shouldn’t be demonized as underhanded or negative.
It’s a tool that can be used for good.
Rhetoric helps us develop the skill of persuasion.
Assuming that one persuasive technique will work with any ol’ time, place, and audience
won’t get us anywhere!
So practicing and understanding rhetoric can help in all kinds of contexts, from term papers
and courtrooms to daily conversations and advocacy,
and it’s what we’ll discuss today in Study Hall: Composition, presented by
Arizona State University and Crash Course.
I’m Yumna Samie, let’s get started.
Persuasion, in a super-broad sense, means changing minds.
Sometimes, it’s just an internal shift, but other times, it can change how someone acts.
There’s lots of persuasion going on in the world.
If I sit down and have a discussion about my ethics and what I think it means to live
a good life,
I’ll use very different persuasive techniques than if I try to convince my little brother
to eat some vegetables.
After all, human beings have their own opinions, desires, needs, and preferences.
So connecting our goals and persuasive techniques to what matters to them will give us more success.
Persuasion also shows up in more subtle ways: we might nod, widen our eyes, or say ‘got
it’ to suggest that we’re listening deeply.
Or we might use a big smile to charm a friend into thinking that of course we’ve read
the giant book they recommended and it was sooo interesting!
So, while persuasion is a broad concept that applies to lots of different situations, it’s
also super local and concrete.
We can’t just learn one overarching rule, like “convincing speech is delivered in
an ultra-low bass voice” and expect it to work everywhere.
This is where the idea of rhetoric comes in.
Rhetoric was defined prominently by the Greek philosopher Aristotle as "the faculty of observing
in any given case the available means of persuasion."
I.A. Richards, a British educator, said rhetoric was “the study of misunderstanding and its remedies."
So for this series, we’ll consider rhetoric where we dig into why some arguments persuade
people to change their minds and others don’t.
Rhetoricians, or people who study rhetoric, study human communication -- analyzing how
spoken language, silence, and body language affect our persuasive skills.
Which means they basically study everything!
Specifically, rhetoricians study individual moments of communication by looking at all
the influencing factors, which are called the rhetorical situation.
The rhetorical situation includes words, but also the writer, the writer’s purpose, how
the writer is trying to achieve that purpose, the context, and the audience.
So like I said…
basically everything.
By gathering the nitty-gritty details of a rhetorical situation, we can see what’s
happening in persuasive speech and texts,
and notice broader patterns of success and failure that we can learn from.
While not every pattern will apply to a future context, we get better by attempting persuasive
techniques in a variety of rhetorical situations,
and paying attention to what has an impact.
For example, imagine a kid who always begs their parents to let them eat candy.
Over time, they intuitively learn that asking for candy right after they’ve broken a window
from playing outside is less effective
than asking for candy after bringing home a great report card.
We’re analyzing rhetorical situations to improve our persuasive strategies all the
time, both consciously and unconsciously.
So essentially, we’re already rhetoricians.
But we don’t just have to rely on intuition.
We can put in a little more work to grow our persuasive skills!
For example, when working with rhetoric, who we are as the writer matters just as much
as who our audience is.
To see what I mean, let’s watch a Writer in Action.
Keisha wants to be a strong public speaker, and her rhetoric professor Dr. Mac
suggests that studying historic speeches could guide her persuasive writing.
She decides to start with the abolitionist and women’s rights activist Sojourner Truth,
known for her compelling speeches.
And she picks a rhetorical situation to dive into.
Keisha chooses to examine the writer, purpose, and the writer’s strategy for achieving
that purpose
in Truth’s “Ain’t I a Woman?”
speech, which advocates for women’s equality.
Keisha reads up on Sojourner Truth’s background and the time in which she lived to learn more
about who the writer of this speech was, and why she would stand and deliver such a
speech.
She reads that Truth was a former slave before becoming a public speaker.
The cultural climate influencing Truth and her audience was harsh toward women and people
of color;
slavery still existed in many parts of the country and women regardless of race didn’t
have the right to vote.
And “Ain’t I a Woman?” was delivered at a women’s conference in Ohio.
Sojourner Truth’s purpose, it turns out, was to get all women the right to vote at
the same time as men who were former slaves.
Keisha notes that Truth’s description of herself as equal to men and white women
helps make her case for women’s rights that apply to women of all racial backgrounds.
Since she now knows that Truth was a former slave and her purpose was getting the right
to vote for women along with former enslaved men,
Keisha understands why Truth describes herself as equal to both groups.
Who she was as a writer also shows how she accomplished her purpose of changing her audience’s
minds.
Most of them were regular people, not power brokers or congressmen who could directly
make policy changes.
So she approached her speech by recognizing the humanity and equality of all women, including
the audience and herself.
Keisha’s investigation of the rhetorical situation helps her understand why Sojourner
Truth chose to say what she did
at that particular women’s conference.
Armed with her analysis, Keisha is a Writer in Action!
So if we want to dive deep into the ways that the rhetorical situation works,
like Keisha does with the historical speeches of Sojourner Truth, we’ve got a technique
for you.
We call this strategy “Rhetorical Situation: Recognize!” or RSR for short.
It’s a set of reminders to help us think about each element of a rhetorical situation.
And if we find ourselves saying, “I don’t know,” for a part of this exercise, that
means we should read more about the argument or the topic.
Dig deeper, don’t hit a wall and stop!
The more we know about the rhetorical situation, the more effective RSR can be.
To use this technique, first, grab a sheet of paper, open a blank file on your computer,
or just have some way of writing down your thoughts.
Write out four categories: audience, purpose, context, and text.
And under each category, jot down notes about what you already know and what you think is
important to understand.
Let’s look at an example for specifics.
Like, say you’re running for student body president, and you get to write a short bio
that will go up
on the student government’s Instagram to introduce your campaign to your classmates.
So you use the RSR technique and start writing!
For audience, think about who goes to your school.
Maybe they’re really passionate about the environment or they are ultra-focused on academics.
If you know what they care about and what they usually expect from their student body
president--
like clear speeches or appearances at lots of events--you can write more effectively
to them.
For purpose, getting them to vote for you is a good start, but you can break it down
further.
If your school struggles with low voter turnout, you may want to convince them to vote in the
first place.
If your real purpose is to convince the administration to stop charging so much for on-campus parking,
you may want to emphasize your proposed parking fee cuts in your bio.
For context, think about the timing and location of this argument.
When will the Instagram post go up, relative to the election--have people seen your signs
already, or is this their first intro?
Consider that only part of the student body actually is on Instagram and following the
school’s student government account.
These factors affect what info you include.
Finally, the text itself is going to be impacted by rhetoric, of course.
You’d get a different response with ‘vote 4 me 4 prez’ than
‘I would be an impactful addition to our student government and heretofore should be
elected forthwith.’
Both might be persuasive in some situations, but we want to pick the words that will reach
the audience we actually want to convince.
So jotting down some notes using RSR can help you get inspired to write everything from
an instagram bio to a campaign speech,
and also feel like you’ve got well-chosen options for what to say.
As we learn more about rhetoric in the upcoming videos, we’ll be able to go into even more
depth with your analysis of what persuades others.
But for now, remember you’re already a persuasive person,
adding nuance to how you speak and write in order to appeal to your listeners and readers.
Learning about rhetoric is just a chance to become aware of the different elements of
persuasion and to be more deliberate in our persuasive work.
So if you hear your friend accusing a politician of using rhetoric as if they are being tricky
or deceitful, remember that basically means,
‘they’re trying to use persuasion to persuade me!’
That’s not so awful, after all; your friend’s probably doing it too.
Join us next time to learn more about the audience factor:
we’ll discuss how much we can tailor our work to an audience, and how much we actually
want to do so.
Thanks for watching Study Hall: Composition, which is produced by Arizona State University
and the Crash Course team at Complexly.
If you liked this video and want to keep learning with us here in Study Hall, be sure to subscribe.
You can learn more about ASU and the videos produced by Crash Course
in the links in the description.
See you next time!