Exordium & Peroration

The second part of rhetoric is arrangement. It is a commonplace for a story to have a beginning, middle, and end. In any piece of persuasive writing this should be applied. Arrangement allows you to maximize the strong arguments, minimize the weak arguments, and glide to your conclusion.

Ad Herennium sets six parts of speech which include: Exordium, Narration, Division, Proof, Refutation, and Peroration. This week we are focusing on two of the six parts of speech: Exordium and Peroration.

Exordium is where you establish your authenticity as a speaker, where you grab the audience’s attention, and hope to keep. You try to put your audience into a open-minded and conscientious place of mind so you do not lose their attention during your appeal. There are four methods to achieve exordium with your audience and that is to discuss yourself, discuss our enemies, discuss for our listeners, and discuss the facts themselves. A great example of exordium was when Apple CEO, Steve Jobs made a commencement speech at Stanford. He flattered the audience, humbled himself, and leading to what he was going to say. Exordium is also the goodness separating those at the opposite end of the moral spectrum that draws a line between us and them. It is also where the strongest ethos appeal appears.

Peroration is when you sum up what was said before, restate your strong points, and propel to your conclusion. It is the grand finale and is where the pathos appeal reaches its peak. This is where the speaker can really have some fun by moving the audience into tears or into rage. Figures of auxesis and recurrence where you usually pull together words or themes from earlier in the speech frequently escalate in peroration. This is why many speakers heighten the intensity in connection with the grand style of the finale.