The Five Canons of Rhetoric

The five canons of rhetoric are invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery. Invention is finding ways to persuade your audience; arrangement is putting together the structure for your argument; style is the way a speaker presents the argument they are making to stir the emotions of the attended audience; memory is when a speaker does not have to prepare or memorize a speech they are going to deliver; and delivery is the way a speaker uses their voice, gestures, and etc. to enhance their speech. These canons of rhetoric give us principles that if we apply them properly they will make our communication more effective to the audience.

The most important canon of rhetoric to me is arrangement because every story or speech needs a beginning, a middle, and an end. Arrangement helps the speaker to maximize their strong arguments, minimize the weaker ones, and helps with the flow to the conclusion. Also I think the second most important canon is delivery because if the speaker cannot deliver their speech effectively it does not have much of an impact on their audience. For example, it would be like a bad actor butchering Shakespeare’s work. The delivery in a speech may vary because of which part of the speech the speaker is in. Ad Herennium recommends “for the introduction to use a voice as calm and composed as possible. Ad Herennium also tells us “good delivery ensures that what the orator is saying seems to come from his heart.” If you fool yourself first, the audience will follow. As Lord Mancroft said and what I agree with is that, “A speech is like a love-affair- any fool can start it, but to end it requires considerable skill.”