Defining Rhetoric, 50+ Modern Takes
One of the oldest definitions of rhetoric is Aristotle’s: “the ability, in each [particular] case, to see the available means of persuasion.” Another classical definition, Quintilian’s, suggests rhetoric is simply “the art of speaking well.” To be sure, rhetoric has never had a stable definition. In 2009, the first sentence in the Wikipedia entry for the term read as follows: “Rhetoric explains the three arts of using language as a means to persuade (logos, pathos, and ethos).” The entry now (in 2016) begins this way: “Rhetoric is the art of discourse, an art that aims to improve the capability of writers or speakers to inform, most likely to persuade, or motivate particular audiences in specific situations.” As Patricia Bizzell and Bruce Herzberg write in the introduction to The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical Times to the Present, “Rhetoric is a complex discipline with a long history: It is less helpful to try to define it once and for all than to look at the many definitions it has accumulated over the years and to attempt to understand how each arose and how each still inhabits and shapes the field.”
It was in this spirit that several years ago I started collecting definitions of rhetoric. I wanted to be able to show my students the complexity and ambiguity of rhetoric’s scope via this relatively straightforward convention of definition, of attempts to say what rhetoric is. The following list is partial and limited to declarative statements that I’ve come across through my own reading and writing. Since the first definition in the list is from 1849, the “modern” in my title is a loose designation at best and simply reflects my interest in rhetoric as a “modern” academic discipline that recognizes rhetoric as a multimodal practice.
“Rhetoric, in the modern acceptation of the term, is the science of good writing. It includes within its province precepts pertaining to all sorts of writing, poetry as well as prose, orations, philosophical treatises, essays, and epistles. It regulates the use of the pen, and is particularly careful to produce a good style of composition.”
— Henry Jones Ripley, Sacred Rhetoric; or, Composition and Delivery of Sermons (1849)
“Without attempting a formal definition of the word, I am inclined to consider rhetoric…as a body of rules derived from experience and observation, extending to all communication by language and designed to make it efficient. It does not ask whether a man is to be a speaker or writer, — a poet, philosopher, or debater; but simply, — is it his wish to be put in the right way of communicating his mind with power to others, by words spoken or written. If so, rhetoric undertakes to show him rules or principles which will help to make the expression of his thoughts effective; and effective, not in any fashionable or arbitrary way, but in the way that nature universally intends, and which man universally feels.”
— Edward T. Channing, Lectures Read to the Seniors at Harvard College (1856)
“Rhetoric is the Science of the Laws and Forms of Prose. It investigates the method and general principles to which every discourse must conform that is designed to instruct, convince, or persuade.”
— Andrew Dousa Hepburn, Manual of English Rhetoric (1875)
“1. Rhetoric is the science which treats of discourse. 2. By discourse is meant any expression of thought by means of language. 3. Discourse may be either oral or written.”
— John Seely Hart, A Manual of Composition and Rhetoric (1878)
“Rhetoric is both a science and an art. It is a science when it discovers and establishes the laws of discourse, an art when the laws are applied to practice. Rhetoric is, therefore, the science of the laws of effective discourse, or the art of speaking and writing effectively.”
— David J. Hill, The Elements of Rhetoric and Composition (1878)
Rhetoric “lies in between grammar and logic. Rhetoric is the study which teaches us how to invent thought, and how to express it most appropriately in words.”
— Brainerd Kellogg, A Textbook on Rhetoric (1881)
“Rhetoric is the art of adapting discourse, in harmony with its subject and occasion, to the requirements of a reader or hearer.”
— John Franklin Genung, The Practical Elements of Rhetoric with Illustrative Examples (1886)
“Rhetoric is the art of effective communication by means of language; or, more simply, it is the art of expressing by words precisely what we mean […] First, notice that the art we are to study involves communication, the telling of something to persons other than ourselves. Simple as is this conception of rhetoric, it is one hard to keep in mind. A speaker or writer is often tempted to feel that his duty is done when his thoughts are so expressed that he himself understands them, forgetting that what is of real importance is that the reader or the hearer shall understand them […] Second, notice that rhetoric is the art of effective communication by language, the art of expressing precisely what you mean […] Third, notice that we call rhetoric an art, not a science. The meanings of these two words often come very close together, but the main distinction between them is that science implies knowledge and art implies skill.”
— George Rice Carpenter, Elements of Rhetoric and English Composition (1889)
“I define oratory [rhetoric] to be the art of influencing conduct with the truth set home by all the resources of the living man. Its aim is not to please men, but to build them up; and the pleasure which it imparts is one of the methods by which it seeks to do this. It aims to get access to men by allaying their prejudices.”
— Henry Ward Beecher, Oratory (1892)
“Rhetoric is the art of dressing up some unimportant matter so as to fool the audience for the time being.”
— T.S. Eliot, “Vorticism” (1914)
“Rhetoric, I shall urge, should be the study of misunderstanding and its remedies. We struggle all our days with misunderstandings, and no apology is required for any study which can prevent or remove them…[so as rhetoricians we must] consider more closely how words work in discourse.”
— I.A. Richards, The Philosophy of Rhetoric (1936)
Rhetoric “is the art of communicating through symbols ideas about reality.”
— Sister Miriam Joseph, The Trivium: The Liberal Arts of Logic, Grammar, and Rhetoric (1947)
“[The] characteristic concern of rhetoric [is] the manipulation of men’s beliefs for political ends. Now, the basic function of rhetoric [is] the use of words by human agents to form attitudes or to induce actions in other human agents…”
— Kenneth Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives (1950)
“I take rhetoric to be the rationale of informative and suasory discourse […] it is ‘the function of adjusting ideas to people and people to ideas.’ The ultimate goal of rhetoric ‘is the attainment of maximum probability as a basis for public decision’.”
— Donald C. Bryant, “Rhetoric: It’s Functions and its Scope”(1953)
“(1) Rhetoric refers to the making of speeches and the writing of themes, essays, and other literary forms and includes the principles which guide the production of these speeches and written forms. (2) Rhetoric refers to the various forms of speaking and writing. (3) Rhetoric is connected with the criticism and study of these forms of discourse. (4) Rhetoric also refers to the analysis of theories and histories of rhetoric, the generalizations and speculations about how discourse does or does not, should or should not work. And finally, (5) rhetoric refers to the examination of the true nature of speech practices and literary forms of discourse, the philosophic study of language meanings.”
— Walter Fisher, “Rhetoric: A Pedagogic Definition” (1961)
“Rhetoric is the art of finding and employing the most effective means of persuasion on any subject, considered independently of intellectual mastery.”
— Wayne C. Booth, “The Rhetorical Stance” (1963)
“Rhetoric is the art or the discipline that deals with the use of discourse, either spoken or written, to inform or persuade or motivate an audience, whether that audience is made up of one person or a group of persons. Broadly defined in that way, rhetoric would seem to comprehend every kind of verbal expression that people engage in.”
— Edward P.J. Corbett and Robert J. Connors, Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student (1965)
“Rhetoric, or the art of acting on someone through words, is an abstractive art […] For me rhetoric refers to the ways one person attempts to act on another, to make him laugh or think, squirm or thrill, hate or mate.”
— James Moffett, Teaching the Universe of Discourse (1968)
“In short, rhetoric is a mode of altering reality, not by the direct application of energy to objects, but by the creation of discourse which changes reality through the mediation of thought and action.”
— Lloyd Bitzer, “The Rhetorical Situation” (1968)
“A rhetoric I define as an organized, consistent, coherent way of talking about practical discourse in any of its forms or modes.”
— Douglas Ehninger, “On Systems of Rhetoric” (1968)
Rhetoric is “[t]he art of changing men’s minds.”
— Wayne C. Booth, “The Scope of Rhetoric Today: A Polemical Excursion” (1971)
“The art of rhetoric is thus a ‘heuristic’ art, allowing the rhetor to discover real issues in indeterminate situations…. [So] I propose that rhetoric be construed as an art of topics or commonplaces.”
— Scott Consigny, “Rhetoric and Its Situations” (1974)
“Rhetoric is communication characterized by a high degree of intentionality and a high degree of structure, including distinctness of communicative roles; it eventuates in discourse in the public realm of experience rather than the private.”
— R.L. Scott, “A Synoptic View of Systems of Western Rhetoric” (1975)
“The primordial function of rhetoric is to ‘make-known’ meaning both to oneself and to others. Meaning is derived by a human being in and through the interpretive understanding of reality. Rhetoric is the process of making known that meaning.”
— Michael Hyde and Craig Smith, “Hermeneutics and Rhetoric: A Seen but Unobserved Relationship” (1979)
“I specify now that rhetoric is the functional organization of discourse, within its social and cultural context, in all its aspects, exception made for its realization as a strictly formal metalanguage — in formal logic, mathematics, and in the sciences whose metalanguages share the same features. In other words: rhetoric is all of language, in its realization as discourse.”
— Paolo Valesio, Novantiqua: Rhetoric as a Contemporary Theory (1980)
“n. 1. the art of using words effectively; esp., the art of prose composition 2. artificial eloquence.”
— Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language (1982)
“Rhetoric in its contemporary sense may be defined as collective, cooperative inquiry. This definition of rhetoric departs from the traditional definition of rhetoric in at least two important respects. First, contemporary rhetoric departs from the traditional identification of rhetoric with persuasion…. Second, contemporary rhetoric departs from the traditional association of rhetoric with an established community of belief.”
— James P. Zappen, “A Rhetoric for Research in Sciences and Technology” (1983)
“Rhetoric is the art which seeks to capture in opportune moments that which is appropriate and attempts to suggest that which is possible.”
— John Poulakos, “Toward a Sophistic Definition of Rhetoric” (1983)
Rhetoric is “the theory and practice of persuasive communication.”
— Chaim Perelman, “Rhetoric and Politics” (1984)
“…rhetoric is the process of using language to organize experience and communicate it to others. It is also the study of how people use language to organize and communicate experience. The word denotes…both distinctive human activity and the ‘science’ concerned with understanding that activity.”
—C. H. Knoblauch, “Modern Rhetorical Theory and its Future Directions” (1985)
“Rhetoric, in short, is thought of as either a second-rate way of dealing with facts that cannot really be properly known or as a way of dealing with people instrumentally, or manipulatively, in an attempt to get them to do something you want them to do [… but rhetoric] is not merely an art of estimating probabilities or an art of persuasion, but an art of constituting culture and community.”
— James Boyd White, “Law as Rhetoric, Rhetoric as Law: The Arts of Cultural and Communal Life” (1985)
“Rhetoric is the study of the personal, social, and historical elements in human discourse — how to recognize them, interpret them, and act on them, in terms both of situational context and of verbal style. This is the kind of study one has to perform in order to effect persuasion, the traditional end of rhetoric.”
— Patricia Bizzell, “Foundationalism and Anti-Foundationalism in Composition Studies” (1986)
“If rhetoric is truly to be regarded as an interdisciplinary, epistemic enterprise — as the creation and communication of knowledge through symbolic activity — then we must not only bring rhetoric to bear on other fields, but we must also bring those fields to bear on our understanding of rhetoric.”
— Karen Burke LeFevre, Invention as a Social Act (1987)
Rhetoric is “[t]he study of how people use language and other symbols to realize human goals and carry out human activities . . . ultimately a practical study offering people great control over their symbolic activity.”
—Charles Bazerman, Shaping Written Knowledge: The Genre and Activity of the Experimental Article in Science (1988)
Rhetoric is “the political effectivity of trope and argument in culture.”
— Steven Mailloux, Rhetorical Power (1989)
“Rhetoric, as I see it, is a means — perhaps the only means — of evoking and maintaining consciousness. It accomplishes these ends by driving a wedge between subject and object. For it is the instrument that objectifies stimuli or presuppositions not hitherto perceived as objects.”
—Henry Johnstone, “Rhetoric as Wedge: A Reformulation” (1990)
“Rhetoric is an art of positionality in address.”
— John Bender and David E. Wellbery, “Rhetoricality: On the Modernist Return to Rhetoric” (1990)
“Rhetoric is the art of framing an argument so that it can be appreciated by an audience.”
— Philip E. Johnson, Darwin on Trial (1991)
Rhetoric is “a speaker or writer’s self-conscious manipulation of his medium with a view to ensuring his message as favorable a reception as possible on the part of the particular audience being addressed.”
— Thomas Cole, The Origins of Rhetoric in Ancient Greece (1991)
Rhetoric is “[t]he art of persuasion. It has to do with the presentation of ideas in clear, persuasive language.”
— C. Hugh Holman and William Harmon, A Handbook to Literature (1992)
“Rhetoric in the most general sense may perhaps be identified with the energy inherent in communication: the emotional energy that impels the speaker to speak, the physical energy expanded in the utterance, the energy level coded in the message, and the energy experienced by the recipient in decoding the message.”
— George Kennedy, “A Hoot in the Dark” (1992)
“Rhetoric is an acquired competency, a manner of thinking that invents possibilities for persuasion, conviction, action, and judgment […it is] more than the product; more even than practice; it is the entire process of forming, expressing, and judging public thought in real life.”
— Thomas Farrell, Norms of Rhetorical Culture (1993)
“Rhetoric is primarily a verbal, situationally contingent, epistemic art that is both philosophical and practical and gives rise to potentially active texts.”
— William A. Covino and David Joliffe, Rhetoric: Concepts, Definitions, Boundaries (1995)
“[W]e can define rhetoric as a mode of reflection upon the sociality of language.”
— Robert Hariman, “Status, Marginality, and Rhetorical Theory” (1999)
“[R]hetoric is, in its deepest and most fundamental sense, the advocacy of realities.”
— Joseph Petraglia, “Shaping Sophisticates: Implications of the Rhetorical Turn for Rhetoric Education” (2000)
“Rhetoric is an instrumental use of language…. One person engages another person in an exchange of symbols to accomplish some goal. It is not communication for communication’s sake. Rhetoric is communication that attempts to coordinate social action. For this reason, rhetorical communication is explicitly pragmatic. Its goal is to influence human choices on specific matters that require immediate attention.”
— Gerard A. Hauser, Introduction to Rhetorical Theory (2002)
“[A]ny theoretical discourse that is entitled to be called ‘rhetoric’ must at minimum conceive of rhetoric as an art of invention, that is, it must give a central place to the systematic discovery and investigation of the available arguments in a given situation. Furthermore, it must conceive of the arguments generated by rhetorical invention as both produced and circulated within a network of social and civic discourse, images, and events.”
— Sharon Crowley, “Composition is Not Rhetoric” (2003)
“Rhetoric is commonly defined as the art of persuasion, but it involves far more than the verbal devices that are often connected with propaganda. It is the shaping of discourses (or simply the uses of language) for different purposes and audiences.”
— Bonnie Stone Sunstein and Elizabeth Chiseri-Strater, Fieldworking: Reading and Writing Research (2006)
Rhetoric is “the art of effective communication. The study of rhetoric examines all the elements that are necessary to make communication persuasive to a reader or listener.”
— Elizabeth A. Stolarek and Larry R. Juchartz, Classical Techniques and Contemporary Argument (2007)
“Rhetoric is the art of using language and media to achieve particular goals.”
— John J. Ruszkiewicz, How To Write Anything (2009)
“Rhetoric is, as simply defined as possible, the art of persuasion: the attempt by one human being to influence another in words. It is no more complicated than that.”
— Sam Leith, Words Like Loaded Pistols: Rhetoric From Aristotle to Obama (2012)
“Rhetoric is revealing and doing — doing as revealing and revealing as doing — and hence integral to our dwelling in the world […] Rhetoric is an emergent result of environmentally situated and interactive engagements, redolent of a world that affects us, that persuades us to symbolicity.”
— Thomas Rickert, Ambient Rhetoric: The Attunements of Rhetorical Being (2013)
“Rhetoric is the reflective practical art of strategic utterance in context from the point of view of the participants, both speaker and hearer, writer and reader.”
— Charles Bazerman, A Rhetoric of Literate Action (2013)
As I said at the beginning, this list is partial and only reflects those definitions I’ve run across myself. For my money, however, one of the most eloquent statements about what rhetoric is comes from Joe Kelleher in a scholarly essay about Princess Diana titled “Rhetoric, Nation, and the People’s Property”:
[Rhetoric] is to serve — so to speak — as a two handed technology. On the one hand, it comprehends how empirical events may be constituted and exchanged among participants (performers, witnesses), through and as discursive practices. On the other, it serves as a mode of metacritical practice, a methodology of analyzing and bringing to light interests, power places, and ideological sleights of hand that may function as the ‘ends’ of rhetorical ‘means.’ As such, in serving to bring together the parties to an agreement, while at the same time functioning as the analytic light by which disputed and contradictory interests may be brought to view, rhetoric engages in both a binding and a rupturing. Rhetoric, that is to say, is an ambivalent mediator.
