Rhetorical Terms Flashcards
Audience
The listeners, viewer, or reader of the text. Most texts are likely to have multiple audiences.
Concession
an acknowledgement that an opposing argument may be true or reasonalble in a strong argument, a concession is usually accompinied by a refutation challanging the validity of the opposing argument.
Connotation
Meanings or associations that readers have with a word beyond its dictionary deffinition or denotation. Conmotstions are usually positive or negitive and they can greatly affect the authors tone.
Context
The circumstances, aptomoshphere, attitudes, and events surrounded by a text
Counterargument
An opposing argument to the one a writer is putting forward. Rather than ignoring a counterargument a strong writer will usually address it though the process of concession and refutation
Ethos
Greek for “character” speaks appeal to the ethos to demonstrate that they are credible and trustworthy to speak on a given topic. Ethos is established by both who you are ans what you say
Logos
Greek for “embodied thought”. Speakers appeal to logos or reason by offering clear, rational ideas and using specific details, examples, facts , statistics or expert testimony to back them up
Occasion
The time and place a speech is givej orna piece is written
Pathons
Greek for “suffering” or “ experience”. Speakers appeal to pathons to emotionally motivate their audience. More specific appeals to Pathons might play the audiences values desires and hopes on the one hand, or fears and prejudices on the other hand
Persona
Greek for “mask” the face or character that a speaker shows to his or her audience
Polemic
Greek for “hostile” an aggressive argument that tries to establish e superiors of one opinion over all others. Polemic generally do not concede that opposing opinions have any merit
Propoganda
The spread of ideas and info to further a cause.
In a neg sense, propaganda is the use of rumors, lies, disformation and scare tactics.
Purpose
The goal the speaker wants to achive
Refutation
A denial of validity of opposing argument. In order to sound reasonable, refutations often follow a concession that acknoloagems that an opposing argument may be true or reasonable.
Rhetoric
As aristotle defined the term “the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion”
Its the art pf finding ways to pursue an audience
Rhetorical appeals
Rhetorical techniques used to pursue an audience by emphasizing sizing what they find most important or compelling
The three major appeals are ethos (character) logos(reason, and pathos (emotion)
Retorical triangle
A diagram that illistrates the interrelationship among the speaker, audience, and subject in determining a text.
Soaps
A mnemonic device that stands for subject, occasion, audience, purpose and speaker. It is a handy way to remember the various elements that make up the rhetorical situation
Speaker
The person or group who creats a text this might be a politician who delivers a speech, a commentator who writes an article, an artist who draws a political cartoon or even a company that commissions an advertisement
Subject
The topic of text
Text
While this term generally means the written word, in humanities it has come to mean any cultural product that can be “real”- meaning not just consumed and comprehended but investigated.
