"Socrates"/Plato: "Rhetoric is the counterpart of cookery."

Aristotle: The standard translation has been: "Rhetoric is the counterpart of dialectic.... Rhetoric is the art of discovering the available means of persuasion in the given case." The recent translation by Geo. Kennedy is "Rhetoric is an antistrophos to dialectic.... Let rhetoric be [defined as] an ability, in each [particular] case, to see the available means of persuasion. This is the function of no other art...."

T. De Quincey: "Here then we have a in popular use two separate ideas of Rhetoric: one of which is occupied with the general end of the fine arts--that is to say, intellectual pleasure; the other applies itself more specifically to a definite purpose of utility, viz. fraud."

R. Young: "Rhetoric is the art, method, and theory of bringing about psychological change."

W. Booth: Rhetoric "creates meaning."

Barthes: "I have always conceived rhetoric very broadly, including all reflections on all forms of work, on general technique of forms of work, and not only in the restricted sense of rhetorical figures."

I. A. Richards: "Rhetoric is the study of misunderstanding and its remedies."

K. Burke: (1.) "Rhetoric is concerned with the state of Babel after the Fall." (2.) "Wherever there is persuasion, there is rhetoric. And wherever there is 'meaning,' there is 'persuasion.' " (3). "The ideal of rhetoric is consubstantiality; that is sympathetic understanding among all men."

D. Ehninger: "A rhetoric I define as an organized, consistent, coherent way of talking about practical discourse in any of its forms or modes."

See Ehninger's "On Systems of Rhetoric" in Philosophy and Rhetoric. I (1968): 131-44 (Originally in different form published as "On Rhetoric and Rhetorics" in Western Speech 31 [1967]: 242-49).

R. L. Scott: "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."

See Scott's "I. A Synoptic View of Systems of Western Rhetoric." Quarterly Journal of Speech 61 (1975): 439-47; and Enhinger's "II: A Synoptic View of Systems of Western Rhetoric." QJS 61 (Dec. 1975): 448-53.

Valesio: "Rhetoric is all of language, in its realization as discourse."

DeMan: "Rhetoric radically suspends logic and opens up vertiginous possibilities of referential aberation."

Group Mu (Univ. of Liege, center for Poetic Studies): "Today rhetoric appears not only as a science of the future but also as a timely science within the scope of structuralism, new criticism, and semiology."

Pound: "Rhetoric is the art of dressing up some unimportant matter so as to fool the audience for the time being."

Todorov: "poetic language [Rhetoric] is not only foreign to good usage, it is its antithesis: Its essence consists in a violation of the norms of language."

Geo. Kennedy: "Rhetoric, in the most general sense, is the energy [en ergon] inherent in emotion and thought, transmitted through a system of signs, including language, to others to influence their decisions or actions."

In Comparative Rhetoric, Kennedy argues: "I would ... like to push the definition of rhetoric beyond an abstract concept of an art, skill, or technique of composition to try to identify a place for it in nature. Rhetoric is not, I think, just a convenient concept existing only in the mind of speakers, audiences, writers, critics, and teachers. It has an essence or reality that has not been appreciated. I shall argue in this book that rhetoric, in essence, is a form of mental and emotional energy. This is most clearly seen when an individual, animal or human, is faced with some serious threat or opportunity that may be affected by utterance. An emotional reaction takes place in the mind. The emotion may be fear, anger, lust, hunger, pity, curiosity, love--any of the basic emotions of sentient life. The probable source of such basic emotions, and thus of rhetoric, is the instinct for self-preservation, which in turn derives from nature's impulse to preserve the genetic line.... Rhetoric is thus a 'conservative' faculty."

Bitzer: "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."

Winterowd: "Rhetoric is the study of honest, effective communication."

Some one liners associated with Rhetoric (and always in reference to style): abuse (Valery), violation (Cohen), scandal (Barthes), anomaly (Todorov), folly (Arragon), deviation (Spitzer), subversion (Peytard), infraction (Thiry). Each of these words has strong moral, political connotations. One last example, this one from Charles Bally: "The first person who called a sailing vessel a sail made a mistake."

I will add more definitions as we further interrogate this Question of rhetoric.


The Question(s) that remain are How will have Rherotics been seen, further spectacalized?, How will have Rherotics become? There is hope in the Future Anterior!

For an additional effort @ examining the Question of Defining Rhetoric, see J. Comas's 'Defining Rhetoric' Site.