You’ve heard people say it, particularly of political speeches: “It’s just rhetoric.” They mean, of course, that it’s B******T! – a bunch of grandiose, pretentious, self-serving, undoubtedly deceitful, and ultimately empty words meant to pull the wool over the eyes of all us rubes.
Of course, people apply that definition of rhetoric to most advertising and marketing copy, too – or would, if B******T weren’t so much more, well … colorful!
But is that all rhetoric is? Traditionally, no.
Aristotle gave rhetoric what remains its primary definition: the means of persuasion, or, as today’s American Heritage Dictionary has it, “the art or study of using language effectively and persuasively.” And how does one do that? By employing rhetorical devices such as metaphor, simile, allusion, paradox, personification, hyperbole, understatement, irony, ambiguity, rhyme, puns, symbol, synesthesia, anesis, antithesis, parallelism, chiasmus, zeugma, eulogia, paramythia, bdelygmia, and yadda yadda yadda. I know: Even if most of it weren’t Greek, it’d still be Greek to most of us.
Used properly, rhetorical devices lend power, grace, and eloquence to one’s words. They move people to think, to feel, to take a particular course of action. They persuade.
Used improperly … Well, even his day, Aristotle had to defend his definition of rhetoric, arguing that the use of what’s good for a bad reason doesn’t negate the goodness of what’s good.
So, really, rhetoric is a good thing – until a bad writer or speaker or someone with bad intentions turns it into B******T.
