Against Rhetoric?

In de Washington Post schreef Michael Gerson een column 'Words Aren't Cheap' over de waarde retoriek.

In een Time Blog wordt het debat gevoerd over retoriek. Is Obama te welbespraakt? Is retoriek een vorm van zwakte? Of zelfs iets verwerpelijks?

Rhetoric A Weakness? - Real Clear Politics - Elections 2008 - TIME
Posted by KYLE TRYGSTAD

Enkele ideeën:
Former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson writes in the Washington Post that Clinton and McCain should not use Obama's speaking acumen in attacks against him. History has shown that vocal eloquence is no weakness, and "rhetoric" was not always a four-letter word

"Civil rights leaders possessed few weapons but eloquence -- and their words hardly came cheap. Every president eventually needs the tools of rhetoric, to stiffen national resolve in difficult times or to honor the dead unfairly taken.

It is not a failure for Obama to understand and exercise this element of leadership; it is an advantage.

Some Obama critics go even further, accusing him of inducing a "creepy," "cultish" "euphoria." A candidate delivers a good stump speech, adds a dose of personal magnetism and suddenly he is a sorcerer, practicing the dark arts of demagoguery.

But Obamamania is pretty mild stuff compared with our rhetorical history."

Toulmin

The Toulmin Project Home Page

This is the Toulmin Project Home Page. This page is designed to teach interested individuals about a theory of argumentation developed by Stephen Toulmin. Toulmin's theory is used in a variety of communiaction classes including our Fundamentals of Communication course, Public Speaking, Business and Professional Speaking, Communication Theory, Interpersonal Communication, and others. This theory is also used in some philosophy and english composition courses. The purpose of the web site is to introduce students to the theory so that they can use it to evaluate arguments or to construct their own. By clicking the buttons below, you can move through the web site.

Retorica

Onze Taal over retorica

Wie anderen wil overtuigen, begeeft zich bewust of onbewust op het terrein van de retorica -- het klassieke systeem van regels en adviezen voor welsprekendheid en doeltreffende communicatie. Professor Grootendorst legt, bij wijze van inleiding op de volgende congresbijdragen, uit hoe dit aloude systeem precies in elkaar zit. Bovendien gaat hij na hoe het tegenwoordig funcioneert -- onder meer aan de hand van de gebeurtenissen na de dood van prinses Diana.
Oude en nieuwe retorica
Prof. dr. R. Grootendorst - hoogleraar Taalbeheersing van het Nederlands, Universiteit van Amsterdam

Journals

Poroi is an online peer-reviewed journal for scholarship attuned to rhetoric in inquiry and culture.

POROI – Project On Rhetoric Of Inquiry – The University of Iowa

About Enculturation

Enculturation is a refereed journal devoted to contemporary theorizations of rhetoric, writing, and culture.

Rhetorica Network

The Rhetorica Network offers analysis and commentary about the rhetoric, propaganda, and spin of journalism and politics, including analysis of presidential speeches and election campaigns. This site features the Rhetorica: Press-Politics Journal web log, comprehensive news media links, a rhetoric textbook, a primer of critical techniques, and information for citizens.
The character of Rhetorica represents the purposes and canons of classical rhetoric.


About Dr. Andrew R. Cline and The Rhetorica Network


"Oh, that's just rhetoric!" In other words, whatever the statement is, the amateur critic believes it to be simply empty or evasive language. And perhaps it is. So is it rhetoric? Certainly. Every human utterance is rhetoric because, from my particular theoretical perspective, all human utterances are speech-acts meant to persuade. In an academic, non-pejorative sense, rhetoric is the effective use of language. Effective to what end? There are lots of answers to that question, and you now know mine: persuasion. The quality of a rhetorical performance can be anything from sublime to insipid, but what is most important is to decide if rhetoric is working to persuade and, if it is, how it is working to persuade.
The Rhetorica Network, including my Rhetorica: Press-Politics Journal web log, is my attempt to explain the persuasive tactics of politics and the press.

Retoriek Clinton

Arianna Huffington: Clinton, Obama And The Belief In The Magic Power Of Words - Politics on The Huffington Post

Een retorische analyse van de Clinton speeches.

Along with her "ready to lead on Day One" mantra, Hillary Clinton's favored line of attack against Barack Obama is the reincarnation of Mondale's 1984 "Where's the beef?" attack on Gary Hart. In Clinton's version, Obama is little more than a shallow speechifier -- he believes that words are all you need to lead.
She made it explicit in a speech in Providence, Rhode Island on Sunday:

"I could stand up here and say 'Let's just get everybody together. Let's get unified. The sky will open! The light will come down! Celestial choirs will be singing! And everyone will know we should do the right thing and the world will be perfect!' Maybe I've just lived a little long, but I have no illusions about how hard this is going to be. You are not going to wave a magic wand and have the special interests disappear!"

Last week it was: "Speeches don't put food on the table. Speeches don't fill up your tank, or fill your prescription, or do anything about that stack of bills."
And her chief strategist, Mark Penn, summed up the "just words" meme this way: "She is in the solutions business while Obama is in the promises business."
Now, I agree with Clinton that it's important to look at how each of the Democratic candidates uses words and how rhetoric fits into how they've run their respective campaigns. And if you do, you'll see that one candidate does believe that words are like a magic wand: you utter them and reality changes. But it's not Barack Obama -- it's Hillary Clinton.

Obama-Clinton: indruk en toon

Finding Political Strength in the Power of Words
Oratory Has Helped Drive Obama's Career -- and Critics' Questions
by Alec MacGillis
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 26, 2008; A01

Een indruk maken…

Een retoricus is zich bewust van zijn publiek.

"It comes from his sense of an audience," said Gerald Shuster, an expert in political communication at the University of Pittsburgh. "He's doing a lot of impromptu when he gets to the stage; he looks out over the audience and has the ability to adjust it."

Een toon bij het spreken…

The stump speech is far more freewheeling than his scripted addresses, mixing the colloquial and the lofty and dotted with laugh lines that Obama often chuckles at himself, enjoying his role. Contrary to Obama's reputation as a fiery orator who traffics mainly in abstractions, much of the speech is delivered in a conversational tone, and it includes a long middle section of policy prescriptions. But what audience members tend to remember are the handful of crescendos that punctuate it, which deliver all the more punch for how slowly he builds them.

"He uses highs and lows. He has a wide range of pitch and uses it effectively," said Ruth Sherman, a Connecticut communications consultant. "He knows where to pause and stop and let his audience enjoy him, and he knows how to ride the crest of the wave and allow the momentum to evolve."

While his speeches include more policy gristle than Obama gets credit for, critics note that those ideas amount to a fairly conventional left-leaning platform and are not as novel as the package they are wrapped in.

"People are commenting increasingly on the disjunction between the elevated and exceptionally fine rhetoric and the rather pedestrian policy proposals that form the Obama platform," said Berenson, the Harvard classmate and former Bush counsel.

Obama-Clinton: Reading form a scipt

Finding Political Strength in the Power of Words
Oratory Has Helped Drive Obama's Career -- and Critics' Questions
by Alec MacGillis
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 26, 2008; A01

It has also allowed him to keep his speeches fresh, a challenge in a campaign in which he has given two or three a day, on average, in addition to a dozen or so major televised addresses along the way. And by continually tweaking his pitch with new material, he gives the impression that he is thinking things through in front of his audiences, instead of reciting a rote speech.

"He seems very deliberative," said Martin Medhurst, a professor of rhetoric at Baylor University. "He seems like he's actually thinking about what he is saying rather than just reading from a script."

Obama-Clinton: Xerox

Finding Political Strength in the Power of Words
Oratory Has Helped Drive Obama's Career -- and Critics' Questions
by Alec MacGillis
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 26, 2008; A01

To his critics, these influences are proof that Obama's rhetoric is less original and inspired than his supporters believe. "If your candidacy is going to be about words, then they should be your own words," Clinton said in Thursday's debate in Texas. ". . . Lifting whole passages from someone else's speeches is not change you can believe in, it's change you can Xerox."

To his admirers, this magpie-like tendency to pluck lines and ideas from here and there and meld them into a coherent whole is inherent to good speechwriting and part of what makes Obama effective on the stump. It has allowed him to adapt quickly to rivals' attacks, which he often absorbs into his remarks, parroting them and turning them to his advantage.

Retoriek Ik en Wij

The UmBlog: Rhetoric without a cause: Obama

Het gebruik van 'ik' of 'wij' kan anders geïnterpreteerd worden.

Obama supporters like to point his rhetorical difference in using "we" instead of "I" in his stump speeches. Perhaps, unfortunately, Americans are so far removed from England since our revolution 230 years ago, that we forget the royal "we" is the polite royal's pronoun when he means "me."

Retoriek en Onderwijs

Een bedenking bij mogelijkheden voor het onderwijs.
Rhetoric and the Campaign | Blogging Pedagogy

Watching the Democratic debate last week made me think this primary has been a potential goldmine for rhetoric instructors.
Throughout the debate, Clinton argued that "actions speak louder than words," while Obama insisted that "words matter."

Beyond this, Clinton's big attack was over plagiarishttp://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/02/21/videos.21feb.debate/
Here's a link to an article that looks at language and the Democratic primary a bit more: http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/02/25/foreman.raw.politics/index.html
I'm planning on starting my class tomorrow with a discussion of language in the debates, but would also love to know if anyone else has found useful ways to incorporate the primaries into their rhetoric class.

Retoriek: overnemen

Barack Obama: Analyzing his stump speeches
by Christi Parsons and John McCormick
Tribune correspondents

Beide kandidaten nemen elkaars retoriek over.

Like McCain, Clinton and Obama frame the other party's ideas in their own words and then criticize them. McCain criticizes Obama as lacking in specifics; Obama responds with detail.

Een paar voorbeelden:

Over the past few months, Clinton has begun to speak proportionally in more human terms about the hardships of working people. She defines the campaign in terms of individuals, citing people with "mortgages they can't afford, medical bills that wiped out their life savings, tuition bills that cut short their children's dreams, who work the day shift and the night shift because they want the world for their children."

(…)

"I see an America where college is affordable again for hard-working families and students," she says, and where "America is respected around the world again."

Interestingly, as the campaign continues, each candidate's rhetoric adapts to acknowledge that of the others--almost as if evolving into a three-way conversation.

Clinton says that "speeches don't put food on the table," and Obama echoes the idea in short order with his own spin.
Clinton tells voters, "Your voices are the change we seek," an idea similar to Obama's "We are the change that we seek."

Hoog-plat

Barack Obama: Analyzing his stump speeches
By Christi Parsons and John McCormick
Tribune correspondents

Hooggestemede kritiek roept ‘platte’ reacties op.

Ambitious speakers in the past have found themselves vulnerable to the criticism. Robert F. Kennedy was questioned about who would actually pay for all of his noble plans. Gary Hart spoke grandly about "new ideas," only to be hit by a blunt rejoinder quoting a hamburger commercial: "Where's the beef?"

Obama-Clinton: vlot

Barack Obama: Analyzing his stump speeches
by Christi Parsons and John McCormick. Tribune correspondents

"Yes they are filled with platitudes, but they discuss policy as much as his opponents' speeches do".

Goed spreken is belangrijk. Men kan echter ook te vlot zijn want dat creëert dan weer wantrouwen.

And that may be what helps to fuel the criticism from detractors that Obama speaks mostly in "platitudes."

"Is it a fair criticism to say they have a lot of platitudes in them? It's accurate," said David Zarefsky, a Northwestern University professor who studies campaign rhetoric. "That's what stump speeches do. They're to capture an audience, to motivate people."

By reaching that height too well, he says, a stump speech can actually fail.

"There's a deep-seated cultural ambivalence we have about eloquence," Zarefsky said. "We seek it out, especially from leaders in times of crisis. On the other hand, we're suspicious that someone who is talking really well is putting something over on us."

Burke Links

Burke archive at

This blog, even in its nascent stage, could easily be thought of as a blog specifically on the ideas of Kenneth Burke rather than rhetoric generally.

That’s not my intent, but it’s no big surprise that it might appear that way. Look at most of the deeply important concepts that have emerged in rhetorical criticism over the last century, and you’ll see the majority of them were created by Burke or draw heavily on his ideas.

Oboma: rhetoric & events

Analyzing the enthusiasm gap. Seatlepi

But Obama's appeal is not simply that he is charismatic and delivers a good speech. Political rhetoric resonates only when it is tied to causes or shifts in real values. In other words, great rhetoric is made by great causes, not the reverse.

Rhetoric Clinton body language

N.Y. senator's rhetoric fails to shift the balance - The Boston Globe


"She dogged him on the respective merits of their healthcare plans and did not waiver in her claim that he is insufficiently prepared to be president. And while Obama was dialing down, she raised the volume a bit. Her tone of voice - which can tend toward the monotonous - rose with passion when talking about healthcare and drooped with sorrow when discussing the failures of the Bush administration. She even added a new hand gesture, cupping her hands and reaching out to the crowd."

Obama:rhetoric versus content

Obama's fresh rhetoric covers up old ideas. News-Leader


Much of his rhetoric is lighter than air — almost content-free. It's the past versus the future, hope over fear, one nation not two, yes we can, turn the page, and so forth. But when you get past the music and really focus on the lyrics, Obama emerges as an utterly conventional, down-the-line liberal Democrat. He claims to be all about the future, but his policy ideas are about as modern as disco and the leisure suit.

Rhetoric: Words, words..

Words should inspire people....

Yale Daily News - Fad of hope rhetoric blind to existential reality

For those of you who may have missed it, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama staged a watershed moment in the history of stupid presidential campaign rhetoric earlier this week in Wisconsin. Two days before the state’s primary, the Bloomberg headline read: “Clinton, Obama Trade Barbs in Wisconsin Over ‘Hope.’ ”

That’s right: barbs. About hope.

“It will take more than just speeches to fulfill our dreams,” Sen. Clinton said, really going out on a limb. “It will take a lot of hard work.”

“Don’t tell me words don’t matter,” Obama retorted. “If we don’t inspire the country to believe again, then it doesn’t matter how many policies and plans we have.”

Clearly, Obama is the worse offender here. At least Hillary, with all of her experience, knows that getting Americans of all ages “involved,” and “energized,” is cruel because it will inevitably lead to disappointment. This explains the cautionary tone of her rhetoric: Nothing scares away hip young voters like the threat of “hard work.”

Burke cases

The Rhetoric Garage: Callin’ Out Cousin Pookie: Clinton and Obama’s Rhetoric at Selma
http://rhetoricgarage.blogspot.com/2007/03/callin-out-cousin-pookie-clinton-and.html

The pentad: scene in both speeches. "... it’s obvious that scene plays a major role in both speeches. They are giving speeches in Selma about an event that happened there. Their audience includes people who actually participated in this event. They speak in African American churches that evoke the genesis of the Civil Rights movement. When speakers are commemorating an event at or near the site of that event, it’s a safe bet that “scene” is going to be one of the central terms.

So, the next question is what is the other half of this central ratio of terms in each speech?

I suggest that Clinton and Obama’s speeches pair “scene” up with two different terms, and for understandable reasons. These choices shape the very different speeches they give.

In Clinton’s case, her speech centers on the purpose/scene ratio (with “purpose” being the dominant term). Obama’s speech centers on the act/scene ratio (with “act” being the dominant term)".

Semiotics

Semiotics for Beginners by Daniel Chandler
http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/

Semiotics
http://carbon.cudenver.edu/~mryder/itc/semiotics.html

Analysis Links

Logical Fallacies: The Fallacy Files
http://www.fallacyfiles.org/index.html

Guide Links

Silva Rhetoricae: The Forest of Rhetoric

This online rhetoric is a guide to the terms of classical and renaissance rhetoric. Sometimes it is difficult to see the forest (the big picture) of rhetoric because of the trees (the hundreds of Greek and Latin terms naming figures of speech, etc.) within rhetoric. This site is intended to help beginners, as well as experts, make sense of rhetoric, both on the small scale (definitions and examples of specific terms) and on the large scale (the purposes of rhetoric, the patterns into which it has fallen historically as it has been taught and practiced for 2000+ years).

RHETORIC

A fast-paced introduction to the study of rhetoric, from Aristotle to the present,
with an emphasis on argumentative strategies and on rhetorical and stylistic analyses of essays, stories, speeches, poems, advertisements, lawn ornaments, t-shirts, and other forms of discourse.

A Short Handbook on Rhetorical Analysis | by William P. Banks

"He who does not study rhetoric will be a victim of it"
found on a Greek wall from the 6th Century B.C.

Throughout the numerous texts and treatises dealing with rhetoric in the classical tradition, much space is dedicated to the theories of invention, what Aristotle would claim as the different methods for "finding all the available arguments" in a given situation. Likewise, current textbooks that seek to "rediscover" the classical rhetorical tradition …

Corax: The Crow's Nest

"Corax: The Crow's Nest" is the website of Thomas J. Kinney, graduate student in English at the University of Arizona. It is named after Corax, the ancient Greek rhetorician who is said to have invented the art of rhetoric and whose name means "the crow." For more information, see my overview of rhetoric.

Currently, I am a PhD candidate in the Rhetoric, Composition, and the Teaching of English program, where I study rhetoric, composition, literary and cultural theory, and literature.

Texts

Aristotle's Rhetoric

http://www.public.iastate.edu/~honeyl/Rhetoric/

This online version of Aristotle's Rhetoric

Aristotle's Rhetoric. Notes.

Aristotle's rhetoric has had an enormous influence on the development of the art of rhetoric. Not only authors writing in the peripatetic tradition, but also the famous Roman teachers of rhetoric, such as Cicero and Quintilian, frequently used elements stemming from the Aristotelian doctrine.

BLogs

The Rhetoric Garage

At the Rhetoric Garage, we put current political and cultural texts up on the lift and check them out with a variety of rhetorical tools and discourse diagnostics. And don't forget to have your ethos changed and your tropes rotated every 30,000 words!

http://rhetoricgarage.blogspot.com/2007/03/callin-out-cousin-pookie-clinton-and.html

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Unfrozen Caveman Rhetorician

Unfrozen Caveman Rhetorician blends a semi-scholarly take on rhetorical analysis with political commentary and, hopefully, a bit of humor.