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.