The Canons of Rhetoric

The five canons of rhetoric include invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery. Though their direct terminology evolved in the Roman Rhetoric period, Aristotle and Cicero alike discussed the offices that structured the orator’s success. Many rhetorics valued different offices as higher than the others. Delivery and memory, for example, do not retain as much value for literate rhetorics because information can be read and looked up. Memory was extremely valuable in Plato’s rhetorical view because the highest objective is “alethia” or to not forget. Regardless of what is valued as most important, the canons offer patterns of thought, speech, structure, and sentences. These patterns influence the practice.

Invention

Invention is the production of thought and what to say. Invention includes signs (both fallible and infallible evidence demonstrating the presence or absence of another thing), topics (lists of words relating to contexts to aid in knowing what and when to speak), dialectic (a question and answer discussion seeking to understand meaning, validity, and value in distinctions), stasis (debate involving differing opinions), and asystatic (useless arguments).

Dialectic seems a particularly important part of invention as it is the antidote for blind believing. It involves asking the important questions to counter the obvious and redefine the thought that is most often just simply accepted. Dialectic discussion demands defining to discover distinction. The technique of using analogies and contrasts to find minute details in the definition includes one person asking the questions (without guiding the conversation) and the candid answerer responding on the path to discovery.

Plato’s Gorgias is a discussion that offers a guide of sorts to dialectic. The principles Plato offers through examples and repetition in his discussion stir in the reader a desire to argue and deeply think about the answers to questions that govern a world. And in a true argument where Plato’s principles are accurately in place, I think great discoveries could be invented. I’m not sure that all of his principles might be attained though. I wonder if it is possible to be truly fearless (although now I’m wondering about the definition of fearlessness as it compares to bravery, thanks Plato), in that you do not worry about your own or other’s feelings. Is it possible to truly remove yourself from all feelings? If not worrying about other’s feelings is being fearless, then is fearlessness rude? I suppose the next point, “be selfless—no ego” begins to answer that question. And then the bravery does come into play when accepting the answer even when (and it seems it often will) it contradicts previous beliefs.

It has taken reading through this section on dialectic in particular many times because it isn’t necessarily fun or easy to test beliefs in order to correct values by coming to an unsatisfactory conclusion. This is probably why it is unfortunately unfamiliar to me (in actual definition, though I think I’ve done it in some form without knowing it) and therefore difficult to grasp. This is also probably why it is an important piece of the preeminent canon of rhetoric. Thus, this complexity is also the reason I’m suddenly practicing dialectic with everything I encounter.

One of my close friends is moving across the world this week. For the next two years, she’ll be teaching girls who have been rescued from horrors. A natural part of the process of moving includes saying “goodbye” to all of her friends and family. I happened to be in the middle of reading about dialectic when we met for my turn at “goodbye,” and I might have mentioned that “if you can’t define them, then you can’t value them.” Before I even understood what we were doing (I’d only read it once at this point), we engaged in a dialectic that was very much based on the principles Plato described in hope to define “goodbye.” What makes a farewell good? How is it, like love, full of different definitions in different contexts? Saying good-bye to me was very different for my friend than saying good-bye to her dog. And both were significantly different from saying good-bye to the girl she’s been mentoring for six years because this nineteen-year old girl has terminal cancer and likely will not be alive when my friend returns. Our discussion on the distinctions of “goodbye” was filled with more questions of definitions—hope, mortality, service, family, friends, travel, living, dying, and love. Our amateur dialectic has a long way to go.

If I was truly a rhetorician, perhaps I would have had a notebook full of typical goodbyes to pull out in this moment with my friend. Topics involve knowing what to say and when to say it. Traditional teachers encouraged boilerplates, or a rhetorical handbook of sorts that offered an answer to the question ‘what to say?” With this helpful guide, the decision and the rhetorical choice became important in choosing what to say and retaining sincerity in the delivery. I think many today are very similar to the Greeks in that we all want to hear intelligent things and we appreciate when things are said beautifully, but distrust of those who speak just to speak remains.

I particularly like Cicero’s advice on praise for its practicality. The general guidelines can be applied well to many contexts and end in true encouragement, but it still takes logic to apply the praise correctly. And then, if the praise is not delivered seamlessly, one can turn to Aristotle’s Topic Twenty on motive and question (perhaps in retrospect) why they are offering praise.

Topics remind me, in a strange way, of the Valentine’s Day packets kids purchase every February. For their classroom exchange, they choose from a variety of Valentine’s Day messages, often transcribed over the year’s biggest superhero or princess. The rhetoric is important for the first graders. You give the kid who likes you the “you’re sweet” message, the best friend the “Will you be my Valentine?” card, and the teacher the “Happy Valentine’s Day” larger card. To choose incorrectly would be detrimental. The social structure of the class hangs on what candy pairs with the messages that are sent. And sometimes, the concept of ‘liking’ someone else doesn’t even arise until the messages suggest it—Valentine topics potentially invent thought. Of course, Aristotle’s method was slightly more abstract than the first grader’s February 14th options.

Arrangement

The classes on composition I’ve taken (granted, I’ve only taken high school courses on composition) seemed to skip over invention and glorify arrangement. I think I’ve been learning arrangement since third grade when teachers described a paper like a cheeseburger (the buns were the opening and conclusion, the meat was the argument, the cheese was the transition, and the lettuce was the back story). As I progressed through school, the cheeseburger became a bit more advanced (though I was nowhere near writing a textbook on the subject at age fourteen like Cicero).

This section on arrangement makes me wonder again about the question of natural talent, training, and rules. The teaching of arrangement can be done well through modeling and encouraging practice. Training seems particularly useful when addressing the specific points of Cicero’s On Invention like what background information is necessary. Training is critical for revising, as even the sentence jumbler trains (I’m suddenly very self-conscious of every sentence I place in this response).

The rules in this instance are delineated well. Start at the beginning by stating the issue and the thoughts in opposition to the issue, offer your stance, and briefly summarize your argument so the reader follows along well. Before you explain, name; before you evaluate, define; before you solve, state the problem. When refuting, question, deny and grant the premises but deny the conclusion by questioning examples. When concluding, refrain from suddenly jumping into a new topic. The rules themselves are a successfully arranged argument; they’ve worked in persuading people for centuries.

So with good training and the knowledge of good rules, arrangement should be easy. And while I think these are the most important parts of arrangement, natural talent plays some role as well. Because thoughts rarely come in the same order that they’re best presented to others (why is that?), the choice of argumentation (logical or chronological, for example), is developed by practicing reading arguments but also by natural talent. Intelligence also plays a role in arrangement. Perhaps people with natural brightness figure out more quickly what they are trying to say, and so their writing towards an idea process progresses quickly to the next step and offers more time for practice and training. Then again, perhaps the most intelligent people have the most difficulty arranging and conveying their thoughts.

Style

My eleventh grade English teacher would not let us use a single “to be” verb in any paper or email we turned in. Her attempt to teach style frustrated me, but I learned a lesson on avoiding passive voice. Now I can speak in plain style, though I’m particularly conscious of every word in this section.

I felt the same way when reading William Zinsser’s On Writing Well (a book surely influenced by this rhetoric). With cutting sentences like, “Clutter is the disease of American writing. We are a society strangling in unnecessary words, circular constructions, pompous frills and meaningless jargon,” I want to include a metaphor, but I’m terrified it will just add to decoration. Like dialectic, rhetorically astute style frightens me. When all is stripped away, do I really have anything to say?

The praise of brevity makes me wonder on the rhetoric of silence? In relation to topics, if the answer to what to say and when to say it is say nothing, then is silence rhetoric? Is the most powerful form of brevity saying nothing? Like food coloring, saying nothing at all seems powerful and best when used very rarely and in little doses.

Has modern technology changed the three styles of prose? Is high style as high as it once was? Society, as a whole, seems less formal in attire and behavior. Will high style become antiquated? I do not think it will; as long as art and politics endure, a form of high style is needed.

Memory

Memory is the ability to remember things. Everyone possess a memory of some sort. As described in Rhetorica ad Herrenium, Simonides displayed the morbid power of memory by recalling every person who was in the banquet hall when the walls collapsed and everyone died. His memory was based on the visual image, but other devices aid in the expansion of memory. Other techniques help build memory’s capacity for things as simple as preparing for a test and as complex as recalling information as life or death dependent as Simonides. Common mnemonic devices include involving movement, remembering the first letters in the form of a word, and connecting art to the object that should be remembered.

According to Rhetoric ad Herennium, Book Three, natural memory comes from the idea that we are born with memories in our mind like we are born with thought. The recent Pixar movie Inside Out takes this stance that memories are innate. Artificial memory is built by training and discipline. Artificial memory and natural memory certainly go together. As artificial memory is strengthened, the natural memory becomes outstanding. And a strong natural memory makes it easier to develop an artificial memory. This again brings up the question of training, rules, and natural talent.

Beyond natural memory, Rhetoric ad Herennium, Book Three also argues that nature teaches memory. The ordinary things in life are often not remembered because they offer nothing new or extraordinary to stir the mind. However if we hear or see something grand, laughable, or dishonorable, it stands out and is thus imbedded in our memories. This is most evident in the nature we remember. Because the sun rises and sets each day, we fail to remember each sunrise. Our minds lack that capacity to recall this much information. The lightning storm that strikes during a sunset at the beach is much more memorable. Thus, nature’s example offers the advice that we should create images (or words) that will be so extraordinary that they endure in memory.

My training in memory comes from earning a degree in psychology. Psychologists have long studied the (sometimes deceptive) power of memory. The ability to create false memories with reliable people telling believable stories and with evidence makes me question memory’s danger. Yet even this strength of creating memories that are nonexistent shows why memory deserves to be a canon of rhetoric. What people remember changes their future thoughts.

The connection between memory and smell is intriguing in the same way that these ancient arguments connected memory and images. A study by White and others (2015) demonstrated that the olfactory bulb first processes incoming smells. This begins inside the nose and moves through the bottom of the brain with direct connections between the amygdala and the hippocampus. Both the amygdala and hippocampus are connected to emotion and memory. Visual, auditory, and tactile information do not directly pass through these areas of the brain. Thus, the vivid connection between emotion and memory has been the subject of many recent studies that question both positive and negative emotion as it connects to the olfactory bulb. Associate a beautiful (or terrible smell) with the audience when giving a persuasive speech or offering them a stirring book, and they might just recall the emotions and evidence with greater clarity the next time they come across that aroma.

Delivery

Delivery is the impact of voice, body language, and behaviors other than the message itself on the argument. When reading an argument, delivery is not as important as when the rhetoric is offered through a medium of oral tradition. Quintilian argued, “All emotional appeals will inevitably fall flat, unless they are given the fire that voice, look, and the whole carriage of the body can give them” (Istitutio Oratoria Book XI). Because delivery is important to reception, body language has been studied through the centuries and hand movements were critical to the elocutionary movement.

Quintilian points out that words themselves matter, but voice, gesture, and motion add a force so that when the qualities are combined, the near perfect argument is delivered. Describing gesture as that which appeals to the eye and voice as the appeals to the ears, I’m suddenly as self-conscious of my own delivery as I was my word choice in the style section. Reading Quintilian’s thoughts on how to strengthen a voice so that it refrains from “dwindling to the feeble shrillness that characterizes the voices of eunuchs, women and invalids,” I wonder how Quintilian might view the delivery presented by both candidates in the upcoming presidential debates (pg 253).

In regard to gestures, I’ve never felt more keenly the power of my hands: “In fact, though the peoples and nations of the earth speak a multitude of tongues, they share in common the universal language of the hands.” (Quintilian pg 291) Not only have hand movements transcended the boundaries of language, they’ve endured through time. The emoji hand symbols alone offer evidence of this. Moving hands when speaking seems to come so naturally, but the well-studied balance of using hands to aid in delivery is a critical part of rhetoric. Yet, like voice, these nuances of delivery seem to be such an unconscious aspect of speech and conversation.

The unconscious becomes important when video turns rhetoric as oral as it once was. Video interviews for high paying jobs, video streaming of news instantly, video conversation through snapchat, skype, and other forms of social media, and even video classes make this canon critical to rhetoric.

In addition to the return of video, the evidence that attractive people have a higher average wage than less attractive people shows that delivery, even in our very literate culture, is still important. Hamermesh’s studies on pulchronomics—the economic study of beauty—emphasize delivery. I wonder if there’s a connection in people qualifying as more attractive in studies such as Hamermesh’s and whether or not they hold their neck in the way Quintilian suggested? Would such a connection be a natural outcome of confidence?

Why is delivery important? What is it that makes a human care about the presentation instead of merely the message? Is it a sign of weakness to be swayed by the delivery if so many others are also swayed? Knowing that people are swayed, is it manipulation to strengthen delivery instead of, say, invention? Hopefully this is where the order of the canons come into play. If invention is as strong as it should be, then delivery should be like the frosting on the outer layer of the cake. The fondant is often the distinction between cakes, and though it isn’t always the most flavorful, it does make the decision for many because it enhances the delivery of the sweetness. The culture who feasts only on fondant will surely not endure.

#invention #arrangment #style #memory #delivery #Aristotle #GreekRhetoric