The Art of Rhetoric Is Used in a Presentation

Rhetoric: How to Inform, Persuade, or Motivate your Audition

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June 12, 2018 - Gini Beqiri

Persuasive speaking is needed in a broad range of situations; from arguing with a colleague, to haggling down a price, to performing a spoken communication. Rhetoric is the key to developing this skill. In this article, we discuss how to use rhetoric for constructive public speaking.

What is rhetoric?

Rhetoric is the written report and art of writing and speaking persuasively. Its aim is to inform, educate, persuade or motivate specific audiences in specific situations. Information technology originates from the time of the ancient Greeks.

Rhetoric is the art of ruling the minds of men - Plato

Rhetoric is not just a tool used only in speeches, y'all utilise it in everyday life when, for example, y'all but disclose certain parts of your weekend to certain people.

Treatise of rhetoric

Aristotle stated that in that location are three types of persuasive speech:

1. Forensic / judicial rhetoric - looks at the justice or injustice of accusations and establishes testify about the past. It's used mainly in a court of police force.
2. Epideictic / demonstrative rhetoric - praises or blames and makes a announcement about the present situation. It'south used in, for case, wedding ceremony and retirement speeches etc.
3. Symbouleutikon / deliberative rhetoric - tries to become the audience to take action past talking about a possible future. Politicians frequently use this approach and Martin Luther's "I have a dream" oral communication is a good example.

Rhetorical situations

To use rhetoric yous must start:

1. Analyse the rhetorical state of affairs y'all are in - an effective speech is i that responds to its rhetorical situation (context)
2. Identify what needs to exist communicated
3. Provide a strategic response using rhetorical tools

When you analyse the rhetorical situation remember about the following:

The rhetor (yourself) - the person speaking to the audition. Your personal characteristics and beliefs will influence what you decide to say, such as:

• Age
• Gender
• Geographical location
• Instruction
• Previous experiences
• Socio-economic status, etc

The audience - the people you are trying to persuade. Usually the same factors that affect the rhetor affect the audience. Recollect near what they already know. What questions or reservations might they take? What expectations do they have? Where should you lot conform to and stray from these expectations?

The setting - the situation which causes the need for your speech, for example, current events, location, fourth dimension period, political situation etc. Where is the speech happening and when? How do these this impact you? For example, speeches may need to differ between countries.

The topic - needs to be relevant to the rhetorical situation you are in. How does your topic limit what you tin do for the audience? Depending on your audience, what should you include or exclude?

The purpose - why are y'all saying this? Is information technology to:

• Entertain
• Educate
• Persuade
• Instigate action, etc

Five canons and 3 appeals

The five canons of rhetoric

The 5 Canons of Rhetoric are tools for creating persuasive speeches:

1. Invention - the process of developing an argument. For this you need to option effective content and sort through everything you could say and make up one's mind what should be included or excluded. There needs to be a balance betwixt what the audience needs to hear and what you need to say.
2. Arrangement - once you have determined the content you must organise and social club your speech to create the most bear on, such equally thinking about how long each section should be and what should follow on from ane bespeak etc.
3. Style - deciding how to present your chosen arguments, including thinking tactically about how your audience will respond to your discussion choices. Peradventure include visualisation or other techniques to evoke emotions. (See rhetorical devices and tools)
4. Retentivity - memorising your speech.
5. Delivery - this includes your projection, gestures, eye contact, pronunciation, tone and pace.

The three appeals

Co-ordinate to Aristotle, rhetoric rests on the 3 appeals: ethos, logos and pathos. They are modes of persuasion used to convince an audience.

1. Ethos: your credibility and character
2. Pathos: emotional bond with your listeners
3. Logos: logical and rational argument

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Ethos - the upstanding appeal

Ethos consists of convincing your audition that yous have expert grapheme and you are credible therefore your words tin be trusted. Ethos must be established from the start of your talk or the audience will not accept what you say. In fact, ethos is often established before your presentation, for example, you may exist the CEO of the company you're presenting to so you're already perceived as a specialist.

Characteristics of ethos

In that location are four main characteristics of ethos:

1. Trustworthiness and respect
2. Similarity to the audience
3. Potency
4. Expertise and reputation/history

Amend ethos

• Ensure that people know about your expertise past promoting yourself, for example, ensure that people can easily access testimonials, reviews, papers etc.
• In your introduction draw attention to your ethos.
• Tell personal stories that show the audience that you follow your own recommendations because they are more than probable to believe you on other points that cannot easily exist confirmed.
• Facts, stats and quotes should be up-to-date and from reputable sources, for example, between choosing from social media or Mind's website to quote a statistic about feet, you lot would cull Mind'southward website as this has high ethos which in plough increases your ethos.
• Be unbiased by albeit that you and your opposition'due south side concur on at least one matter. This highlights that you are credible because you are treating the topic with consideration and fairness.
• Stick to your promises, for case, during the Q&A you may have agreed to find out an answer to a question and tell everyone - ensure that you practice this to be seen as honest.

Pathos - the emotional appeal

Desolation is to persuade by appealing to the audience's emotions. Pathos is more probable to increase the chances of your audition:

• Understanding your point of view
• Accepting your arguments
• Interim on your requests

Improving pathos

• Use analogies and metaphors - linking your ideas with something your listeners already know about and feel strongly about can trigger emotional responses. For example, "They are terrible" compared to "They are poisonous." This will use the audience'southward knowledge that poison is bad and therefore this outcome needs to be dealt with.
• Use emotionally charged words, for example, say "This castor is a life-saver" rather than "This castor is astonishing.". Another way to make a statement more emotional is to use vivid and sensory words which allow the audience to experience the emotion. For instance, "The smell of your grandparent's house" volition increment the recollection of, hopefully warm memories, and therefore volition trigger sure emotions.
• Ensure that the emotion y'all desire to induce is suitable for the context:
  • Positive emotions, such as joy, should be linked with your claims.
  • Negative emotions, such as anger, should exist linked to your rival's claims.

• Visual aids tin sometimes be more powerful than words
• Storytelling is a quick way to form an emotional connection
• Match what you're saying with your body language, face up and eyes
• You may target the audience's hopes by describing a positive hereafter state of affairs if your proposed actions are followed

Logos - logical entreatment

Logos is to appeal to logic by relying on the audition's intelligence and offer evidence in support of your argument. Logos too develops ethos because the information makes yous wait knowledgeable. Logos is important because logical arguments are not hands dismissed.

Improving logos

Be comprehensive: Make sure your points and arguments can exist understood

• Employ language that your audience will sympathise. Avoid jargon and technical terminology
• Employ figures and charts
• Make the relationships between your evidence and conclusions articulate
• Use analogies and metaphors

Be logical: Ensure that your arguments make sense and that your claims and bear witness are not implausible. Have a plan for dealing with opposing viewpoints that your listeners may already believe.

• Ensure that the audience is involved past request them engaging questions.
• Talk well-nigh opposing views equally this allows you to explicate why your logical arguments are more reasonable.
• Build your argument on the audience'due south widely held beliefs - commonplaces. For instance, a company'due south principal value and therefore commonplace may be "Pity makes us the best company". Use the audience'southward commonplace like a fact and apply it to a new situation. So if yous want to encourage your staff to join a committee, employ their commonplace, for example, rather than your belief say: "This committee needs considerate and kind-hearted people."

Exist specific: Base of operations your claims on facts and examples as your arguments will be accepted quicker than something nonspecific and non-concrete. The more easily the evidence is accepted, the more than hands the conclusions will be accepted.

• Facts and stats cannot be debated and they signify the truth.
• Visual evidence, such as, objects and videos are hard to challenge.
• Citing specialists and authorities on a topic increases the quality of your testify and therefore your claims.
• Tell stories, such as, case studies or personal experiences. The audience would like to hear your ain stories if you're a specialist, for case, "When I was excavating in Nottingham…"

There is uncertainty over which pillar is the most important - Aristotle thought that logos was vital merely when used past itself it lacks impact. So ensure that you lot treat all 3 pillars with equal importance to succeed in persuading your audience.

Rhetorical modes

Rhetorical modes are patterns of arrangement used to produce a specific outcome in the audience. They assistance in increasing the speaker'due south ethos, pathos and logos.

Narration

• Telling a story or narrating an event.
• Uses facts - what happened, where it happened, when it happened and who was there.
• It helps put information into a logical order - ordinarily chronological order.
• Purpose: to evoke certain emotions in the audition.

Description

• Re-create, inventing or visually presenting a person, place, object, event or activeness through words
• This helps the audience imagine what is being described
• Use precise verbs and nouns and bright adjectives
• Using the 5 senses is especially useful
• Purpose: to evoke certain emotions in the audition

Argumentation/Persuasion

• Articulating your opinion about an upshot - proving or contesting a indicate or view or an issue.
• Consists of presenting the evidence.
• Argumentation generally uses anterior arguments, deductive arguments or a combination of the two:
  • Inductive arguments- Forming generalisations from the evidence. For example: "All the theme parks I take been to have been safe. This is a theme park. So it must be safe."
  • Deductive arguments - Forming conclusions from generalisations. For example. "I don't similar busy places. That shopping heart is really busy. So I won't similar that shopping middle."
• Persuasion is a type of argumentation with a phone call to activity directed at the audience.
• Purpose: the speaker tries to get the audience to hold with their opinion and in the case of persuasion the speaker tries to get the audition to take activity.

Exposition

• Informing, instructing or presenting ideas considerately. Exposition can employ the following techniques:

Illustration/Example

• Using evidence to explain a full general idea or statement.
• The stronger your bear witness, the more than likely the audience will consider your points.
• Usually used to support an statement.
• Employ evidence suitable for your topic and audience.
• Figure out how much prove y'all need to use to support your argument depending on:
  • How circuitous the topic is
  • The audition'southward noesis
• Purpose: gives your statements/arguments more than credibility and helps the audience understand more than quickly.

Definition

• Explaining what a discussion, thought etc means to your audience and/or to explain what information technology is not.
• This is more difficult than looking up the term in a dictionary because you may exist re-defining a common term or explaining a term that is normally used incorrectly, such as, the word low.
• By reshaping what the audition thought a concept meant they tin see and retrieve near that concept in a dissimilar way.
• There are multiple ways you can define something, it doesn't have to be in a clinical manner - you can utilize the rhetorical strategies discussed later.
• Purpose: helps the audience see things from your point of view.

Procedure analysis

• Explaining how a particular event occurs or how something is done or how something works, for example, how to sew, or how to motility on from the death of a loved one.
• This process is commonly explained in clear steps.
• Purpose: to provide clear data so the audience tin can fully understand - the more the audience understands, the more likely they will be persuaded.

Division

• Dividing one concept into smaller ones.
• This can be helpful for you, the speaker, equally information technology can provide the audition with an insight of how yous view a concept.
• Purpose: to help the audition understand a circuitous issue.

Classification

• Often looking at a diverse group of objects and finding similarities.
• The rhetor creates categories based on the similarities and gives each category a proper noun.
• Purpose: useful for organising circuitous issues.

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Cause and effect

• Examining the causes of a state of affairs and the consequences of information technology.
• Causes help you empathize why something happened and event helps you empathize what could happen or what has happened.
• Especially useful when the rhetor can prove a cause and effect human relationship the audience oasis't noticed before considering this helps the audition see the situation in a dissimilar fashion.
• Often leads to debates as it'due south non ever easy to make up one's mind this relationship.
• Purpose: to make up one's mind how concepts are related to each other.

Comparison and contrast

• Comparison looks at similarities and contrast looks at differences.
• The more divergent the two things initially announced the more interesting it will be to look at the similarities.
• Purpose: generally to testify something is more superior to another, to show unexpected similarities or to help the audience sympathize a person, place, idea etc in relation to some other.

Rhetorical devices and tools, with examples

Rhetorical devices tin can be useful for assisting with the above modes of persuasion:

Adynaton - a blazon of hyperbole (exaggeration) in which the exaggeration is taken to such extreme lengths to suggest impossibility.

• Example: "When pigs fly!"

Alliteration - the occurrence of the aforementioned letter or sound at the beginning of several words that are close in proximity to each other.

• Example: "The dog dived securely."
• Case: "Peradventure she's born with it. Maybe its Maybelline."

Allusion - a reference to an event, literary piece of work, person etc usually inside pop civilisation.

• Example: "It'southward just £10, you're acting like Scrooge."

Anaphora - repeating a give-and-take or phrase in successive phrases.

• Example: "As you know, we've got the iPod, all-time music player in the world. We've got the iPod Nanos, brand new models, colours are dorsum. We've got the amazing new iPod Shuffle." - Steve Jobs

Antanagoge - when a negative bespeak is followed by a positive one to reduce the impact.

• Example: "It's expensive but it's unbreakable"

Antimetabole - a phrase or sentence is repeated in reverse club.

• Example: "It is not even the kickoff of the end but is mayhap, the end of the beginning." - Winston Churchill

Antiphrasis - a phrase or word that is opposite to its literal meaning to create an ironic or comic effect.

• Example: Calling your friend Tiny even when they are 6 foot 5.

Antithesis - two opposite ideas are put together in a judgement for contrast.

• Case: "That's i small step for a man, one giant spring for mankind." - Neil Armstrong

Appositive - places a noun or phrase next to another noun for descriptive purposes.

• Example: "Your friend Sam is waiting exterior for you."
• Instance: "The neurologist, a well-renowned expert in Paediatric Neurology, looked at the scans."

Epanalepsis - repeating the initial office of a sentence at the terminate of the same sentence.

• Example: "Today, I want it done today."

Epithet - using an adjective or phrase to emphasises a person's characteristics. Frequently, this adjective or phrase becomes linked to the person and can be used with their proper name or instead of their name.

• Case: Eddie the Eagle

Epizeuxis - repeats 1 word in immediate succession for accent.

• Example: "That film was great, dandy, swell."

Hyperbole - an exaggeration not meant to be taken literally.

• Case: "I've got tons of work to get through."
• Example: "I'thousand freezing."

Metanoia - correcting a statement you lot simply made deliberately to strengthen or soften it.

• Example: "This has made my twenty-four hours, no, my month."

Metaphor - a comparing fabricated past stating i thing is the other.

• Case: "This block is sky."

Metonymy - where something is referred to by the name of something closely associated with information technology.

• Example: Referring to business organization professionals as "suits."
• Case: Referring to royals as "Crown."
• Example: Referring to a plate of nutrient equally a "dish."

Onomatopoeia - words that are similar to the sound they describe.

• Example: Drip, pop, buzz, blindside

Oxymoron - a combination of contradictory words.

• Example: Barbarous kindness, definitely perchance, open up clandestine

Parallelism - uses components in a sentence that are similar grammatically or in their construction, audio or significant. Information technology makes sentences flow ameliorate by adding rhythm.

• Example: "The dog was barking, the bong was ringing and the children were shouting."

Personification - The attribution of human characteristics to something not-human.

• Instance: "The traffic slowed to a crawl."

Simile - compares 1 affair to some other to brand a description more than brilliant, usually uses "as" or "like".

• Example: "As light equally a feather."

Understatement - deliberately making a situation sound less important or serious than it is. Y'all can employ it for humour, to be polite or to remain modest over something.

• Instance: You won an laurels for a piece of artwork but you say "It's no large deal." (Minor)
• Instance: Your friend is worried about people staring at a stain on his T-shirt, you say "I wouldn't have even noticed if y'all hadn't said anything." (Polite)
• Instance: You walk exterior with your coat on and realise it's very hot - "I may be a piddling over-dressed." (Humour)

Criticisms of rhetoric

Some people believe that rhetoric is a type of lying or fake behaviour and manipulation. Still, even when you're criticising rhetoric, y'all are engaging in an act of rhetoric because you are trying to get others to agree with yous.

Rhetoric works well in many situations, such as, in business presentations, lectures etc. So rhetoric is a good tool but, like with other tools, information technology'southward up to yous how to use information technology effectively.

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Source: https://virtualspeech.com/blog/rhetoric-inform-persuade-motivate-your-audience

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