Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Chapter 9: Arrangement

When begining this chapter, I found the different opinions about arrangement when comparing ancient and modern rhetors to be interesting.

Ancient rhetors weren't very concerned with arrangement. Rather, they were more concerned with determining what kind of audience they had to decide how to deliver their argument/speech. They ancient rhetors were concerned with the context, or the rhetorical situation.

Sophists had 4 parts of arrangement: "prooemium (intro), narration (statement of the issue), proof, and conclusion" (294).

Aristotle only thought there were 2 parts necessary: "a statement of the case and proof" (294).

Cicero believed in 6 parts: "exordium (intro), narratio (statement of issue), partitio (division of the issue into parts), confirmatio (where strongest arguments are made), refutatio, and peroratio (conclusion)" (294).

In more modern times, we are very concerened with arrangement. Generally, a modern speech has an intro, body, and conclusion.

Exordium- Introduction. Rhetor establishes an ethos. Cicero argues that it should be "dignified and serious". There are different kids of cases that require different kinds of exordiums.

Topics for making Audience Attentive and Receptive:
Attentive: 1) show importance of issue 2) show how issue affects audience 3) show how issue affects everyone 4) show how issue affects general good of community.

Receptive: 1) strengthen your ethos 2) weaken ethos of those who oppose rhetor 3) show respect for audience 4) praise issue or position while denigrating position of opponents

1 comment:

  1. I agree with the idea of the introduction needing to have an ethical appeal. That's the part where you get the audience hooked and focused and you can't just throw hard facts at people from the begining. It's kind of like sweet talking a girl you have to be gentle and nice in the begining to get them hooked...you can just tell them to take their clothes off cause theyre just going to anyways...you gotta ease them into it.

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