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Rhetoric (/ˈrɛtərɪk/) is the art of persuasion. It is one of the three ancient arts of discourse (trivium) along with grammar and logic/dialectic. As an academic discipline within the humanities, rhetoric aims to study the techniques that speakers or writers use to inform, persuade, and motivate their audiences.[1] Rhetoric also provides heuristics for understanding, discovering, and developing arguments for particular situations.
Aristotle defined rhetoric as "the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion", and since mastery of the art was necessary for victory in a case at law, for passage of proposals in the assembly, or for fame as a speaker in civic ceremonies, he called it "a combination of the science of logic and of the ethical branch of politics".[2] Aristotle also identified three persuasive audience appeals: logos, pathos, and ethos. The five canons of rhetoric, or phases of developing a persuasive speech, were first codified in classical Rome: invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery.
From Ancient Greece to the late 19th century, rhetoric played a central role in Western education in training orators, lawyers, counsellors, historians, statesmen, and poets.[3][note 1]
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- Corbett, E. P. J. (1990). Classical rhetoric for the modern student. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 1.
- Young, R. E.; Becker, A. L.; Pike, K. L. (1970). Rhetoric: discovery and change. New York: Harcourt Brace & World. p. 1.
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- Aristotle. "I.2§1359". Politics. Translated by Roberts, W. Rhys. Archived from the original on 16 September 2008.
- Aristotle. "I.2". Rhetoric. Archived from the original on 15 April 2012. Retrieved 19 October 2011.
- ^ Conley, Thomas (1991). Rhetoric in the European Tradition. University of Chicago.
- ^ Parlor, Burkean; Johnstone, Henry W. (1996). "On schiappa versus poulakos". Rhetoric Review. 14 (2): 438–440. doi:10.1080/07350199609389075.
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