The Rhetoric of Booth

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The Rhetoric of Booth

• Advanced Rhetorical Writing
• Matt Barton

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What is Rhetoric?

• Booths definition
• The entire range of resources that human beings
  share for producing effects on one another.
• Booths agenda
• Unless we pay more attention to improving our
  communication at all levels of life, unless we
  study more carefully the rhetorical strategies we
  depend on, consciously, unconsciously, or
  subconsciously
• We will continue to succumb to unnecessary
  violence, to loss of potential friends, and to
  the decay of community.

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The Status of Rhetoric

• Rhetoric lost prestige during the Enlightenment,
  when scientific thinkers complained that it made
  things unnecessarily complicated.
• Rhetoric no longer seen as a method to acquire
  truth at best it could put it in a prettier
  package.

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John Locke

• John Locke attacked rhetoric in his famous Essay
  on Human Understanding
• Rhetoric, besides order and clearnessare for
  nothing else but to insinuate wrong ideas, move
  the passions, and thereby mislead the
  judgmentThey are perfect cheats.

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Rhet-Definitions

• Rhetor One who practices rhetoric
• Rhetorician One who studies rhetoric
• Listening-Rhetoric Reduce misunderstanding by
  paying better attention to opposing views
• Rhetrickery Dishonest rhetoric
• Rhetorology Deepest form of LR
• Rhetorologist Rhetoricians who focus on LR

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Rhetoric Reality

• Booth distinguishes between three realities
• Reality One Permanent, Unchangeable,
  Non-Contingent
• Reality Two Changeable but still not created by
  rhetoric
• Reality Three Contingent Realities about Our
  Lives (Created Realities)

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Reality Three

• Rhetoric makes realities, no matter how
  temporary.
• Hitlers rhetoric (along with others) created
  WWII.
• Persuading your husband two years ago to go with
  Architect A rather than B created the reality of
  your living room and bathroom.

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Types of Rhetoric

• Deliberative
• Concerned about the future (politics)
• Forensic
• Concerned about the past (lawyers)
• Epideictic
• Concerned about the present (praise or blame)

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Rhetorical Domains

• The community that preaches and practices
  rhetorical standards that contrast sharply with
  the standards embraced by those in other
  domains.
• Also known as Discourse communities, scene,
  culture
• These communities share tacit shared assumptions
  about standards and methods

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Academic Domains

• There are plenty of differences among the various
  academic fields
• What constitutes evidence or valid argument?
• What questions are worth asking?
• What choices of style will work best?
• Which authorities can be trusted?
• How much eloquence is permitted?

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Sokal Hoax

• In quantum gravity, as we shall see, the
  space-time manifold ceases to exist as an
  objective physical reality geometry becomes
  relational and contextual and the foundational
  conceptual categories of prior science -- among
  them, existence itself -- become problematized
  and relativized. This conceptual revolution, I
  will argue, has profound implications for the
  content of a future postmodern and liberatory
  science.

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Listening Rhetoric

• Whatever the language standards, communication
  can be improved by listening to the other side,
  and then listening even harder to ones own
  responses.
• The thesis of this book can be reduced to Let
  us attempt to enlarge the domain of those who
  work to avoid misunderstanding.

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Discussion Questions

• How does rhetoric make realities?
• Compare and contrast some of the various
  definitions of rhetoric in this chapter.
• What does it mean to say that rhetoric steals
  subjects from other fields?
• Identify and compare some of your own rhetorical
  domains.