AP Language and Composition
Rhetoric
Rhetoric has accumulated three definitions over the centuries: the art of
persuasion, the art of decoration, and the art of composition. According to
Leo Rockas, the classical Greek rhetoricians held to the first definition, the
medieval and Renaissance ones held to the second, and the modern ones held
to the third (ix). Confusing, no?
One can’t eliminate the confusion; one can only understand it and try to
clarify what someone else means by “rhetoric.” It may be easiest to attack
the confusion first at the middle (ages) definition: the art of decorating or of
ornamenting language. The only vestiges of this definition are found in
phrases like “that’s a bunch of rhetoric” – i.e., a bunch of pretty language that
means nothing. This second definition is decidedly not what the rhetoricians
and other authors we’ll read mean by rhetoric.
The first and third definitions are the ones in serious use today, however.
Teachers and professors today seem to fall into one of two groups: one that
views rhetoric as either the art of persuasion, and the other that views
rhetoric as the art of composing speech and written language. For instance, a
current, influential textbook entitled Everything’s an Argument by Andrea
Lunsford and two other writers (whom I’ll refer to hereafter collectively as
“Lunsford”) defines rhetoric in the classic sense: “the art of persuasion”
(1045). On the other hand, one of our textbooks, The Norton Sampler, defines
rhetoric in the modern sense: “The art of using language effectively in speech
and in writing” (529).
Here’s why the difference matters. Moderns, such as Thomas Cooley (The
Norton Sampler’s author), relegate argument to a single, albeit large, mode of
rhetoric. Argument, for them, is an equal partner with description, narration,
and exposition. But for a classicist such as Lunsford, everything’s an
argument. (Hence the name of her textbook!)
Cooley acknowledges that “in a sense, all writing aims to present an argument
because the writer is always trying to convince readers that what he or she
says deserves to be heard” (15), but he’d rather confine the term “argument”
or “persuasion” to when the reader or hearer can easily see an argument’s
bones: its appeals to the reader’s or hearer’s reason, emotions, and sense of
ethics (376). It’s easy to see an argument in an editorial or a lawyer’s closing
argument, for example, so Cooley would say that the writer or lawyer is
writing or speaking primarily in the argument mode (as opposed to the
narrative or expository modes).
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AP Language and Composition
Lunsford the classicist and Cooley the modern would therefore analyze Annie
Dillard’s personal essay “from Holy the Firm” in different ways. Cooley sees
a bit of the argument mode at work in the essay, but he sees mostly a mixture
of narrative and descriptive modes working harder there. Lunsford, however,
would see Dillard’s essay chiefly as an argument for an all-consuming
devotion to the calling of writing, and she would relegate the modes to a
discussion of the style employed in expressing that argument.
We’ve lived under the modern view – the Cooley view, we could call it – for
most of our public schooling. We’ve been learning to recognize and to write
in the four chief modes of rhetoric (description, narration, exposition, and
argument) since second grade. Even when we started analyzing writing in
ninth grade, we called it “literary analysis,” and we wrote “literary analysis
essays.” Since then, of course, we’ve learned some things about rhetoric in
the classical sense: the appeals to reason, emotion, and ethics, for instance.
But in AP Language and Composition, we’ll make almost a full transition to
the classic idea of rhetoric.
What does that transition mean for us in AP Lang? It means we’ll do
rhetorical analyses of essays and other writings instead of literary
analyses. We’ll use a lot of the same forms of analysis that we have in the
past: sound devices, word choice, figurative language, and syntax, for instance
– but the more literary form of analysis will take a back seat to an analysis of
the rhetorical appeals and the forms of argument.
To use another metaphor, we’ll use some of the same tools we’ve used for
years, but the toolshed will look a lot different because we’ll add new tools,
rearrange the old tools among them, and even re-label some of the old tools.
Welcome to rhetorical analysis!
Rhetoric > Rhetorical Analysis > Style
So, from this point on, unless I say otherwise, when I say “rhetoric,” I mean
what Aristotle and the rest of the classical world meant: the art of persuasion.
When we study how someone writes or says something (the sound devices,
the diction, etc.), we are studying a subset of rhetorical analysis sometimes
called “style.” (Or as Lunsford puts it, “style in arguments.”) Style is still very
important, but most of the analysis we’ll do this year will involve the
substance of argument as much as – or even more than – its style.
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AP Language and Composition
Rhetorical analysis is “an examination of how well the components of an
argument work together to persuade or move an audience” (Lunsford 1045).
In rhetoric, style refers to how the argument is dressed. Style is not an
argument’s components, but its presentation.
Rhetoric > Rhetorical Analysis > Style > Figures of Speech
In this transition from literary analysis to the style “subset” of rhetorical
analysis, one of the biggest areas of expansion in our toolshed is in the
figurative language corner. We’ve studied simile, metaphor, personification,
and even some more specialized forms of figurative language like metonymy
and synecdoche. But some rhetoricians recognize over two hundred kinds of
figurative language! We’ll learn around forty of them this year, but right now
we’ll focus on ones that will help us a rhetorical analysis of Annie Dillard’s
essay “from Holy the Firm.”
Rhetoricians usually call figurative language “figures of speech.” They don’t
just mean phrases like “throw in the towel,” “get your act together,” or “nip it
in the bud,” or any of the other thousands of what we’ve come to call figures
of speech. For rhetoricians, “figures of speech” mean more than words and
phrases that take on new (and hard-to-translate) significations. Talk about a
major re-labeling of some old tools!
Rhetoric > Rhetorical Analysis > Style > Figures of Speech > Tropes
& Schemes
In rhetoric, figures of speech are broken into two major categories. The first is a
trope. Tropes “involve a change in the ordinary signification, or meaning, of a
word or phrase” (Lunsford 427). They include “seeing read,” “being on cloud
nine” – what we’ve come to know and love as figures of speech.
Schemes, the other rhetorical category of figures of speech, change the ordinary
word patterns in a sentence or a group of sentences for persuasive effect. Our old
friend parallel structure – that mainstay of the thesis sentence – is a scheme
because it arranges grammatically similar words, phrases, or clauses for special
effect.
Tropes, then, are usually at the word, or diction, level, while schemes are usually
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AP Language and Composition
at the sentence, or syntactical, level.
Rhetoric > Rhetorical Analysis > Style > Figures of Speech >
Schemes > Repetition
Dillard’s essay “from Holy the Firm” uses a lot of repetition. Some of it is at
the sound level: alliteration and assonance, for instance. Some of it is at the
word level: repetition of colors, for instance. But some instances of that
repetition are in the form of some of the following schemes, all of which
emphasize repetition:
1. Chiasmus: a repetition and arrangement of two key terms in a
sentence by forming the pattern ABBA.
Ex. Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can
do for your country.
In 1860, everyone knew if the North fired on the South,
the South would fire on the North.
2. Asyndeton – the deliberate omission of conjunctions in a series of
related clauses.
Ex. “I came, I saw, I conquered.”
3. Polysyndeton – the deliberate use of many conjunctions for special
emphasis. Highlights quantity or mass of detail or to create a flowing,
continuous sentence pattern.
A and B and C
NOT A, B, and C
Ex. The meal was huge – my mother fixed okra and green beans
and ham and apple pie and green pickled tomatoes and
ambrosia salad and all manner of fine country food – but no
matter how I tried, I could not consume it to her satisfaction.
4. Anaphora – the repetition of the same word or group of words at the
beginning of successive clauses
Ex. “We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landinggrounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall
fight in the hills.” (Churchill)
5. Antithesis – the use of parallel structure to mark contrast or
opposition:
Ex. That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.
(Neil Armstrong)
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AP Language and Composition
Ex. Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures.
(Samuel Johnson)
6. Epistrophe – close each successive clause with the same word or
words
Ex. To the good American many subjects are sacred: sex is
sacred, women are sacred, children are sacred, business is
sacred, America is sacred, Masonic lodges and college clubs are
sacred.
7. Symploce - combines anaphora and epistrophe. Clauses begin and
end with the same words; the center is the only area to change.
Ex. I was born an American; I will die an American.
Life has rewarded me, life has penalized me, and life has not
been fair to me.
8. Negative-Positive Sentence – present the negative first, so the positive
becomes stronger. Not this, THAT.
Ex. Nuns don’t have external riches, but they possess internal
richness.
9. Positive-Negative Sentence – presents positive first, ends with
negative, emphasizing the weak. This, NOT THAT.
Ex. “Reason can dictate, but cannot originate; she can adopt, but
she cannot create.”
Ex. Although he speaks fluent French, he cannot read or write a
word,
Use three colors of markers or pens to find repetition in “From Holy the Firm”
– one color for repetitive sound devices, another color for repetitive words,
and a third color for repetitive sentence elements. For this third category,
write the name of the scheme in the margin beside each of Dillard’s
repetitions.
Works Cited
Cooley, Thomas. The Norton Sampler: Short Essays for Composition. New York:
W.W. Norton &, 2010. Print.
Lunsford, Andrea A., John J. Ruszkiewicz, and Keith Walters. Everything's an
Argument. 5th ed. Boston: Bedford / St. Martin's, 2010. Print.
Rockas, Leo. Modes of Rhetoric. New York: St. Martin's, 1964. Print.
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