Using the Five Traditional Canons of Rhetoric
·
Raise your awareness of how you use rhetoric
·
Canons – invention, arrangement, style, memory,
and delivery
Rhetoric at Work: Context and the Three Appeals
·
Ethos - ethics
·
Logos - facts
·
Pathos – emotions
·
Invention strategies help generate material that
is clear, forceful, convincing, and emotionally appealing
·
Techniques of arrangement, style, and delivery
help you to put your material in structures, patterns, and formas that will be
understandable to your readers ad help them to see you as a credible,
sympathetic even impressive person.
·
Methods of tapping into your readers’ memories
and cultural associations will assist with your efforts to clarify your ideas
and arguments for readers and will help them to see you as a person who is on
their side, who is one of them.
Invention
·
To find ideas, reading background, and
observations that can be put together to form a composition
Systematic Invention Strategy I: The Journalist’s Questions
·
Who
·
What
·
When
·
Where
·
Why
·
How
·
The answer to these questions produce an ample
inventory of the ideas introduced and developed in a composition
Systematic Invention Strategy II: Kenneth Burke’s Pentad
·
Act: What happened?
·
Scene: When and Where did it happen?
·
Agent: Who did it?
·
Agency: How was it done?
·
Purpose: Why was it done?
·
It relates the questions instead of keeping them
separate
·
It is helpful for analyzing human behavior
Systematic Invention Strategy III: The Enthymeme
·
Nearly everything people write about presents an
argument
·
Unstated premise – is always an irrefutable
generalization.
·
Minor premise – particular instance of
generalization
·
Conclusion – idea that logically follows
Systematic Invention Strategy IV: The Topics
·
The places a writer might go to discover methods
for proof and strategies for presenting ideas
The Basic Topics
·
4 basic topics
·
Possible and impossible
·
Past Fact
·
Future Fact
·
Greater and Less
The Common Topics
·
Definitions
·
Division
·
Comparison and Contrast
·
Relationships
·
Circumstances
·
Testimony
Intuitive Invention Strategies: A Preview
·
Free writing- write for 5 -10 minutes about
whatever comes to mind when you think about your subject matter
·
Keeping a journal – record your observations,
thoughts, and responses to your reading
·
Conversations- just talking about your subject
helps create ideas
Arrangement
·
The canon of Arrangement offers techniques that
writers can use to give appropriate and effective order and structure to texts.
Genres
·
There is no single pattern that will work with
every type of genre
·
All pieces have a beginning (central question),
middle (points/back up), and end (answers the question: so what?)
Functional Parts
·
Divide the text into functional parts
·
Is there one piece that clearly states the
purpose?
Questions About the Parts
·
Ask yourself why they are divided in this way
Style
·
The canon of Style represents an extensive array
of strategies that writers can use to craft their sentences , phrases, and
words in ways that are appropriate and effective in the particular writing
situation.
Memory
·
The canon of memory today guides writers to try
to tap into the “cultural memory” of their readers effectively
Delivery
·
The canon of delivery today helps writers decide
how to format their compositions, either in print or electronically, in a way
that is most effective for readers.
