"But many, perhaps most persons, are inclined to the opinion that Eloquence, either in writing or speaking, is either a natural girt, or, at least, is to be acquired by mere practice, and is not to be attained or improved by any system if rules." - Whately, 1008
This quote jumped out at me mostly because I'm really interested in eloquence in rhetoric, but it summarized this work for me in a way, emphasizing Whately's take on rhetoric, which seems to mean (to him) that rhetoric is proved by science and logic - mostly logic. Eloquence can be learned with a set of rules (I don't completely agree with that) This definition makes sense when I think about it, but I get thrown off by the working definition we're using, art of persuasion, etc, because science and art don't equate for me in that way...
His writing seems to apply rhetoric to an area that would make me think of law or courtroom proceedings; everything must have rules to abide by. The thing that bugs me is that he kind of...sucks the emotion out of everything, in a manner of speaking. It's all good and well to know your facts and have them straight and follow the rules, but if you have no - I'm not sure how to say this - feeling, maybe? In what you're speaking about or how you're saying it, it's going to fall flat in an audience.
I also don't necessarily think that a set of rules would allow someone to learn to be really eloquent. I do think that eloquence can be a natural gift, the same way everyone has different gifts: Example - I hate science. I can learn about it, and I can work with it, but I'll never be good at it; my brother hates writing, vice versa. We all have things we are good at - giving us a set of rules can't always improve the things that we aren't.
I really like your statement about having rules, and applying to courtrooms. I think that this might have been the overarching theme to this particular passage in that all writing (encompassing as well rhetoric) has to fall under a particular sense of order.
ReplyDeleteMoreover, the idea that there needs to be appropriate usages for these words, kind of takes me back to some of our previous authors we've studied...
If rhetoric is based on the premise of persuasion, that it is necessary to look at the ways we ourselves have been motivated or inspired to make particular choices. I would be curious as to why you like writing and Josh likes science in how you were persuaded by those two fields. I think we need to formulate a personalized relationship with the definition of rhetoric, which is why I think it is important to study how previous rhetoricians formulated a definition for themselves. Although following a set of rules might not persuade you, take grammar. It is a set of followed contextual rules that help both you in writing and your brother in science perform better within your fields because it enables you to have credibility. Without following that set of rules, even if it is emotionless, there is a part of your work that would be somewhat lesser. The linking between ethos and literacy, is thus inseparable from rhetoric, but everyone's personal literacy and ethos is hard to define. Rather than an art of persuasion, maybe it would be better to look at rhetoric as a personal narrative of persuasive choices.
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