Plenty of politicians give speeches promising
to bring change. Sometimes their words might evoke strong feelings,
but other times they might be dismissed as “just empty rhetoric.” This use of the word rhetoric suggests that
a speech is just an empty pie crust, with no valuable apple-y evidence to fill it. Basically, some kind of language trickery. But rhetoric shouldn’t be demonized as underhanded
or negative. It’s a tool that can be used for good. Rhetoric helps us develop the skill of persuasion. Assuming that one persuasive technique will
work with any ol’ time, place, and audience won’t get us anywhere! So practicing and understanding rhetoric can
help in all kinds of contexts, from term papers and courtrooms to daily conversations and
advocacy, and it’s what we’ll discuss today in Study
Hall: Composition, presented by Arizona State University and Crash Course. I’m Yumna Samie, let’s get started. Persuasion, in a super-broad sense, means
changing minds. Sometimes, it’s just an internal shift,
but other times, it can change how someone acts. There’s lots of persuasion going on in the
world. If I sit down and have a discussion about
my ethics and what I think it means to live a good life, I’ll use very different persuasive techniques
than if I try to convince my little brother to eat some vegetables. After all, human beings have their own opinions,
desires, needs, and preferences. So connecting our goals and persuasive techniques
to what matters to them will give us more success. Persuasion also shows up in more subtle ways:
we might nod, widen our eyes, or say ‘got it’ to suggest that we’re listening deeply. Or we might use a big smile to charm a friend
into thinking that of course we’ve read the giant book they recommended and it was
sooo interesting! So, while persuasion is a broad concept that
applies to lots of different situations, it’s also super local and concrete. We can’t just learn one overarching rule,
like “convincing speech is delivered in an ultra-low bass voice” and expect it to
work everywhere. This is where the idea of rhetoric comes in. Rhetoric was defined prominently by the Greek
philosopher Aristotle as "the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion." I.A. Richards, a British educator, said rhetoric
was “the study of misunderstanding and its remedies." So for this series, we’ll consider rhetoric
where we dig into why some arguments persuade people to change their minds and others don’t. Rhetoricians, or people who study rhetoric,
study human communication -- analyzing how spoken language, silence, and body language
affect our persuasive skills. Which means they basically study everything! Specifically, rhetoricians study individual
moments of communication by looking at all the influencing factors, which are called
the rhetorical situation. The rhetorical situation includes words, but
also the writer, the writer’s purpose, how the writer is trying to achieve that purpose,
the context, and the audience. So like I said… basically everything. By gathering the nitty-gritty details of a
rhetorical situation, we can see what’s happening in persuasive speech and texts, and notice broader patterns of success and
failure that we can learn from. While not every pattern will apply to a future
context, we get better by attempting persuasive techniques in a variety of rhetorical situations, and paying attention to what has an impact. For example, imagine a kid who always begs
their parents to let them eat candy. Over time, they intuitively learn that asking
for candy right after they’ve broken a window from playing outside is less effective than asking for candy after bringing home
a great report card. We’re analyzing rhetorical situations to
improve our persuasive strategies all the time, both consciously and unconsciously. So essentially, we’re already rhetoricians. But we don’t just have to rely on intuition. We can put in a little more work to grow our
persuasive skills! For example, when working with rhetoric, who
we are as the writer matters just as much as who our audience is. To see what I mean, let’s watch a Writer
in Action. Keisha wants to be a strong public speaker,
and her rhetoric professor Dr. Mac suggests that studying historic speeches could
guide her persuasive writing. She decides to start with the abolitionist
and women’s rights activist Sojourner Truth, known for her compelling speeches. And she picks a rhetorical situation to dive
into. Keisha chooses to examine the writer, purpose,
and the writer’s strategy for achieving that purpose in Truth’s “Ain’t I a Woman?” speech, which advocates for women’s equality. Keisha reads up on Sojourner Truth’s background
and the time in which she lived to learn more about who the writer of this speech was,
and why she would stand and deliver such a speech. She reads that Truth was a former slave before
becoming a public speaker. The cultural climate influencing Truth and
her audience was harsh toward women and people of color; slavery still existed in many parts of the
country and women regardless of race didn’t have the right to vote. And “Ain’t I a Woman?” was delivered
at a women’s conference in Ohio. Sojourner Truth’s purpose, it turns out,
was to get all women the right to vote at the same time as men who were former slaves. Keisha notes that Truth’s description of
herself as equal to men and white women helps make her case for women’s rights that
apply to women of all racial backgrounds. Since she now knows that Truth was a former
slave and her purpose was getting the right to vote for women along with former enslaved
men, Keisha understands why Truth describes herself
as equal to both groups. Who she was as a writer also shows how she
accomplished her purpose of changing her audience’s minds. Most of them were regular people, not power
brokers or congressmen who could directly make policy changes. So she approached her speech by recognizing
the humanity and equality of all women, including the audience and herself. Keisha’s investigation of the rhetorical
situation helps her understand why Sojourner Truth chose to say what she did at that particular women’s conference. Armed with her analysis, Keisha is a Writer
in Action! So if we want to dive deep into the ways that
the rhetorical situation works, like Keisha does with the historical speeches
of Sojourner Truth, we’ve got a technique for you. We call this strategy “Rhetorical Situation:
Recognize!” or RSR for short. It’s a set of reminders to help us think
about each element of a rhetorical situation. And if we find ourselves saying, “I don’t
know,” for a part of this exercise, that means we should read more about the argument
or the topic. Dig deeper, don’t hit a wall and stop! The more we know about the rhetorical situation,
the more effective RSR can be. To use this technique, first, grab a sheet
of paper, open a blank file on your computer, or just have some way of writing down your
thoughts. Write out four categories: audience, purpose,
context, and text. And under each category, jot down notes about
what you already know and what you think is important to understand. Let’s look at an example for specifics. Like, say you’re running for student body
president, and you get to write a short bio that will go up on the student government’s Instagram to
introduce your campaign to your classmates. So you use the RSR technique and start writing! For audience, think about who goes to your
school. Maybe they’re really passionate about the
environment or they are ultra-focused on academics. If you know what they care about and what
they usually expect from their student body president-- like clear speeches or appearances at lots
of events--you can write more effectively to them. For purpose, getting them to vote for you
is a good start, but you can break it down further. If your school struggles with low voter turnout,
you may want to convince them to vote in the first place. If your real purpose is to convince the administration
to stop charging so much for on-campus parking, you may want to emphasize your proposed parking
fee cuts in your bio. For context, think about the timing and location
of this argument. When will the Instagram post go up, relative
to the election--have people seen your signs already, or is this their first intro? Consider that only part of the student body
actually is on Instagram and following the school’s student government account. These factors affect what info you include. Finally, the text itself is going to be impacted
by rhetoric, of course. You’d get a different response with ‘vote
4 me 4 prez’ than ‘I would be an impactful addition to our
student government and heretofore should be elected forthwith.’ Both might be persuasive in some situations,
but we want to pick the words that will reach the audience we actually want to convince. So jotting down some notes using RSR can help
you get inspired to write everything from an instagram bio to a campaign speech, and also feel like you’ve got well-chosen
options for what to say. As we learn more about rhetoric in the upcoming
videos, we’ll be able to go into even more depth with your analysis of what persuades
others. But for now, remember you’re already a persuasive
person, adding nuance to how you speak and write in
order to appeal to your listeners and readers. Learning about rhetoric is just a chance to
become aware of the different elements of persuasion and to be more deliberate in our
persuasive work. So if you hear your friend accusing a politician
of using rhetoric as if they are being tricky or deceitful, remember that basically means, ‘they’re trying to use persuasion to persuade
me!’ That’s not so awful, after all; your friend’s
probably doing it too. Join us next time to learn more about the
audience factor: we’ll discuss how much we can tailor our
work to an audience, and how much we actually want to do so. Thanks for watching Study Hall: Composition,
which is produced by Arizona State University and the Crash Course team at Complexly. If you liked this video and want to keep learning
with us here in Study Hall, be sure to subscribe. You can learn more about ASU and the videos
produced by Crash Course in the links in the description. See you next time!
