Literary Deathmatch (A Reflection)

The third week into the semester we were treated to a rather informative lecture by guest speaker Dr. Kevin O'Neill on Classical Rhetoric. He discussed the rise of rhetoric in Ancient Greece, sprouting from the human tradition of distinguishing themselves from other beings by asking questions about life and death and how speech and action turned the human body into an instrument of self-expression. Speech was so important that objects like the city (polis) only existed on the grounds that people discussed and talked about the city. This was a world that cherished the sense of competition by founding sporting events to test physical prowess to starting wars between cities just for the fun of flexing some muscles and being able to call the other cities mother by inappropriate names. It was only natural that when the importance of speech came about that it would be social suicide if one could not speak with strength and conviction, and also look rather good in the process. I'm sure Monty Python has a sketch about literary deathmatches somewhere. This was the rise of rhetoric.

Dr. O'Neill focused mainly on Aristotle and his views on rhetoric. To Aristotle, there were three types of speech: deliberative(future), forensic(past), and epideictic(present). Deliberative speech focused on persuading people about what will happen in the future, forensic speech was focusing on what did happen, and epideictic was more for eulogies and encomiums. Then there is a breakdown in type of rhetoric. One one hand there is epagogue, which is inductive. For example, if I observed a thousand fall ill after eating a certain brand of microwaveable confectionery, I could come to the conclusion that people should not eat such confectioneries or risk a date with a porcelain prince. The other type would be dialectical, which is deductive. This is the concept of A=B, and B=C, then A=C, which is a much more persuasive form of rhetoric, although, it gets tricky depending on what is omitted or questioned, especially if the speaker removes certain parts for the sake of keeping his listeners awake while proving his argument.

Dr. O'Neill continued with discussing Ethos, Pathos, and Logos in order to appeal to the listeners and to not lose validity. After the lecture, we resumed normal class and analyzed a speech found in Wall Street, the movie. We broke down what we observed and analyzed how rhetoric was used. It was a rather informative class period that helped me understand some of the previous readings, and also reviewed on speaking techniques that I had glazed over from years ago.