Cover not available
Part of
Persuasion in Public Discourse: Cognitive and functional perspectives
Edited by Jana Pelclová and Wei-lun Lu
[Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture 79] 2018
► pp. 43–62

Chapter 2
Construction of the speaker’s persuasive image in public discourse

Classical rhetoric revisited

This chapter presents Greco-Roman conceptualizations of rhetorical ethos in order to show that classical rhetoric, when properly reconstructed in the framework of its (relevant) sociocultural context, can fruitfully contribute to the research and analysis of persuasive strategies in contemporary public discourse. A reconstruction of a model for analysis of rhetorical ethos is proposed and applied to selected contemporary data. The analysis presents a case study of persuasion through character in formal addresses of Slovenian Prime Minister-designates. Two issues are explored in particular: (1) the relevance of rhetorical ethos as a persuasive strategy and (2) the characteristics of rhetorical ethos in these speeches.

Keywords: classical rhetoric, means of persuasion, rhetorical ethos, authority, argumentation, public discourse, political speech
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction: Rhetoric and persuasion
  • 2.Rhetorical ethos – a theoretical background
  • 3.Analysis: Towards characteristics of rhetorical ethos in Slovenian political rhetoric
  • 4.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Sources
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 8 August 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.79.03zma
References

Sources

Transcription of the first extraordinary session of the Slovenian National Assembly
, November 9 2004:[URL] (retrieved February 9, 2009).
Transcription of the first extraordinary session of the Slovenian National Assembly
, November 7 2008:[URL] (retrieved February 9, 2009).
Amossy, Ruth
2001 “Ethos at the Crossroads of Disciplines: Rhetoric, Pragmatics, Sociology.” Poetics Today 22 (1): 1–23. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2009 “Argumentation in Discourse: A Socio-discursive Approach to Arguments.” Informal Logic 29 (3): 252–267. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Aristotle
(2006) Art of Rhetoric, trans. by John Henry Freese. Cambridge, Massachusetts, London: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Blair, Anthony J.
2012 “Argumentation as Rational Persuasion.” Argumentation 26: 71–81. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Booth, Wayne C.
2004 The Rhetoric of RHETORIC: The Quest for Effective Communication. Malden, Oxford, Carlton: Blackwell Publishing.Google Scholar
Brinton, Alan
1986 “Ethotic argument.” History of Philosophy Quarterly 3: 245–258.Google Scholar
Buxton, Richard G. A.
1982 Persuasion in Greek Tragedy. A Study of Peitho. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Cicero. 19541
(1999repr.). Rhetorica ad Herennium. With an English Translation by Harry Caplan. Cambridge, Massachusetts, London: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Conley, Thomas M.
1990 Rhetoric in the European Tradition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Corbett, Edward P. J., and Robert J. Connors
1999 Classi1cal Rhetoric for the Modern Student, 4th ed. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Fahnestock, Jeanne
1999 Rhetorical Figures in Science. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Halmari, Helena, and Tuija Virtanen
(eds.) 2005 Persuasion across Genres. A Linguistic Approach. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Isocrates
1963 Isocrates with an English Translation in Three Volumes by George Norlin. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Jamieson, Kathleen Hall, and Karlyn Kohrs Campbell
1982 “Rhetorical Hybrids: Fusion of Generic Elements.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 68 (2): 146–157. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kennedy, George A.
1963 The Art of Persuasion in Greece. New Jersey, Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
1972 The Art of Rhetoric in the Roman World 300 B.C.–A. D. 300. New Jersey, Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
1998 Comparative Rhetoric. An Historical and Cross-cultural Introduction. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kalyvas, Andreas
2009 “The Democratic Narcissus: The Agonism of the Ancients Compared to that of the (Post)moderns.” In Law and Agonistic Politics, ed. by Andrew Schaap, 15–41. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing Ltd.Google Scholar
Kohrs Campbell, Karlyn, and Kathleen Hall Jamieson
1985 “Inaugurating the Presidency.” Presidential Studies Quaterly 15 (2): 394–411.Google Scholar
Leff, Michael
2003 “Rhetoric and Dialectic in Martin Luther King’s ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail.” In Anyone Who Has a View: Theoretical Contributions to the Study of Argumentation, ed. by Frans H. van Eemeren, J. Anthony Blair, Charles A. Willard, and A. Francisca Snoeck Henkemans, 255–268. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2009 “Perelman, ad Hominem Argument, and Rhetorical Ethos.” Argumentation 23: 301–311. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lunsford, Andrea A., Kirt H. Wilson, and Rosa A. Eberly
(eds.) 2009 The SAGE Handbook of Rhetorical Studies. London and New Delhi: SAGE Publications. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
May, James M.
1988 Trials of Character. The Eloquence of Ciceronian Ethos. Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
O’Keefe, Daniel J.
2002 Persuasion: Theory and Research, 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Östman, Jan-Ola
2005 “Persuasion as Implicit Anchoring: The Case of Collocations.” In Persuasion across Genres. A Linguistic Approach, ed. by Helena Halmari, and Tuija Virtanen, 183–212. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Plato
1925 Lysis. Symposium. Gorgias. Volume III, trans. by Walter R. M. Lamb, Loeb Classical Library 166. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Rubinelli, Sara
2009 Ars Topica: The Classical Technique of Constructing Arguments from Aristotle to Cicero. Argumentation Library, 15. Dordrecht: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tindale, Cristopher W.
1999 Acts of Arguing. A Rhetorical Model of Argument. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
2004 Rhetorical Argumentation: Principles of Theory and Practice. London: Sage. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
van Eemeren, Frans H., and Rob Grootendorst
2004 A Systematic Theory of Argumentation: The Pragma-dialectical Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
van Eemeren, Frans H., Bart Garssen, Erik C. W. Krabbe, Francisca A. Snoeck, Bart Verheij, and Jean H. M. Wagemans
(eds.) 2014 Handbook of Argumentation Theory. Dordrecht: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Verhagen, Arie
2007 Constructions of Intersubjectivity: Discourse, Syntax, and Cognition. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Verschueren, Jef
1999 Understanding Pragmatics. London: Arnold.Google Scholar
2012 Ideology in Language Use. Pragmatic Guidelines for Empirical Research. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Walton, Douglas
1998 Ad Hominem Arguments. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press.Google Scholar
Walton, Douglas, Christopher Reed, and Fabrizio Macagno
2008 Argumentation Schemes. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wisse, Jakob
1989 Ethos and Pathos from Aristotle to Cicero. Amsterdam: Hakkert.Google Scholar
Žmavc, Janja
2009 “Govorniške zvrsti in sredstva prepričevanja v zgodnji rimski retoriki: metaretorika v nastajanju [Branches of Oratory and Rhetorical Means of Persuasion in Early Roman Rhetoric].” Annales. Series Historia et Sociologia 19 (1): 1–14.Google Scholar
2012 “The Ethos of Classical Rhetoric: From Epieikeia to Auctoritas.” In Topical Themes in Argumentation Theory: Twenty Exploratory Studies, Vol. 22, ed. by Frans H. van Eemeren, and Bart Garssen, 181–191. Dordrecht: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 2 other publications

Afful, Joseph Benjamin Archibald, Eugene Kwesi Hesse, Ebenezer Agbaglo & Emmanuel Mensah Bonsu
2023. Persuasive strategies in grant recommendation letters written by senior faculty in a Ghanaian university. ExELL 11:2 ► pp. 133 ff. DOI logo
Khafaga, Ayman
2024. Imperatives as persuasion strategies in political discourse. Linguistics Vanguard 9:1 ► pp. 51 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 28 march 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.