It's Only Rhetoric

The term rhetoric is a noun that carries a demeaning connotation these days. It is defined as “playing with words, or using words to persuade – usually in an exaggerated, even hyperbolic, manner.”  

While hyperbole (which is an intense exaggeration to make a point) is a technique of rhetoric, it is not the only one. Rhetoric is much more, and actually an important aspect of language and communication. It carries a higher significance, and a better derivative for what it does, as it is basically the study of the power of words.

The power of words is the power to communicate, and rhetoric is a tool to unleash that power.  

Rhetoric was for centuries a basic course of study. The ancient Greeks and Romans utilized it to teach early pupils the power of words and how to use them to persuade, to comfort, to enlighten and to inspire. In the nineteenth century, it was still taught at grade schools and universities. Until modern times, this primary subject was indispensable. We seem to have dispensed with it, to our detriment.

There are many categories for employing rhetoric. One ancient Greek professor took a simple sentence, like Receiving your letter delighted me, and encouraged his pupils to find a hundred different ways to say the same thing. It isn’t just what we say (or write), it matters greatly how we say it.

We can take a portion of the brief but powerful Gettysburg Address, Lincoln’s greatest speech, and see examples of the formidable use of words to communicate a sublime message. In an unfinished graveyard, our first national cemetery, Lincoln needed to speak to the thousands there, and make sense of the terrible sacrifice that had been made on the surrounding fields. He began:

Fourscore and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

What if he had instead said: Eighty-seven years ago, a bunch of statesmen decided that they didn’t want to be subject to a king anymore, and we should all be the same.

It just doesn’t capture the essence of what Lincoln meant, or what this experiment called America meant then, and still means now.  

Using the word “fathers” and “conceived”, he employs personification – giving a human quality to the concept of liberty, something we can identify with, as we are also human. He also gives it a cohesion that brings us together as a human family. He keeps that ideal going throughout his speech, as he mentions “the brave men who struggled here” to include both the Union and the Confederate troops – all again part of that human, American, family. It was his gift for rhetoric – his way of communicating an idea – that resonated with the audience all across the nation, and the world. While the Union victories on the battlefield eventually helped to win the war, we must give credit to Abraham Lincoln, and his steady leadership and gift of communication, for maintaining the Presidency and helping to win that awful conflict.

He ended his speech by returning full circle to the importance of life in the midst of death: That the government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

To say he just used rhetoric simply doesn’t describe the measure of that success.

Other great leaders used great rhetoric to inspire over the centuries.  

George Washington, a man of few words, was quoted as saying, Labour to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience. Again, he gives life and human qualities to that inner spark. If he had said instead, Don’t lose your conscience, it just doesn’t inspire, it doesn’t penetrate that inner vessel that makes us who we are.

In addition to personification, good rhetoric also gives a cadence, a repetition, a type of poetic symmetry to our words. Lincoln’s final line of the Gettysburg address, “of the people, by the people, for the people” is an example. Here are a few more examples:

He that cannot obey cannot command. – Ben Franklin (notice the hard “c” sounds)

The fever called ‘Living’ is conquered at last. – Edgar Allan Poe (notice his comparing life to a fever – something he wants gone, poor man. Notice the repetitive “l” sounds)

The childhood shows the man as morning shows the day. – John Milton (notice the repetition of phrases and the comparison of life stages to stages of the day)

These three examples, all from men of different ages and demonstrating different ideas, communicate to us facts that reach more deeply into us because of the manner in which they say them. We see comparisons to nature, alliteration, repetition and cadence that flow, sometimes gently, sometimes starkly, until they reach us.

The power of rhetoric is the power of words, when they are communicated with thought and intelligence – and conviction.

Probably the most famous purveyor of rhetoric, because of the volume of his prose, and the fact that we still read him five hundred years after he lived on earth, is Shakespeare. He could be verbose, or succinct – and he successfully contributed his ideas to the masses. Here are examples of both:

The lovely Portia in The Merchant of Venice saved a defendant with these words: “The quality of Mercy is not strain’d, it droppeth as a gentle rain from heaven, upon the earth beneath; it is twice bless’d; It blesses him that gives and him that takes.”

Where justice was demanded for an unpaid debt, Portia knew how to sway the court. Carefully using rhetoric, she compared mercy to a heavenly being, and expressed that to show mercy helped both the giver and the receiver. It was much better than saying, “Come on, let him off the hook. You have lots of money. Be nice.”

My favorite of Shakespeare’s more condensed maxims is from Hamlet:

Brevity is the soul of wit.

Abraham Lincoln knew that phrase and took it to heart. At Gettysburg, his speech lasted only two minutes. No one memorized Edward Everett’s two-hour oration. Everett’s speech, although he was the keynote speaker that day in Gettysburg, is not the speech that everyone remembers. Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address is known and repeated, still, all over the world.

The character Polonius in Hamlet, by employing rhetoric, has given a human soul to the noun brevity. It offers a deeper meaning, and one we can take to heart.

We all know it is better to end a speech while everyone still wants to hear you. More Presidents should take that initiative and follow Lincoln’s example.

The power of words is the power of communication.

Rhetoric, studied and practiced, is a good thing.

Pass the word.