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Elocutio (lexis or phrasis in Greek) [1] [2] is a Latin term for the mastery of rhetorical devices and figures of speech in Western classical rhetoric. [2] Elocutio or style is the third of the five canons of classical rhetoric (the others being inventio, dispositio, memoria, and pronuntiatio) that concern the craft and delivery of speeches and writing. [1]
The word elocutio comes from the Latin word loquor, "to speak". [3] Elocutio typically refers to rhetorical style. Similar terms are eloquence and elocution.
An orator or writer had a number of things to decide in developing a style for a particular discourse.
First, there was the level of style; plain (attenuata or subtile), middle (mediocris or robusta), or high (florida or gravis). [4] Writers were instructed to match the basic style to their subject matter and audience. For instance, Quintilian in his Institutio Oratoria deemed the plain style suitable for instruction, the middle for moving oration, and the high for charming discourse. Today, elocution and rhetoric are associated with the last of the styles, but for rhetoricians, each style was useful in rhetoric.
The ancient authors agreed that the four ingredients necessary to achieve good style included correctness, clearness, appropriateness, and ornament. [5]
Sometimes translated as "purity", correctness meant that rhetors should use words that were current and adhered to the grammatical rules of whatever language they wrote. Correctness rules are standards of grammar and usage drawn from traditional grammar.
In regard to clarity, most ancient teachers felt that clarity meant that rhetors should use words in their ordinary or everyday senses. The object of clarity was to allow meaning to "shine through" like light through a window.
Appropriateness probably derives from the Greek rhetorical notion to prepon, meaning to say or do whatever is fitting in a given situation. Ancient teachers taught that close attention to Kairos will help to determine the appropriate style.
The last and most important of the excellences of style is ornament, which is defined as extraordinary or unusual use of language.
Ornamentation was divided into three broad categories: figures of speech, figures of thought, and tropes. Figures of speech are any artful patterning or arrangement of language. Figures of thought are artful presentations of ideas, feelings, concepts and figures of thought that depart from the ordinary patterns of argument. Tropes are any artful substitution of one term for another.
A great amount of attention was paid to figures of speech, which were classified into various types and subtypes. One Renaissance writer, Henry Peacham, enumerated 184 different figures of speech, but it could be argued that it was a manifestation of the increasing overemphasis on style that began in the Renaissance.
Also important to elocutio were subjects that would now be generally regarded as grammatical: the proper use of punctuation and conjunctions; the desirable order of words in a sentence (unlike English, many languages are not as dependent on word order to establish relationships between words and so choices of word order may revolve more around form than function); and the length of sentences.
Rhetoric is the art of persuasion, which along with grammar and logic, is one of the three ancient arts of discourse. Rhetoric aims to study the techniques writers or speakers use to inform, persuade, or motivate their audiences.
A figure of speech or rhetorical figure is a word or phrase that intentionally deviates from ordinary language use in order to produce a rhetorical effect. Figures of speech are traditionally classified into schemes, which vary the ordinary sequence of words, and tropes, where words carry a meaning other than what they ordinarily signify.
In rhetoric, chiasmus or, less commonly, chiasm, is a "reversal of grammatical structures in successive phrases or clauses – but no repetition of words".
Kairos is an ancient Greek word meaning 'the right, critical, or opportune moment'. In modern Greek, kairos also means 'weather' or 'time'.
Eloquence is fluent, elegant, persuasive, and forceful speech, persuading an audience. Eloquence is both a natural talent and improved by knowledge of language, study of a specific subject to be addressed, philosophy, rationale and ability to form a persuasive set of tenets within a presentation.
Elocution is the study of formal speaking in pronunciation, grammar, style, and tone as well as the idea and practice of effective speech and its forms. It stems from the idea that while communication is symbolic, sounds are final and compelling. It came into popularity in England in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and in America during the nineteenth century. It benefited both men and women in different ways but overall the concept was there to teach both how to become better, more persuasive speakers, standardize errors in spoken and written English, as well as the beginnings of the formulation of argument were discussed here.
Inventio, one of the five canons of rhetoric, is the method used for the discovery of arguments in Western rhetoric and comes from the Latin word, meaning "invention" or "discovery". Inventio is the central, indispensable canon of rhetoric, and traditionally means a systematic search for arguments.
Dispositio is the system used for the organization of arguments in the context of Western classical rhetoric. The word is Latin, and can be translated as "organization" or "arrangement".
Memoria was the term for aspects involving memory in Western classical rhetoric. The word is Latin, and can be translated as "memory".
Pronuntiatio was the discipline of delivering speeches in Western classical rhetoric. It is one of the five canons of classical rhetoric that concern the crafting and delivery of speeches. In literature the equivalent of ancient pronuntiatio is the recitation of epics.
The Rhetorica ad Herennium, formerly attributed to Cicero or Cornificius, but in fact of unknown authorship, sometimes ascribed to an unnamed doctor, is the oldest surviving Latin book on rhetoric, dating from the late 80s BC, and is still used today as a textbook on the structure and uses of rhetoric and persuasion.
Geoffrey of Vinsauf is a representative of the early medieval grammarian movement, termed preceptive grammar for its interest in teaching the ars poetica.
Owing to its origin in ancient Greece and Rome, English rhetorical theory frequently employs Greek and Latin words as terms of art. This page explains commonly used rhetorical terms in alphabetical order. The brief definitions here are intended to serve as a quick reference rather than an in-depth discussion. For more information, click the terms.
The epideictic oratory, also called ceremonial oratory, or praise-and-blame rhetoric, is one of the three branches, or "species" (eidē), of rhetoric as outlined in Aristotle's Rhetoric, to be used to praise or blame during ceremonies.
Institutio Oratoria is a twelve-volume textbook on the theory and practice of rhetoric by Roman rhetorician Quintilian. It was published around year 95 AD. The work deals also with the foundational education and development of the orator himself.
A literary trope is the use of figurative language, via word, phrase or an image, for artistic effect such as using a figure of speech. Keith and Lundburg describe a trope as "a substitution of a word or phrase by a less literal word or phrase." The word trope has also undergone a semantic change and now also describes commonly recurring or overused literary and rhetorical devices, motifs or clichés in creative works. Literary tropes span almost every category of writing, such as poetry, film, plays, and video games.
In philosophy, lexis is a complete group of words in a language, vocabulary, the total set of all words in a language, and all words that have meaning or a function in grammar.
A figure of thought is a rhetorical device sometimes distinguished from figure of speech. In another sense the term has been used in the study of diagrams and drawings.
In classical rhetoric, figures of speech are classified as one of the four fundamental rhetorical operations or quadripartita ratio: addition (adiectio), omission (detractio), permutation (immutatio) and transposition (transmutatio).
Ethopoeia (ee-tho-po-EE-ya) is the ancient Greek term for the creation of a character. Ethopoeia was a technique used by early students of rhetoric in order to create a successful speech or oration by impersonating a subject or client. Ethopoeia contains elements of both ethos and pathos and this is noticeable in the three divisions of ethopoeia. These three divisions are pathetical, ethical and mixed. It is essential to impersonation, one of the fourteen progymnasmata exercises created for the early schools of rhetoric.