Persuasion or persuasion arts is an umbrella term for influence. Persuasion can influence a person's beliefs, attitudes, intentions, motivations, or behaviours.
Public speaking, also called forensics,oratory or oration, has traditionally been defined as speaking in person to a live audience. Today, the term can also refer to speaking to an audience through digital technology.
Rhetoric is the art of persuasion. It is one of the three ancient arts of discourse (trivium) along with grammar and logic/dialectic. Rhetoric aims to study the techniques that speakers or writers use to inform, persuade, or motivate their audiences.
Kairos is an ancient Greek word meaning 'the right, critical, or opportune moment'. In modern Greek, kairos also means 'weather' or 'time'.
Logos is a term used in Western philosophy, psychology and rhetoric; it connotes an appeal to rational discourse that relies on inductive and deductive reasoning. Aristotle first systemised the usage of the word, making it one of the three principles of rhetoric alongside ethos and pathos. This specific use identifies the word closely to the structure and content of text itself. This specific usage has then been developed through the history of western philosophy and rhetoric.
In Greek mythology, Pistis was the personification of good faith, trust and reliability. In Christianity and in the New Testament, pistis is typically translated as "faith". The word is mentioned together with such other personifications as Elpis (Hope), sophrosyne (Prudence), and the Charites, who were all associated with honesty and harmony among people.
Ethos is a Greek word meaning "character" that is used to describe the guiding beliefs or ideals that characterize a community, nation, or ideology; and the balance between caution, and passion. The Greeks also used this word to refer to the power of music to influence emotions, behaviors, and even morals. Early Greek stories of Orpheus exhibit this idea in a compelling way. The word's use in rhetoric is closely based on the Greek terminology used by Aristotle in his concept of the three artistic proofs or modes of persuasion alongside pathos and logos. It gives credit to the speaker, or the speaker is taking credit.
Pathos appeals to the emotions and ideals of the audience and elicits feelings that already reside in them. Pathos is a term used most often in rhetoric, as well as in literature, film and other narrative art.
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.
Aristotle's Rhetoric is an ancient Greek treatise on the art of persuasion, dating from the 4th century BCE. The English title varies: typically it is Rhetoric, the Art of Rhetoric, On Rhetoric, or a Treatise on Rhetoric.
Narrative paradigm is a communication theory conceptualized by 20th-century communication scholar Walter Fisher. The paradigm claims that all meaningful communication occurs via storytelling or reporting of events. Humans participate as storytellers and observers of narratives. This theory further claims that stories are more persuasive than arguments. Essentially the narrative paradigm helps us to explain how humans are able to understand complex information through narrative.
The term composition as it refers to writing, can describe authors' decisions about, processes for designing, and sometimes the final product of, a composed linguistic work. In original use, it tended to describe practices concerning the development of oratorical performances, and eventually essays, narratives, or genres of imaginative literature, but since the mid-20th century emergence of the field of composition studies, its use has broadened to apply to any composed work: print or digital, alphanumeric or multimodal. As such, the composition of linguistic works goes beyond the exclusivity of written and oral documents to visual and digital arenas.
Chaïm Perelman was a Belgian philosopher of Polish-Jewish origin. He was among the most important argumentation theorists of the twentieth century. His chief work is the Traité de l'argumentation – la nouvelle rhétorique (1958), with Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca, translated into English as The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation, by John Wilkinson and Purcell Weaver (1969).
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.
Rhetoric of science is a body of scholarly literature exploring the notion that the practice of science is a rhetorical activity. It emerged after a number of similarly-oriented topics of research and discussion during the late 20th century, including the sociology of scientific knowledge, history of science, and philosophy of science, but it is practiced most typically by rhetoricians in academic departments of English, speech, and communication.
Persuasive writing is a form of written communication intended to convince or influence readers to accept a particular idea or opinion and to inspire action. A wide variety of writings, such as criticisms, reviews, reaction papers, editorials, proposals, advertisements, and brochures, utilize different persuasion techniques to influence readers. Persuasive writing can also be employed in indoctrination. It is often confused with opinion writing; however, while both may share similar themes, persuasive writing is backed by facts, whereas opinion writing is supported by emotions.
Rhetorical stance refers to the position or perspective that a writer or speaker adopts to convey a message to an audience. It involves choices in tone, style, and language to persuade, inform, entertain, or engage the audience. Rhetorical stance can include elements like the use of ethos, pathos, and logos to shape the overall impact of a communication.
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.
In social psychology, the Yale attitude change approach is the study of the conditions under which people are most likely to change their attitudes in response to persuasive messages. This approach to persuasive communications was first studied by Carl Hovland and his colleagues at Yale University during World War II. The basic model of this approach can be described as "who said what to whom": the source of the communication, the nature of the communication and the nature of the audience. According to this approach, many factors affect each component of a persuasive communication. The credibility and attractiveness of the communicator (source), the quality and sincerity of the message, and the attention, intelligence and age of the audience can influence an audience's attitude change with a persuasive communication. Independent variables include the source, message, medium and audience, with the dependent variable the effect of the persuasion.
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.
