When it comes to multi-individual spaces, it is always enjoyable to listen as one articulates even a simple tongue or account into a more refined version of itself in its possible culmination, whether comical, persuasive, or both. Many would describe it as honeyed words; however, it is an excellent leap in an individual’s mastery of language and a testament to the orator’s cognitive development within the species. No doubt, such an articulation is the art of not boring listeners and of injecting significance. That is how one is exposed to rhetoric and the nature of rhetoricians, but there is more to explore to achieve a higher form of understanding of rhetoric and the nature of the rhetorician.
Rhetoric, in its elementary understanding, is the practice of using language through writing, speaking, or visualising to communicate or push listeners towards a specific belief. Aristotle, in his Rhetoric, argued that ethos, pathos, and logos are fundamental in this practice. His argument emphasised the requirements of the rhetorician, such as expertise, character, authority, and reputation, to construct trust organically; the evocation of emotional responses by deliberately targeting the emotions of listeners through storytelling or vivid language; and intellectual appeals to listeners to convince them through rational and evidence-based reasoning. In his De Inventione, Cicero suggested five parts of rhetoric, or “The Five Canons of Rhetoric”: inventio (invention), dispositio (arrangement), elocutio (style), memoria (memory), and pronuntiatio (delivery). He later expanded on his explanation of these in De Oratore. By adding three goals for the orator, which are docere (to prove), delectare (to delight), and movere (to sway), he established that rhetoric was a civic responsibility for elite citizens. On the contrary, Plato, in his Gorgias, famously equated rhetoric with pastry-baking and argued that it seeks only to please listeners. However, in his Phaedrus, he radically softened his stance and argued that rhetoric is a means of guiding the soul, through speech, towards the truth, under specific rules. Still, his later argument sounds like a rehash of his first argument, with added verbal acrobatics. When Churchill delivered his “We shall fight on the beaches” speech on the 4th of June 1940 to the House of Commons, declaring that Britain should fight on the beaches, landing grounds, in the fields and in the streets, using the anaphoric repetition of “we shall fight” at the beginning of every section to build a sense of momentum and inevitability, it was rhetoric. Thus, rhetoric is the art of architecting language to enable a rhetorician to articulate more effectively and achieve the intended result.
Why rhetoric? Is it all about fancy talking? Or is it about just moving the tongue, teeth, jaws and lips to produce sequences of sensuous speech sounds? Perhaps humans are inherently as curious as they are lazy, preferring information that is easy to process; that is, one is more likely to believe what is easy to hear or read, probably because humans don’t usually enjoy encountering mental friction while digesting a message or piece of information. Daniel Kahneman, in his Thinking, Fast and Slow, suggests that because the mind is prone to laziness and a reluctance to invest effort, a state of “cognitive ease” in which familiarity is mistaken for truth results in a listener who is casual, superficial and likely to believe whatever they hear. It can also be observed that whenever a public figure, who may be a political cult figure or an orator, delivers their speech to the public, the sense of belonging is quite often mobilised through the narrative of “we”, “us”, “them”, and so on, which could potentially trigger the human evolutionary need for safety by belonging to a group or a tribe. In this way, the audience is likely to agree with the speaker, which helps the rhetorician maintain their significance or at least status. Isn’t it quite obvious that rhetoric deliberately targets emotion? Perhaps emotions move much faster than logic, and it is easier and more convenient to react to the feeling rather than analyse the facts.
Electoral politics in a democracy is indeed an arena of clashing rhetoricians, and it is the citizens who must choose those who will carry the people’s mandate for a specific duration. It can be further remarked that rhetoric, its effectiveness, and the method depend on the mental state of the listeners at the moment; that is, if the listeners are too attentive, then the rhetorician would be forced to employ some degree of logic and evidence, but in the case of distracted listeners, the rhetorician would turn to charisma to persuade even before or without the audience realising what is going on. And surprisingly, humans are easier to persuade by rhetoric that seems to align with what they want to believe or already believe. It would be reasonable to infer that our species might not be rational, but rather rationalising; sometimes we put our emotional decisions first and use rhetoric to justify them to ourselves later. Perhaps my take on rhetoric is itself an act of rhetoric, or perhaps it is yet to be judged.
The writer passed out from the Centre for French and Francophone Studies Jawaharlal Nehru University
