Portal: Rhetoric

Enthymeme, what is it? A Dark Art. Aristotle called it the body/core of rhetoric but did not define it well. One way to see it: It's like a syllogism, but you leave out one of the premises, letting the audience's doxa fill it in. Doing this is often more impactful, bypassing filters that would otherwise be triggered.

There are four types of enthymeme.

1. Syllogism with an unstated premise
2. Syllogism based on signs
3. Syllogism where the audience supplies a premise
4. Visual enthymemes
   • Pictures can also function as enthymemes because they require the audience to help construct their meaning.

The classic syllogism

1. Humans are mortal
2. Socrates is a human
3. Socrates is mortal

One enthymematic version is the truncated syllogism, "Socrates is mortal because he's human", leaving out "humans are mortal". The audience is assumed to understand this.

A valid syllogism:

1. All men are good drivers
2. Rune is a man
3. Rune is a good driver

Of course, if you don't accept the first premise, you needn't accept the conclusion as true.

Another enthymeme: "Candide is a typical French novel; therefore it is vulgar". You rely on the audience to already think it sounds reasonable that typical French novels are vulgar.

An enthymeme that bypasses filters: "Hela personalen består av ungdomar som knappt är torra bakom öronen, så det går inte fort med servicen om man säger så." The implied premise, that all teenagers are slow, is so categorical that were it said explicitly, even the most teenager-hostile would protest its validity. What's concerning is that none in the audience might actually agree with the premise, but it passes, and it might reinforce the audience's image of teenagers as slow workers.

Ideer som vi i ett samhälle eller en grupp implicit har antagit gemensamt. Värdegrunder är ett slags doxa, och allmänt erkända fakta som att jorden är rund ingår också i vårt doxa.

If anyone wanted to persuade based on pure logic, it would be the philosopher Aristotle. And yet Aristotle’s remarks are extraordinary. Ethos, he says, is almost the whole of persuasion. And he narrows ethos down to exactly three things: the speaker’s phronesis (practical wis- dom), arête (moral virtue), and eunoia (goodwill). Aristotle insists that any rhetor who wants to be trusted must be seen to possess these three attri- butes, and with these three, the speaker cannot help but be persuasive.

Rhetors often make the mistake of assuming their credibility before an audience. Bad idea. Aristotle goes so far as to say that one’s ethos, rather than existing within the person, is established by the speech itself: “This kind of persuasion, like the others, should be achieved by what the speaker says, not by what people think of his character before he begins to speak.” In other words, you may have a good reputation, but if you don’t draw upon it verbally, it just sits by uselessly.

Visuell retorik

Roland Barthes 1976 pratar om textens förankrande relation till bilden [anchrage]. Det kan tolkas som att han inte riktigt litar på bildens egen förmåga att förmedla ett innehåll, som om den kunde tolkas lite hur som helst, medan språket ger säker info. Men så är inte fallet. Bild har egna betydelser vid sidan av och tillsammans med ev skriftspråklig info.

Semiotics also seems to related to Critical theory.

Art, skill. The art of doing something. Contrast with episteme.