Rhetoric
The art of persuasive speaking and writing — the discipline behind every great quoted line.
Rhetoric is the study and practice of effective communication — particularly persuasive communication. The Western tradition begins with Aristotle, whose three-part division of ethos (the speaker's credibility), pathos (emotional appeal), and logos (logical argument) is still the working vocabulary of speechwriters and lawyers.
Most of the quotations that survive in public memory are products of rhetorical craft. The Gettysburg Address, the Sermon on the Mount, Pericles's funeral oration, Churchill's wartime broadcasts: all are dense with deliberate rhetorical figures — anaphora, chiasmus, antithesis, tricolon.
To read a famous quote rhetorically is to ask why the words are in that order. Almost always, the answer is technique.
“We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets.”
Keep reading the glossary
Aristotle's three modes of persuasion — character, emotion, and reason.
The deliberate repetition of a word or phrase at the start of successive clauses.
An ABBA word-order reversal — 'ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country'.
A grammatical balance of two opposed ideas — 'to be or not to be'.