When talking about what a politician just said, people often say, “Oh, that’s just rhetoric.” What he means, of course, is that the politician is being deceitful, he is avoiding an issue, he is being less than honest. That common-sense attitude toward rhetoric is quite at odds with the Merriam-Webster online dictionary in its scholarly definition of rhetoric:

the art of speaking or writing effectively

That academic definition of rhetoric (to whom else but a professor of rhetoric, a true expert in it, would Merriam-Webster go for his definition?) clearly shows the wide gap between the formal, academic, and dictionary definition— the art of speaking or writing effectively — and everyday experience and wisdom about Rhetoric — be deceitful and deceitful. But it is not just ordinary people who see the strong negative aspects of the rhetoric; Quite a few important and highly educated people have also pointed out the negative side of the rhetoric.

Even rhetorical experts such as Professor Wayne C. Booth (1921-2005), professor of rhetoric at the University of Chicago, have openly admitted the negative and misleading side of rhetoric. In his last book, The rhetoric of rhetoric; (2004), Professor Booth points out many, many times that in the United States and certainly in much of the world we are harmed on a daily basis. by floods of careless rhetoric or even deliberately damaging media coverage;.

Media Rhetrickery (which he abbreviates to “MR” throughout his book) is Booth’s unique term for the widespread abuse of rhetoric in the media, incessantly employing rhetoric for misleading, misleading, and corrupt purposes. So Booth spends a great deal of time in his book apologizing for various forms of rhetoric (he clearly means exactly what the term sounds like), apologizing for the corrupt use of rhetoric that occurs so frequently in all walks of life. life. Coming from Booth, this is really a harsh indictment of rhetoric. It seems to me that he does not intend this to be an indictment against rhetoric, since he has always been a highly respected advocate and authority on the positive values ​​of rhetoric, but clearly it is an indication.

At the beginning of his book, Booth recounts that in 1960 he was at a post-lecture reception in Oxford and was chatting over drinks with an Oxford professor, when he asked him what subject he taught. The Oxford professor replied: Mainly 18th century literature. What is your field? stand answered It’s basically rhetoric, even though I’m officially in ‘English’. I am trying to complete a book called “The Rhetoric of Fiction.” The Oxford literature professor frowned, unpleasantly spitting Rhetoric!He turned his back on her and walked quickly away. This experience is an example that shows the traditional lack of academic respect for Rhetoric maintained by most of the academy and the world for centuries, even millennia.

Another who agrees with Booth on the rhetorical quality of rhetoric was a Roman authority, Lucian of Samosata (AD 125-180). Lucian was formally trained as a rhetorician and claimed that a Rhetor is a money pushing, driving and chasing operator who leaves any sense of decency, propriety, restraint and shame at home when he goes to work.

An even more important Roman rhetorician who could not deny the element of rhetoric in rhetoric was Quintilian. As one of the most renowned teachers of rhetoric of all time, Quintilian (35-100 AD) felt that the virtue of vericundia (Latin for a combination of modesty, decency, and restraint) was an absolute vice in a speaker. Why? Because, said Quintilian, it would make him hesitate, change his mind, or possibly even stop talking to think things through.! You can’t let that happen to respectable rhetoricians now, can you? It might even result in making them honest men!

John Locke (1632-1704), the great English thinker and philosopher, expressed probably the strongest condemnation ever expressed against rhetoric. Locke pointed out that the purpose of rhetoric was imply wrong ideas, inflame the passions, and thereby mislead the judgment of the audience. Locke asserted that the techniques of rhetoric are perfect traps…to be avoided entirely…rhetoric, that powerful instrument of error and deception..

Clearly, Booth is not a lone voice conversing on the rhetorical side of rhetoric. I guess the real question is: why have Booth and other defenders of rhetoric stuck with such a deceitful discipline, knowing full well its morally repulsive qualities?

Perhaps Steven Spender (1909-1995) — modern English poet, novelist, essayist — had the right insight when he expressed the idea that, Rhetoric is the art of deception, isn’t it? And when you get good at using rhetoric with other people, you eventually and unknowingly use it with yourself..

As the old adage goes, power corrupts, and Rhetoric — or should we call it by its proper name, Twisting— it is, indeed, powerful.