Summary 1 Response 1

This chapter gives a brief history of rhetoric. Rhetoric began 2500 years ago (about 492 B.C.) with Corax of Syracuse. The word rhetoric in modern times, to common people, as a negative connotation. But, modern scholars and people of the past saw the word rhetoric with a positive connotation. During the classicial age rhetoric was normally a spoken action. Also in the classical age there were five departments of rhetoric. One of those departments was style. Style itself consisted of three parts. During the middle ages rhetoric turned from being spoken into a written art. From the Renaissance to the twentyith centary three points of view were added to rhetoric works. These three were scientific, elocutionary, and literal. These view points did not change the writing methods but showed the complexity of rhetoric works. In modern times linguistics, anthropology, psychology, philosophy, semantics, politics were added to the list of view points.

The chapter title of "What do Teachers need to know about Rhetoric" implies that some were in the work that there will be a definition of rhetoric. Teachers need to know what words mean. Yet, in the chapter there was not good concrete answer to the definition of rhetoric, "...both practice and a body of knowledge describing the practice." What practice ? Baseball, soccer, polo? Although the historical development of rhetoric is interesting to me it still would be nice to give a modern definition to and old word. All the points of view, in the world do not help answer what the word means, and you need to know where to stand before you need to know where to look. The chapter seems to be more "sing-songy" novel than a fact based text book to be used has a teaching instrument. I hope the actual writing of rhetoric is less complex then the attempts of defining rhetoric.