Rhetorical Background

Rhetorical Background
(Griffin)


Definition: Examination of the rhetor's effectiveness of persuasion - exclusively independent of historical context and use of rhetoric by a movement with a common and identifying goal.

Example: Any protest movement that aims to persuade the intended audience by modes of argumentation inherently has a rhetorical background.

From the text:  Griffin makes a clear distinction for the need to separate the historical context from the rhetorical background. He states that "The student's task is to isolate the rhetorical movement within the matrix of the historical movement . . . it is to be isolated, analyzed, evaluated, and described, so that he can say, for the particular historical movement which he investigates: this was the pattern of public discussion, the configuration of discourse, and the physiognomy of persuasion, peculiar to the movement" (10). Griffin goes on to state that "... the critic must judge the discourse in terms of the theories of rhetoric and public opinion indigenous to the times" (12).




Works Cited:
Griffin, Leland M. "The Rhetoric of Historical Movements." Readings in the Rhetoric of Social      Protest. Browne, Stephen Howard, and Charles E. Morris III, eds. State College, PA: Strata  Publishing, Inc., 2013.