Chapter Summary And Analysis Of Heinrichs 'Rhetoric'
1200 Words5 Pages
Kelsey Jones
English III AP
10 August 2015 Section One: Introduction (Chapter 1) In the Introduction, Heinrichs begins with a story of him and his son. He uses a simple everyday conversation and shows how rhetoric is used everywhere. He then explains what rhetoric is and explains the history of it. Heinrich defines rhetoric as “the art of influence, friendship, and eloquence, of ready wit and irrefutable logic.”(4) The history starts with Ancient Greece and continues to Roman orators, William Shakespeare, and the recent surge in popularity among the undergraduates. Heinrichs’ goal is to show the importance of rhetoric and bring it back into the thoughts of everybody outside of academia. He attempts to show the importance by going…show more content… In chapter two he states, “The basic difference between an argument and a fight: an argument, done skillfully, gets people to want to do what you want. You fight to win; you argue to achieve an agreement.” (17) Chapter three introduces the core ideas of and argument (according to Aristotle): blame, values, and choices. The author points out that “you can slot any kind of issue involving persuasion into one of these categories.”(27) The next chapter discusses logos, pathos, and ethos. Logos involve logic, pathos involve emotion and ethos involve…show more content… “An agreeable ethos matches the audience’s expectations for a leader’s tone, appearance, and manners. The ancient Romans coined a word to describe this kind of character based on agreeability: decorum.” (47) Decorum lets the audience find the presenter suitable for the role. The sixth chapter refers to rhetorical virtue and is titled “Make Them Listen”. Heinrichs explains that the audience needs to believe that you can lead them down the right path. You not only have to be likable but have practical wisdom, virtue, and disinterest. Practical wisdom means “you appear to do the right thing on every occasion”, virtue means that “the audience believes you share their values”, and disinterest means “not the lack of interest but the lack of bias; you seem to be impartial, caring only about the audience’s interest rather than your own.” Chapter seven analyzes the use of wisdom in ethos. Heinrichs goes into detail by saying, “The audience should consider you a sensible person, as well as sufficiently knowledgeable to deal with the problem at hand.” In short the author is suggesting that you need to have a knowledge of the subject you are discussing. The last chapter discussing ethos goes into detail with disinterest. As explained before, disinterest is showing that you care for what favors the audience. Heinrichs uses the example of a teenage boy asking to borrow his dad's car for a date. Instead of using himself as the reason he should have the