5 Canons Of Rhetoric

Introduction- Using the Five Traditional Canons of Rhetoric
Canons: Invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery
Heuristic devices are points of reference that you can return to regularly and systematically as you can analyze what you read with a rhetorician’s eye and as you plan writing that will be rhetorically effective
The canons are useful perspectives from which to see rhetoric at work in everyday life B. Rhetoric at Work: Context and the Three Appeals
Writing appeals to readers by making a clear, coherent statement of ideas and a central argument
Writing appeals to readers by offering evidence that the writer is a trustworthy, well-educated, believable person who has done his or her homework and has the best interests
The Basic Topics
There are four basic topics a writer can use to find material for writing on any subject: Possible and impossible, Past fact, Future fact, and Greater and less I. The Common Topics
Definition: Using this topic for invention, you generate material by defining key terms, providing for each term its genus, or the class of things it belongs to the features that distinguish the thing being defined from all other items in its class
Division: Using this topic for invention, you divide some or all of your subject matter into parts
Comparison and contrast: Using this topic for invention, you generate similarities (comparisons) or differences (contrasts) about aspects of your subject matter
Relationships: Using this topic for invention, you can generate material that shows different kinds of relationships between aspects of your subject matter
Circumstances: These topics include the (1) possible and the impossible, (2) past fact, and (3) future fact
Testimony: Using this topic of invention, you can generate material by investigating what authorities or people with extensive experience with your subject say about
Arrangement
Arrangement helps you to analyze the texts written by someone else and to plan your own compositions
The particles of arrangement help a writer plan to (1) order and structure the parts of a piece of writing and (2) support the different parts L. Genres
An important principle that helps govern arrangement is genre, the type of composition writers produce
The beginning of a composition usually sets out the central question the paper will answer or the argument the paper will develop and hints at how the development will proceed
The middle of a paper usually offers points in support of the answer to the central question or the argument and substantiates or explores those points with examples, illustrations, details, and reasons
The end of a paper usually draws together the material developed in the middle and addresses the question “So