Rhetorical Analysis Of Booth's Essay '

Booth begins his paper by defining rhetoric as “every conceivable resource, good or bad, for producing any effect on others”. In other words, he argues that rhetoric is present in any action one takes to influence how others perceive a situation or issue. He then goes on to explain that rhetoric is often considered successful if the speaker manages to garner support for the issue he is arguing, regardless of technical mistakes that may have been made. Attaining this support in times of war has traditionally been relatively easy, as the speaker’s primary task is to invoke a sense of patriotism in his audience. The ease of this task used to be provided by fact that speeches were aimed at a localized audience, eliminating the need to make an attempt