6. What is Rhetorical Theory?

Rhetorical Theory as Useful Tools

• “Rhetorical theory” may sound strange or opaque, but it really boils down to this: rhetorical theory is a body of concepts that have proven useful (in some cases, for a very long time) in understanding what happens when people try to communicate with one another—what choices they make; what resources they draw upon; how much they can take for granted that the audience already accepts; what risks they take; how the particular occasion, genre, or medium shapes the message; and other such concerns.

• While each communication situation is particular, it’s also true that situations, roles of rhetors and audiences, and occasions recur across time. Indeed, that’s one way that rhetorical efforts are understandable at all: they use both the recurring and the unique. Rhetorical theory offers us useful tools to help us understand particular rhetorical occasions and rhetorical problems more generally.

• Many concepts and analytical tools fit within the big umbrella of rhetorical theory. No one-semester course could possibly engage them all, but we will learn some core concepts and sets of tools that can help you learn to notice and make meaning out of particular messages that have circulated in the world and, as rhetoric scholar Barry Brummett puts it, “experience [your] rhetorical environments more richly.”

• Each project in this course will ask you to concentrate on particular ideas when you examine the primary artifact that you choose. Those particular concepts will be the “theory stuff” that you use to build insights. By asking these kinds of questions, you notice these kinds of evidence; by stepping back and seeing patterns in what you notice, you start to develop an understanding of a particular act of communication.

Rhetorical Theory as a Lens

• Think of theory as the lens through which you see—as with all lenses, it brings some items into focus more sharply than others.

• If you’ve ever been to an optometrist, you are familiar with this device, the phoropter:

• The device allows the patient to see how different lenses affect what and how they see, enabling the patient and optometrist to communicate for the purpose of improving the patient’s sight.

• Rhetorical theory is a bit like this device; it has many lenses that enable you to see some things more sharply than others. If you change the lens, you change the focus. To use theory is to use a way of seeing, a particular set of productive questions, that help you to notice what you might want to build your analysis and argument around.