"He who does not study rhetoric will be a victim of it"
found on a Greek wall from the 6th Century B.C.
Throughout the numerous texts and treatises dealing with rhetoric in the classical tradition, much space is dedicated to the theories of invention, what Aristotle would claim as the different methods for "finding all the available arguments" in a given situation. Likewise, current textbooks that seek to "rediscover" the classical rhetorical tradition often focus primarily on strategies of invention from the writer's or speaker's point of view. Examples include Crowley and Hawhee's Ancient Rhetorics for the Contemporary Student and D'Angelo's Composition in the Classical Tradition. All of these texts are useful to the student who wants to learn to write in the classical tradition; likewise, students can find a number of important devices for becoming more effective readers.
However, my purpose here is to offer a short handbook for those who seek to analyze the rhetorical strategies of published writers. Such analyses, I believe, help prevent individuals from the fate of the quotation I cited above: by understanding the ways that different rhetorical strategies are used to effect a certain response in a given audience, readers are better equipped not to fall "victim" to rhetoric.
This particular handbook works with one basic premise: regardless of how "literate" you might think yourself, there are always ways to re-think and re-consider the careful work of the writer so as to become better acquainted with the particular rhetorical strategies and appeals the writer employs in his/her text. It is to this end that the following sections should help you with the task of reading particular pieces of text rhetorically.
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