EmpoWord - A Student-Centered Anthology & Handbook for College Writers, 2018a

General Introduction
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But let’s back up a second. What’s rhetoric?
You may have heard of a rhetorical question before—a question that someone asks you
without expecting an answer. What’s the point of asking a question with no answer? To
somehow impact the person who hears it, maybe by making them think about an issue in a
different way.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, rhetoric is “The art of using language effectively so
as to persuade or influence others, esp. the exploitation of figures of speech and other
compositional techniques to this end.” 10
Very generally speaking,
rhetoric refers to a set of strategies that authors use to connect to
their readers. More often in this book, though, I use “rhetoric” to refer to any text that tries to
do something to a reader, viewer, or listener. Vague, I know, but let’s consider some examples
that require such a vague definition:
An essay on capital
punishment
to convince a reader to
form a particular opinion
on the issue.
A T-shirt with a Boston
Red Sox logo
A Levi’s advertisement in
a magazine
tries
to rally team spirit.
to sell you Levi’s and to
build a brand image.
What other
purposes do
you think each
of these texts
might try to
achieve?
A website for Portland
Community College
to provide resources for
students, faculty, and staff.