Although the quote from Quintilian above gives us three distinct styles, most commentators have rolled them into two: the ‘forensic’ and the ‘grand’ styles. The forensic style gives much of its attention to directness and the particular. Such personalities as Margaret Thatcher, Helmut Schmidt, and Al Gore are modern examples of ‘forensic’ speakers.
Style: the use of language to persuade
Style, meaning how we use language, was emphasized by the Roman rhetor Cicero as one of the key dimension of classical rhetoric. Cicero saw “Style of Language” in terms not only of the words we use, but also in the order that we use them. If invention addresses what is to be said; style addresses […]
Politeness: a strategy or beginnings of virtue?
“If a Nazi is polite, does that change anything about Nazism or the horrors of Nazism? No. It changes nothing, and this nothing is the very hallmark of politeness. …A show of virtue, its appearance and nothing more.” From reading the quote from Andre Comte-Sponville1 above, we can safely deduce that if a gangster is […]
