Rhetoric is defined as an art to effectively write. There are several principles that make up rhetoric. The first two principles I am going to write about are purpose and audience.
Audience
The principle, audience, in the rhetoric process, is defined as whom the writer targets for their writing in the book, The Real World Reader by James Miller. The rhetorical principle of audience will also shape the writer’s choice of tone, content to include in their writing, and even the word choice they use for their writing. My simple definition of audience is, the person or people who read what you write.
Source: Miller, James S. The Real World Reader: a Rhetorical Reader for Writers. Oxford University Press, 2016.
Example of Audience
A good example of rhetorical audience is used in Emmeline Pankhurst’s Freedom or Death Speech she gave in 1913. Emmeline Pankhurst’s target audience are women. The whole point of her speech is to persuade women to take action so they can earn their right to vote. Because she chose women as her target audience, she uses powerful metaphors that touch women, specifically. For example, in one part of her speech she says, “The other baby is an impatient baby and cries lustily, screams and kicks and makes everybody unpleasant until it is fed. Well, we know perfectly well which baby is attended to first. That is the whole history of politics.” Here she compares her main point to a crying baby which specifically touches the women because they know what that’s like.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2007/apr/27/greatspeeches)
Other than strong metaphors, inspired by her target audience being women, she also has some lines in her speech filled with great emotion to help her relate to her target audience as well. For example, one of her lines say, “They will have to choose between giving us freedom or giving us death.” This line in particular really touches women which helps inspire them to make a positive change, despite the radical oppositions. Together, the strong metaphors and sentences that evoke strong feelings were chosen by her because her target audience is women so these two things really speak to women more than they would to men.
Purpose
The principle, purpose, seeks to inform, persuade, entertain, or educate the target audience about a specific topic, according to The Real World Reader by James Miller. In other words, purpose will try to get across the writer’s main point of their essay. Purpose will also try to affect the audience’s actions, to try and reinforce the value of the audience, or to reconsider our previous values of a subject.
Source: Miller, James S. The Real World Reader: a Rhetorical Reader for Writers. Oxford University Press, 2016.
Example of Purpose
A good example of rhetorical purpose is also used in Emmeline Pankhurst’s Freedom or Death Speech. In her speech, she constantly argues her belief that women are also human beings and therefore, should not be excluded from the political system. To simplify the rhetorical purpose of her speech, she tries to persuade women to change their attitude from a static position to a dynamic behavior so they can be given the right to vote.
Source: https://newyorkessays.com/essay-speech-analysis-freedom-or-death/)
The heart of her speech really gets her purpose across to her audience which says, “They have said to us, government rests upon force, the women haven’t force, so they must submit. Well, we are showing them that government does not rest upon force at all: it rests upon consent. As long as women consent to be unjustly governed, they can be, but directly women say: “We withhold our consent, we will not be governed any longer, so long as the government is unjust.” This paragraph embodies the rhetorical purpose very clearly.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2007/apr/27/greatspeeches)
Academicology 