Rhetorical Stance Term Paper

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Wayne Booth is considered one of those principally responsible for the revival of the study of rhetoric, a skill that was valued by the Greeks in their debates and later re-visited by enlightenment-era neo-classicists. His concern for the matter couldn't have been more timely; the late 1950's and early 1960's saw the first televised debates (such as those between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon,) the popularity of shows such as 'Meet the Press, a substantial growth in the legal profession, and a new emphasis on the study of media by MacLuhan and others.

Because Booth is proposing a formula for the proper criticism of essays, we are tempted to approach his essay with an attitude of extreme scrutiny; we are thus able to discern the critical from the merely hypocritical.

Booth illustrates the necessary construction of a speech or essay as a trichotomy: the author must present facts, appeal to his audience, and maintain a proper tone. As a nod to the progenitors of rhetoric, he gives these aspects of proper speech Greek names; he calls them logos, pathos, and ethos. He begins his essay by deriding a hapless graduate student for being a mediocrity, boring his audience with attempts at over-intellectualization.

He refers to the stance that this hapless student makes as the Pedant's Stance: the essay is too factual and dry. Pedantry is considered by most people to be pretentious and boring; one is reminded of the child that memorizes baseball statistics or the gangly teenager who memorizes lines from Star Trek episodes and never dates.

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Booth's pedant is a brain without charm, unfortunately, he claims, academia is replete with such personalities. Pedants make the fundamental mistake of refusing to consider the concerns of their audience or make their speeches clever and instead regurgitate data in order to please themselves. Any research-intensive field is plagued with this problem.

The second rhetorical position he critiques is the Advertiser's Stance. This stance has too much pathos; an essay geared towards the audiences tastes without making a point. Such essays may often include pleasantries in order to win someone over: we might see this as the Dale Carnegie approach, as Carnegie considered all constructive criticism utterly pointless. This is the approach favored by salesmen; it completely gears a set of ideas at an audience. We are left to think: if the audience is pleased, from where can we derive our objective impetus for criticism? It is usually under more careful analysis that such speeches or essays are revealed to be devoid of content.

The third rhetorical position is the Entertainer's Stance. Such a stance has too much ethos; the deliverer is more concerned with matters of form and poise than of content. Such a speaker or writer could….....

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