Rhetoric: A Compasive To The Art Of Persuasion

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History of Persuasion Essay
Rhetoric is something that has been studied and utilized since the days of Plato and Aristotle to even now in the coming presidential election between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. In order to become a successful “rhetor”, one must learn the art of being persuasive to the audience of choice. In the course of history there have been many successful figures who have used rhetoric to influence people to join their movement. One cannot deny though that over time rhetoric has had to evolve with enhanced technology and new public interactions, such as social media and the internet. This paper will highlight Aristotle and some of his theories, David Ewoldsen and a few studies he contributed to in regards to people being
Aristotle builds a case that rhetoric is an art which goes against “Gorgias” written by Plato that states rhetoric is not an art since it is not related to a “definite subject” (Rapp, 2002). Aristotle disagrees with Plato by proposing that rhetoric is an art since it requires being persuasive. The skill of persuasion is no easy task especially when it is concerning passionate topics like politics or beliefs. This leads into the final point to highlight that a true “rhetorician” is a person who is able to see persuasion in every situation (Rapp, 2002). This means that those who truly understand how rhetoric works also understand that even in disagreement, a strong argument is still valid. “The best arguments make use of shared assumptions--beliefs that both the writer and the reader can agree about even if they don 't yet agree about the entire argument” (Wheeler, 2016, para.
In one point of view on social media and rhetoric these days, Mallory Peterson states, “Rhetoric is the art of using language to successfully persuade and impact others, and when it comes to social media this art is often overlooked” (Peterson, 2016, para. 2). It is true that in order to persuade others effectively, rhetoric is still relevant today. According to Gorgias, rhetorical speech is capable of influencing a crowd to do something on almost any subject. The challenge nowadays is persuading people in a quick manner since the attention span of people is much

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