Academic literature on the topic 'Aristotle’s triangle of rhetoric'

This study aims to validate the influence of Aristotle's rhetorical triangle—ethos, pathos, and logos—to the behavior of Saudi Arabian consumers, focusing particularly on consumer product. Quantitative and qualitative methods including descriptive research design were used. Two hundred respondents participated in the study. Results shows that age has impact to influence respondent's preference of Aristotle's rhetorical appeals. However, educational attainment has no influence on respondents' behavior towards Aristotle's rhetorical appeals. Fifty-seven percent of the respondents perceived ethos appeal as the most effective appeal of persuasion. This finding could be due to culture, since Saudis valued trust and credibility. Entities that might be affected directly or indirectly of the findings will give them an idea on how to reach and persuade the target audiences. The classical Aristotle's rhetorical triangle is the ancient art of persuasion still remains useful and applicable for the communication.

The Late Antique Aristotelian tradition inherited by the world of earlyIslam in the Near East considered the Rhetoric an integral part of one’straining in logic and reasoning. Thus far, however, there has been little academicinterest in it, apart from Deborah Black’s ground-breaking monographpublished some two decades ago and the recent edition in MarounAouad’s translation and study of Ibn Rushd’s commentary on it. Vagelpohl’srevised Cambridge dissertation is a careful historical and linguisticstudy of its translation and naturalization in Syriac (less so) and Arabiclearned culture in the Near East. As such, he considers the text a case studythat raises wider questions about the whole process of the translation movementthat, after a relative absence of interest, is again inspiring a new vogueof academic literature.Since translation is a process of cultural exchange, it is important to payattention to details and formulations. The choice of the Rhetoric requiressome justification, as Vagelpohl admits, for two reasons: (a) the Aristotelian text was not that significant in antiquity; more practical manuals were morewidely used and taught, and (b) the Arabic tradition distinguished betweentwo traditions of rhetoric, an indigenous genre of balaghah (and bayan) thatdrew upon classics of the Arabic language and was essential for trainingpreachers and functionaries, and a more philosophical and Hellenizingkhitabah represented by the Aristotelian text and its commentary, such asthe one by Ibn Rushd. Clearly the former tradition dominated, for even a cursoryexamination of the manuscript traditions and texts in libraries attests tothis imbalance. However, Vagelpohl argues that the challenges posed by thetext reveal strategies and approaches used by the translators to deal with thecultural exchange that may assist our understanding of the wider translationmovement ...

Just as Aristotelian dialectic sharply distinguishes between real and fallacious arguments, Aristotelian rhetoric distinguishes between real and fallacious enthymemes. For this reason Aristotle’s Rhetoric includes a chapter – chapter II.24 – that is exclusively devoted to what Aristotle calls “topoi” of fallacious enthymemes. Thus, the purpose of this chapter seems to be equivalent to the purpose of the treatise Sophistici Elenchi, which attempts to give a complete list of all possible types of fallacious arguments. It turns out that, although the Rhetoric’s list of fallacious types of rhetorical arguments basically resembles the list from the Sophistici Elenchi, there also are some striking differences. The paper tries to account for the relation between these two, more or less independent, Aristotelian approaches to the phenomenon of fallacious arguments. Can one of these two lists be seen as the basic or original one? And what is the point in deviating from this basic list? Are all deviations occasioned by the specific contexts of the rhetorical use on the one hand, and the dialectical on the other? Or do the two lists display different (or even incoherent) logical assumptions? Even an only tentative answer to this set of questions will help to clarify another but closely related scholarly problem, namely the relation between the Rhetoric’s list of topoi for real enthymemes and the Topics’ list of topoi for real dialectical arguments. It will also help to account for the general place of fallacious arguments within Aristotle’s dialectic-based approach the rhetoric.

The paper deals with the reception of Aristotle’s definition of rhetoric(Rhet. I 1355b26–27) in several Byzantine commentators of Hermogenes’and Aphthonius’ treatises. A justification of critical interpretationof this definition is to be found in the commentaries of Troilus and Athanasius(4th/5th century) as well as Sopatros (6th century) and Doxapatres(11th century), Maximus Planudes (13th/14th century) and several anonymouscommentators. The Byzantine tradition has found Aristotle’s definitionof rhetoric to be all too theoretical and insufficiently connected topractical activity, which Byzantium identified with political life.