YOU TALKIN’ TO ME? YOU TALKIN’ TO ME? Rhetoric from Aristotle to Obama SAM LEITH First published in Great Britain in 2011 by PROFILE BOOKS LTD 3A Exmouth House Pine Street London EC1R 0JH www.profilebooks.com Copyright © Sam Leith, 2011 Frontispiece: ‘Rhetorick’ by Richard Blome, used with the kind permission of Gillian Darley 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 Typeset in Iowan by MacGuru Ltd [email protected] Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays, Bungay, Suffolk The moral right of the author has been asserted. All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978 1 84668 315 2 The paper this book is printed on is certified by the © 1996 Forest Stewardship Council A.C. (FSC). It is ancient-forest friendly. The printer holds FSC chain of custody SGS-COC-2061 SGSCOC2061 CONTENTS Introduction 1 Rhetoric Then and Now 17 THE FIVE PARTS OF RHETORIC 41 The First Part of Rhetoric: Invention 45 Ethos 47 Logos 57 Pathos 66 Champions of Rhetoric I: Satan – The Original Silver-tongued Devil 74 The Second Part of Rhetoric: Arrangement 81 Exordium 84 Narration 86 Division 90 Proof 92 Refutation 98 Peroration 104 Champions of Rhetoric II: Marcus Tullius Cicero – The Attack Dog of the Roman Forum 107 YOU TALKIN’ TO ME? The Third Part of Rhetoric: Style 117 Decorum 117 Jokes 124 Sound Effects 125 Controlling the Tense 128 The Figures 130 Champions of Rhetoric III: Abraham Lincoln – ‘A few appropriate remarks’ 134 The Fourth Part of Rhetoric: Memory 143 Champions of Rhetoric IV: Hitler and Churchill 158 The Fifth Part of Rhetoric: Delivery 172 THE THREE BRANCHES OF ORATORY 185 The First Branch of Oratory: Deliberative Rhetoric 189 Champions of Rhetoric V: Martin Luther King, Jr – Daydream Believer 199 The Second Branch of Oratory: Judicial Rhetoric 208 Champions of Rhetoric VI: Barack Obama – The Audacity of Trope 218 The Third Branch of Oratory: Epideictic Rhetoric 235 Champions of Rhetoric VII: The Unknown Speechwriter 248 Thus It Can Be Shown … 261 Appendix: Glossary and Key Concepts 263 Notes 281 Index 288 For Mum Also by Sam Leith FICTION The Coincidence Engine NON-FICTION Dead Pets Sod’s Law INTRODUCTION LET ME START with a scene from The Simpsons: MARGE: (sings) ‘How many roads must a man walk down before you can call him a man?’ HOMER: Seven. LISA: No, Dad, it’s a rhetorical question. HOMER: OK, eight. LISA: Dad, do you even know what ‘rhetorical’ means? HOMER: Do I know what ‘rhetorical’ means? It is not too much to say that on this little scene the whole premise of the book you hold in your hand hinges. Do you know what ‘rhetorical’ means? Because you should; and if Homer Simpson, one of the greatest Everyman figures of the late twentieth century, can make a joke about rhetoric, you can be assured that this is not a subject that needs to be intimidating. So what is rhetoric? Rhetoric is, as simply defined as pos- sible, the art of persuasion: the attempt by one human being to influence another in words. It is no more complicated than that. You are probably accustomed to thinking of rhet- oric in terms of formal oratory: the sort of public speeches you see politicians make on television, CEOs make at AGMs 1