Rhetoric

Rhetoric is the art of convincing, and it is one of the oldest surviving arts of speech, together with grammar and logic (or dialectic – see Martianus Capella), that have survived to the present day. When it comes to rhetoric, the goal is to learn about the methods that authors and presenters use to educate, convince, and motivate certain audiences in specific circumstances. According to Aristotle, rhetoric is "the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion," and because mastery of the art was required for victory in a court of law, passage of legislative proposals in the assembly, or fame as a public speaker in civic ceremonies, he describes it as "a synthesis of logic and political ethics." Typical heuristics for understanding, finding, and creating arguments for specific circumstances are provided by rhetorical theory, such as Aristotle's three persuasive audience appeals: logos, pathos, and ethos, which are used to persuade an audience to accept an argument.