Rhetoric and Rightness: Some Fallacies in a Science of Language

Abstract

As I looked over the impressive programme of this Conference, I noted with pleasure that some of the distinguished participants would discuss the use of rhetoric in teaching composition and literature. For this use has had a long and, until our century, successful tradition. The craft of criticism, too, has often in the past come within the purview of rhetoric, making it altogether an influential branch of learning. Then the subject fell on evil days: rhetoric seemed to be no more than a bag of tricks taught and used mechanically. The dismissive phrase ‘mere rhetoric’ meant words without substance. Applied to literature, it meant verbal effects without thought or feeling behind them.