Thus, what makes Vatz's view of rhetoric so much more applicable to rhetorical theory today is that it gives the study of rhetoric an actual purpose and a means of expanding knowledge and understanding. Bitzer's view is ultimately reductive, removing the potential for greater analysis and the uncovering of how humans make meaning by suggesting that any meaning exists already, and as such requires no further investigation. In essence, Bitzer's view of rhetoric is a thought-terminating exercise, because it reduces the object of rhetorical theory to a mere side-effect of reality, suggesting it is only worth examining as a corollary to central topic, which would be Bitzer's all-powerful situations. This is due to the fact that Bitzer begins his entire endeavor with a flawed assumption regarding meaning, such that the rest of his thesis can only progress towards a reductive and ultimately incorrect conclusion. In fact, one might not need any other evidence for the superiority of Vatz's view of rhetoric over Bitzer's than the fact that Vatz's actually allows for further investigation and the uncovering of useful, applicable knowledge, whereas the best Bitzer's theory can do is generate some idle speculation and marveling at the overwhelming influence of situations on human behavior and speech, without any pause to question how those situations may themselves in fact be created by human behavior and rhetoric. By examining...
While these are some of the more famous elements of rhetorical theory, they do not require extensive discussion here for two reasons. Firstly, they are fairly well-known. Secondly, and more importantly, they actually do not provide much insight into the uses of rhetoric, because Aristotle implicitly inserts an ethics into his discussion of rhetoric that precludes it from having as robust an application to the real world as would
Ethical Theories The three basic ethical theories share a number of similarities, because they each attempt to describe and explicate the ethical decisions made by humans as well as the logic (or illogic) that is used to inform any particular behavior. Utilitarianism offers what is perhaps the most sound ethical theory due to the way it chooses for itself the goal of its efforts, but it is hampered by disagreement regarding
Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.
Get Started Now