Since the beginning of formal rhetoric in western culture, people have questioned the relationship between truth, knowledge, and persuasion. The sophists, considered the original rhetoric teachers, taught their students how to persuade their audience in one direction or another, regardless of the truth in their claims. Later Greek philosophers such as Plato, Isocrates, and Aristotle separated themselves from that disregard for truth. In fact, Isocrates says the Sophists “scruple to vaunt their powers with utter disregard for truth” and “choose a life of indolence.” Thankfully, the comments weren't just a smear campaign and the dissension lead to theorists working new relationships between truth and rhetoric. For instance, Plato thought there was an absolute truth that we could never fully comprehend, but nevertheless than rhetoric should always strive to discover truth. Aristotle continued this theme by claiming that we know truth through empiricism and that rhetoric seeks to uncover those facts and find answers of the probable.
In response to the greeks' emphasis on truth and persuasion, renaissance and enlightenment scholars began to question what it takes to persuade an audience and how a speaker's rhetoric could either obscure or promote knowledge. Some held that rhetoric was merely fancy language that obscures true meaning and that a speaker should strip his language to reveal only bare truth. Sprat, a member of British Royalist Society, questioned, “who can behold, without indignation, how many mists and uncertainties, these specious Tropes and Figures have brought on our Knowledge?” John Locke, too, has harsh words for figurative speech: "the art of rhetoric,...all the artificial and figurative applications of words eloquence hath invented, are for nothing else but to insinuate wrong ideas, move the passions, and thereby mislead the judgement." Like others of his time, Locke believes rhetoric "wholly to be avoided" in matters of truth and knowledge. Others following Sprat and Locke take a more moderate view.
For instance, Sir Francis Bacon demonstrates how language can obscure meaning without entirely rejecting use of tropes. Specifically, in Novum Organum Bacon outlines four “Idols” that persuade men's minds. The first two, Idols of the Tribe and Idols of the Cave, address mankind's fallibility and each individual's limitations, respectively. The Idols of the Marketplace speak to the limiting factor of language. Bacon states that “the ill and unfit choice of words wonderfully obstructs the understanding” of what is being said. Finally, in Idols of the Theater, Bacon further explains how thoughts that are almost right or are poorly derived from an idea that is right are perpetuated from authority figures and throughout culture. In describing these “Idols,” Bacon acknowledges that humanity, language, and culture can hinder true knowledge without resorting to the dismissal of rhetoric all together.
Other scholars in in the enlightenment period like George Campbell, Hugh Blair, and Giambattista Vico also note the potential for language to sway listeners, but suggest those elements are an ally to a speaker trying to move an audience. Vico, for instance, recognizes that language and knowledge are intertwined and that language is mixed up with the limitations and possibilities of humanity along with cultural influences. Taken together, he reiterates that the communication of knowledge, and thus the uptake of knowledge, can be tainted. Similarly, Campbell asserts that something more than just bare facts persuade people. To explore this claim, Campbell classifies the steps of persuasion as informing, convincing, pleasing, moving, and finally persuading. Furthermore, he describes methods for achieving each of this steps such as demonstrating beauty and embodying passion. Finally, Blair also suggested that while logic may instruct someone, only special techniques actually move someone to action. Instead of denying how language influences persuasion, these Three scholars discuss methods for using those techniques for betterment in argument.
Amid the multiple perspectives about knowledge, truth, and rhetoric one theme remains: language affects persuasion. Regardless of whether rhetoric should ignore truth, find truth, or promote truth, everyone acknowledges that language will influence what an audience believes is true, so we should all be aware of how rhetoric is subtly influencing what we take as truth. Readers should be especially cautious of how rhetoric is used in health literature since falling prey to faulty logic dressed up in good rhetoric could be detrimental to your life or the ones you love.
Performing a rhetorical analysis can be difficult, though, so that's where I step in. In the following posts I aim to expose some of the underlying messages in health rhetoric and to ask if specific pieces of literature are persuading well or poorly and whether the end is betterment or derailment.
I'd love to see you be more specific in the details of the folks you are reading.
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