The Rhetorical Triangle

What is Rhetoric?

What is saidWho is saying itWho is listeningWhere / when it is being saidWhy it is being saidHow it is being said

What is the Rhetorical Triangle?

Shows the relationship between speaker, audience, message, style, purpose, tone

Understanding these rhetorical elements makes both writing and analysis much clearer

The Rhetorical Triangle

Message

Speaker Audience

Tone Style

Purpose

The Author / Speaker

Gender / racial / geographical orientation of author

Author Bias / hidden agendaOther important biographical

information may affect text

The Audience

Are they friend or foe? (hostile or sympathetic)

How will they receive the message?

How will they affect tone / style?Who is the intentional audience?Who is the unintentional audience?

The Message

What is the main point being made? In other words, what is the writer’s / speaker’s thesis?

Look at the message as an argument / position being sold to the audience. What is the author trying to convince the audience of?

The Tone

What is the author’s attitude about his / her subject / message?

What words in the message let you know the tone?

How does the selection of the tone affect the audience’s reception of the message?

The Style

What strategies does the author employ in order to get his / her message across?

These strategies may include: ethos, logos, pathos; organization; diction; syntax; figurative language; grammatical structure; selection of details; imagery

The Rhetorical Purpose

Under what circumstances is the author addressing his/her audience?

In other words, what is going on in the world at the time this text was composed, and how do those events affect the text?

Summary

Remember – it is not one of these elements of the rhetorical triangle that can be used to analyze a text; it is the relationships between these rhetorical elements that composes the meaning we get from a text!

True analysis is not only the what, but also the why and the how!