Rhetoric (CLA223)

Course Description

The third in the trivium of language arts (core courses in critical thinking), rhetoric aims at teaching students to speak and to write the truth persuasively. To this end, students will compose and deliver speeches as well as analyze and evaluate important orations, both classical and modern, according to the classical rhetorical canons of invention, arrangement, and style.

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: none

Additional Details

Patrick Henry College’s online Rhetoric course is approached from a classical liberal arts perspective that regards thinking as fundamental to speech. The art of rhetoric is examined (from an Aristotelian and Ciceronian perspective) by introducing the student to the role of rhetoric in the liberal arts tradition. Rhetoric, long considered the cornerstone of the liberal arts, is the art of persuasive speaking. The study of rhetoric provides a foundation in speech composition upon which the course builds. The course builds on that foundation by studying, in a systematic and integrated fashion, tools for critical thinking. Again, those tools are examined from the liberal arts point of view wherein students are taught how to be at home in the realm of ideas (i.e., how to analyze, critique, refute, and persuade with ideas).

Students do a variety of readings and assignments designed to help them explore and master various aspects of the practical art of rhetoric. In the first assignment, the student gathers together an audience of ten friends or family and has them evaluate a speech that focuses on essentials of organization.  The second assignment is a speech that is composed, practiced, refined, and then submitted.  This exercise in refining one’s thought and expression is a valuable exercise in speech composition.  The core of the course involves a series of linked speeches in which students first analyze, then persuade about, a contemporary controversial topic of their choosing. The analytical “speech” is submitted in the form of a research paper; the persuasive speech is delivered before a live audience and submitted in DVD format.  Finally, students are required to watch and analyze a great speech. The assignments are supported by study in the principles of rhetoric, syllogistic logic (via online tutorial), dialectic, and common material fallacies.  Through close study of Dr. Tallmon’s Rhetoric Ring (which includes discussions of the works of Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Sir Francis Bacon, and Longinus’ “On the Sublime”), other online resources, numerous discussion threads, and classwide chat sessions, students will learn to think deeply, cultivate eloquence, and engage in the realm of ideas with confidence.

This course will include mandatory real-time chat sessions. The instructor will establish times when students must be online and participating in these class activities.