It can be inferred from the passage that to cast off the rhetoric and still hope to inveigle people _________________.

Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.

Modern linguists concern themselves with many different facets of language, from the physical properties of the sound waves in utterances to the intentions of speakers towards others in conversations and the social contexts in which conversations are embedded. The branches of linguistics are concerned with how languages are structured, how languages are used, and how they change.

Many views have been developed by linguists and philosophers to analyse languages. Those who wanted to develop a scientific analysis of human thought and behavior in the early part of this century adopted the "scientistic" view of language.

Of all the devices for dragooning the human spirit, the least clumsy was to procure its abortion in the womb of language; and those who were driven by the impulse to reduce the specifically human to a mechanical or animal regularity, continued to be increasingly irritated by the nature of the mother tongue and make it their point of attack.

Under the force of this view, it was perhaps inevitable that the art of rhetoric should pass from the status of being regarded as of questionable worth (because although it might be both a source of pleasure and a means to urge people to right action, it might also be a means to distort truth and a source of misguided action) to the status of being wholly condemned. As the “scientist” thinkers believed that people should be regarded only as machines guided by logic, they considered rhetoric to be of low value; for the most obvious truth about rhetoric is that it speaks to the whole person. Some of the rules for the argumentative essay are part of cultural expectations for any kind of discourse or communicative act: a coherent discourse has a beginning (intro, setting up the argument), middle (the argument itself with examples, support of claims, support of prior research, and/or close analysis of material) , and an end (a conclusion that ties up the argument and/or suggests broader implications or wider significance of the "middle".) Rhetoric first addressed the rational side of a person, because persuasive discourse, if honestly conceived, always has a basis in reasoning. Logical argument is the plot, as it were, of any speech or essay that is respect. Fully intended to persuade people. Yet it is a remarkable feature of rhetoric that it transcends the logical argumentative nature and appeals to the parts of our nature that are involved in feeling, desiring, acting, and suffering. It tries to create an analogous situation to achieve it’s ends- by recalling relevant instances of the emotional reactions of people to circumstances-real or fictional- that are similar to our own circumstances.

In Aristotle’s Rhetoric, he argues that the expression of reason is man’s highest attribute, and that all good things can be abused, so rhetoric is no different because there are some who abuse it. He also gives us a great deal comfort in our despair over the continued abuse of rhetoric; he says that the abuse of rhetoric will never be as strong as the right and proper use is.

The same is the case with historical accounts and fables which are always in persuasive discourse: they indicate literally or symbolically how people may react emotionally, with hope or fear, to particular circumstances. A speech attempting to persuade people can achieve little unless it takes into account the aspect of their being related to such hopes and fears.

Rhetoric, then, is addressed to human beings living at particular times and in particular places. From the point of view of rhetoric, we are not merely logical thinking machines, creatures abstracted from time and space. The study of rhetoric should therefore be considered the most humanistic of the humanities, since rhetoric is not directed only to our rational selves. Furthermore, rhetoric is abstract because the basic skills of rhetoric apply across a wide range of situations. Any time you are in a situation that requires speech making, analysis, persuasion, detailed explanations, and so on, you are using rhetorical skills. Rhetoric, therefore, is a widespread ability that comes into play in many other subject areas. A teacher of biology, for instance, uses rhetoric, not in biology itself, but in the teaching and communicating of biology.

Rhetoric is important for it takes into account what the "scientistic" view leaves out. If it is a weakness to harbor feelings, then rhetoric may be thought of as dealing in weakness. But those who reject the idea of rhetoric because they believe it deals in lies and who at the same time hope to move people to action, must either be liars themselves or be very naïve; pure logic has never been a motivating force unless it has been subordinated to human purposes, feelings, and desires, and thereby ceased to be pure logic.

Rhetoric used in the context of poetry produced something called “the flowers of rhetoric.” The flowers of rhetoric were beautiful, interesting, or unique turns of phrase which decorated the poetry of the time. “Flowers of rhetoric” is synonymous with another term that is more familiar to us, i.e., something called “the figures of speech.” We still have the term “a figure of speech” today, but it means much less to us than it did in the Renaissance. Today we use the phrase “a figure of speech” to mean that it was something we didn’t really intend to say. It is a way to excuse an accidentally ill-mannered comment or something that is not quite politically correct. We say that it was just a figure of speech. We also use the term to refer to metaphors, similes, and several other language patterns. This usage, to identify language patterns, is at least accurate, but this still gives us a much diminished view of what figures of speech are. In the Renaissance, there were literally hundreds of language patterns that were considered figures of speech. Any elegant, unusual, or patterned turn of phrase was a figure of speech, and whole books were printed, such as Henry Peacham’s The Garden of Eloquence, listing and cataloguing all the figures of speech and examples of them taken from literature. Learning these patterns and employing them in poetry and letters was fundamental to the education and the culture of the Renaissance. It was a time when people in all educated walks of life were cultured and literary.