LessonsSupplementary Practice 6: Rhetorical Dialogue, Responding to Objections and Choosing the Right ExpressionQuiz

For a difficult rhetorical passage, determine the listener's belief, the contested predication, the grammatical form, and the benefit produced by the chosen expression. Where several devices coexist, identify their distinct scopes: restriction may concern the entire attribution while a circumstantial phrase qualifies an event.

Diagnostic questionEvidence needed
What did the listener believe?Ignorance, hesitation, denial or imagined partnership
Which element is disputed?Occurrence, agent, description or domain
What is the structure?Report, request, circumstance, coordination or ellipsis
What effect results?Emphasis, rebuttal, determination, focus or prevention of misreading

When these questions are underdetermined by the context, do not invent a decisive clue and attribute it to the passage. A sound rhetorical judgment states its evidential limits.

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Capstone: a four-part method of rhetorical judgment

Supplementary Practice 6: Rhetorical Dialogue, Responding to Objections and Choosing the Right Expression

For a difficult rhetorical passage, determine the listener's belief, the contested predication, the grammatical form, and the benefit produced by the chosen expression. Where several devices coexist, identify their distinct scopes: restriction may concern the entire attribution while a circumstantial phrase qualifies an event.

Diagnostic questionEvidence needed
What did the listener believe?Ignorance, hesitation, denial or imagined partnership
Which element is disputed?Occurrence, agent, description or domain
What is the structure?Report, request, circumstance, coordination or ellipsis
What effect results?Emphasis, rebuttal, determination, focus or prevention of misreading

When these questions are underdetermined by the context, do not invent a decisive clue and attribute it to the passage. A sound rhetorical judgment states its evidential limits.