Gravitas

Chapter 7A Modern World

Of Aristotle's five canons of rhetoric, introduced in Chapter 1, we have so far only explored delivery in detail. In this chapter, we turn to the remaining four canons — invention, arrangement, memory and style — to explore how these important elements of communication work in our modern world, and how they contribute to gravitas.

Ask yourself, where have you been offered a course in the skills of rhetoric? Many of the programmes available, at least in Australia, exist in the schools of journalism and focus on the court or political system. And yet the advice of the ancient Greeks and Romans is no less relevant to us all today … and relevant to all people who need to communicate better.

Yes, we need some adjustment to account for modern thinking. But the ancients' way of viewing communication, with their focus on delivery (covered in Chapters 3, 4 and 5), the canons of invention, arrangement, memory and style, as well as persuasive communication that exists outside of spoken language itself (known as non-discursive rhetoric), forms a fabulous basis for our own communication. And though the biggest leap in better communications will come from delivery, these other elements form part of the backbone of what we need to do in our modern area to achieve the gravitas we're striving for. I'd like to show you how.

Invention

It is from these and other authors worthy of our study that we must draw our stock of words, the variety of our figures and our methods ...