The Ideas Behind Ideas
Aristotle’s Tips for Persuasive Writing
Some people are gifted with persuasiveness; most of us are not. But no worries – when nature fails, cleverness come in handy!
That’s exactly what Aristotle claimed: back in the Greece of the 4th century BC, he set the standard for effective communication starting from the
simple assumption that the key to persuasion is in the idea.
The word ‘idea’ is the acronym for Inventio, Dispositio, Elocutio and Actio, which for Aristotle were the foundations of rhetoric, or the art of persuasion. The ancient Greek used rhetoric to gain the upper hand over rivals in trials (no lawyers at that time!) and in political debates. Now we can use the same tricks to write effective, engaging and persuasive text.
Inventio means discovery. For every text you need to find out a group of basic arguments that will give strength and credibility to your message. Some of these arguments will be apparent (e.g. scientific truth), others will require some effort to make them apparent to your readers. For instance, you might use deductive or inductive reasoning, exemplify using metaphors and analogy, appeal to horse sense or recall concepts from the common imagery.
Dispositio means arrangement and refers to the logical order of the building blocks you found during your Inventio phase. There isn’t a fixed structure to fit every message or purpose, but remember that you can hit the mark even with a simple introduction -> arguments -> conclusion order.
Elocutio means delivery and has to do with the style of your text. Reading a lot of essays, articles and blogs will help you recognize and learn to exploit at least some of the most common figures of speech. A first step towards oratory mastery could be looking up “rhetorical strategies” in Google!
Actio is action – in other words, presenting your arguments in a public speech. A brilliant actio is one that makes savvy use of gestures, tone of voice, pauses and other forms of body language or non-verbal communication. Not every text is meant to be performed, but pretending to perform what you’ve written in front of an audience may help you check if your writing is really consistent and compelling. For example, do you need to add many non-verbal clues to make it work? If so, then maybe it needs some revision!
Remember: start your writing from an idea!
Laura Averna is a Copywriter – well, being in charge of Marketing Communications she’s supposed to look after a batch of different tasks, but writing is what she has the most fun with. You might find her raving on Twitter
Thanks for the inspiration!
I had no idea that “idea” is an acronym! Very insightful post!
This is a useful little trick to writing a good rhetorical piece. Having nice formulas for writing sometimes is very nice instead of having to come up with things completely on the spot.
However, while I appreciate the ingenuity of presenting ‘idea’ as a way to remember how to present an argument in rhetorical fashion, it should be noted that the word ‘idea’ is not an acronym and came from the Greek word idein, meaning “to see” or “form, pattern.” (As found here: http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/idea?view=uk). Considering the word ‘acronym’ and the practice of its usage wasn’t begun until the 1940s, it’s hard to see that the Greeks would have used it to help define the process of creating effective rhetoric.
Hi, I’m the one who wrote the post!
Just a quick clarification – JB is right, and I apologize for the misunderstanding: the word “idea” as we commonly use is NOT an acronym, what I wanted to say is that the initial letters of the four “steps” for writing an oration, as Aristotle named them, form the word “idea”…
The acronym is just a nice memory trick I found, and I was willing to share it with you – no intention of showing off my erudition! ^_^
Hope everything is clear now – thanks JB for pointing that out!
Hi, I’m the one who wrote the post!
Just a quick clarification – JB is right, and I apologize for the misunderstanding: the word “idea” as we commonly use it is NOT an acronym, what I wanted to say is that the initial letters of the four “steps” for writing an oration, as Aristotle named them, form the word “idea”…
The acronym is just a nice memory trick I found, and I was willing to share it with you – no intention of showing off my erudition! ^_^
Hope everything is clear now – thanks JB for pointing that out!
Hey, Laura. Whether your ‘idea’ conceit was an acronym or not, it provided a good path to organizing. You ‘de man!