ABSTRACT
The classical model, as presented, outlines the basic resources of message construction we call the canons of rhetoric: style, arrangement, delivery, memory, and invention. These basic principles of operation are complex and interrelated. It is important that, as a message analyst, you do not limit your analysis to the few concepts we presented in the model.
Further, the nature of everyday discourse, be it in courts, legislatures, conference rooms, congregations, or kitchens, is decidedly informal yet it merits critical attention. Stephen Toulmin and Chaim Perelman have added substantially to the classical model, as we explain in this chapter. In the next chapter, we focus specifically on logic as a part of invention, and we examine in detail the nature of inductive arguments using contemporary developments of classical understandings of rhetoric.
We show how the classical model develops analysis through an example analysis of Barack Obama’s speech, “A More Perfect Union.”
