Elocutio - Citizendia

Part of a series of articles on Rhetoric
The five canons: Inventio Dispositio Elocutio Memoria Pronuntiatio

Elocutio is the term for the mastery of stylistic elements in Western classical rhetoric and comes from the Latin loqui, "to speak". Rhetoric has had many definitions no simple definition can do it justice Inventio is the system or method used for the discovery of arguments in Western Rhetoric and comes from the Latin word meaning "invention" or Dispositio is the system used for the organization of arguments in Western classical Rhetoric. Memoria was the term for aspects involving memory in Western classical Rhetoric. Pronuntiatio was the discipline of delivering speeches in Western classical Rhetoric. Rhetoric has had many definitions no simple definition can do it justice Latin ( lingua Latīna, laˈtiːna is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Although today we associate the word elocution more with eloquent speaking, for the classical rhetorician it connoted "style".

It is the third of the five canons of classical rhetoric (the others being inventio, dispositio, memoria, and pronuntiatio) that concern the crafting and delivery of speeches and writing. Inventio is the system or method used for the discovery of arguments in Western Rhetoric and comes from the Latin word meaning "invention" or Dispositio is the system used for the organization of arguments in Western classical Rhetoric. Memoria was the term for aspects involving memory in Western classical Rhetoric. Pronuntiatio was the discipline of delivering speeches in Western classical Rhetoric. Beginning in the Renaissance, writers increasingly emphasized the stylistic aspects of rhetoric over the other divisions of rhetoric. The Renaissance (from French Renaissance, meaning "rebirth" Italian: Rinascimento, from re- "again" and nascere

An orator or writer had a number of things to decide in developing a style for a particular discourse. First, there was the level of style; plain (attenuata or subtile), middle (mediocris or robusta), or high (florida or gravis). Writers were instructed to match the basic style to their subject matter and their audience. For instance, Quintilian in his Institutio Oratoria deemed the plain style suitable for instruction, the middle for moving oration, and the high for charming discourse. Marcus Fabius Quintilianus (ca 35 – ca 100 was a Roman Rhetorician from Hispania, widely referred to in medieval schools of rhetoric and Today, we associate elocution and rhetoric with the last of these styles, but for rhetoricians, each style was useful in rhetoric.

The ancient authors agreed that the four ingredients necessary in order to achieve good style included correctness, clearness, appropriateness, and ornament.

Sometimes translated as “purity”, correctness meant that rhetors should use words that were current and should adhere to the grammatical rules of whatever language they wrote. Correctness rules are standards of grammar and usage drawn from traditional grammar. In regard to clarity, most ancient teachers felt that clarity meant that rhetors should use words in their ordinary or everyday senses. The object of clarity was to allow meaning to “shine through”, like light through a window.

Appropriateness probably derives from the Greek rhetorical notion to prepon, meaning to say or do whatever is fitting in a given situation. Ancient teachers taught that close attention to kairos will help to determine the appropriate style.

The last and most important of the excellences of style is ornament, which is defined as extraordinary or unusual use of language. Ornamentation was divided into three broad categories: figures of speech, figures of thought, and tropes. Figures of speech are any artful patterning or arrangement of language. Figures of thought are artful presentations of ideas, feelings, concepts; figures of thought that depart from the ordinary patterns of argument. Tropes are any artful substitution of one term for another.

A great amount of attention was paid to figures of speech, which were classified into various types and sub-types. A figure of speech, sometimes One Renaissance writer, Henry Peacham, enumerated 184 different figures of speech, although it could be argued that this was a manifestation of the increasing over-emphasis on style that began in the Renaissance. Henry Peacham is the name shared by two English Renaissance writers who were father and son

Also important to elocutio were subjects we would generally regard as grammatical: the proper use of punctuation and conjunctions; the desirable order of words in a sentence (unlike English, many languages are not as dependent on word order to establish relationships between words, and so choices of word order may revolve more around form than function); and the length of sentences.

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