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A witty, elegant enquiry into the art of rhetoric which shows it's nothing to be afraid of, in fact it's everywhere! In this highly entertaining book, Leith examines the development of rhetoric from its Attic origins, telling the story of some of its heroes and villains along the way: Cicero, Erasmus, Hitler, Obama, Gyles Brandreth. Will leave it to you to decide which camp they each fall into.
Synopsis
Rhetoric is what gives words power. It's nothing to be afraid of. It isn't the exclusive preserve of politicians: it's everywhere, from your argument with the insurance company to your plea to the waitress for a table near the window. This book examines how people have taught, practiced and thought about rhetoric from its Attic origins onwards.
Book Details
Publisher:
PROFILE BOOKS
Publication Date:
05-Jul-2012
ISBN:
9781846683169
Observer review
You Talkin' to Me? by Sam Leith review
Christopher Bray the observer Sat 21 July 2012
At the end of his bestseller Literary Theory, the Marxist critic Terry Eagleton called for a back-to-basics approach to Eng lit teaching. What we needed, he said, was not some newfangled hybrid of Freudianism and formalism or feminism and phenomenology but a return to the study of rhetoric of how "discourses are constructed in order to achieve certain effects". Nearly 30 years on, here comes Sam Leith's You Talkin' To Me?, an admirably slim volume that defines and analyses the craft of the great orators.
Leith's first task is to convince you that rhetoric is more than just the art of phoney baloney. The cover references such lingual luminaries as Boris Johnson and "Tricky Dicky" Nixon remind you of how often we use the word rhetoric in conjunction with the word "empty", but don't forget Churchill, says Leith. He was one of the 20th century's great rhetoricians and there are those who believe that without the power of his oratory, our forebears might have been a lot more ready to let Hitler wreak his wreck.
I'm one of them, though I still think it's a shame that Leith's analysis of Hitler's own speechifying isn't as detailed as his discussion of Churchill. Amusing though it is to link the great dictator's hysterical guff about blood and soil with J-Lo begging her fans not to "be fooled by the rocks that I got/I'm still Jenny from the block", Leith never quite acknowledges the people-pleasing potency of Adolf's afflatus. (That's me using alliteration, by the way, one of many technical terms defined in Leith's marvellous glossary.)
Despite the fun I had reading it, I'm not sure who or what this book is for. Though it will help you understand what makes for a successful speech, it isn't really a primer in oratory. (Show me a best man who's worried about whether his speech has the requisite number of anapests and zeugmas and I'll show you someone unlikely to wow his audience.)
The truth is that unlike punctuation, which Lynne Truss made a small fortune out of with Eats Shoots & Leaves, or Latin, which Harry Mount did equally well from with Amo, Amas, Amat, rhetoric isn't something many people regret not having worked at in school. And anyway, is working at it really going to improve your rhetoric? While the rules of punctuation and Latin can be learned by rote, rhetoric is rather less concrete. A talent for crafting finely balanced, rhythmic sentences is just that a talent. And talent can't be taught.
