Teaching the enthymeme: On becoming a critical-rhetorical consumer of verbal and visual arguments

Abstract

In this chapter we consider the enthymeme: first of all, what it entails, and secondly, how to best teach it in a lecture format in order to help people become critical, rhetorical consumers of both verbal and visual enthymematic arguments. In the section of what enthymemes entail, we systematically proceed through a range of argument-related phenomena. The first of these is the theoretical basics of the enthymeme and its connections to formal logic and in particular the syllogism. Next, we consider the rhetorical praxis of the enthymeme, including discussions on its relations to persuasion and argumentation theories. Thereafter, we discuss the multimodality of the enthymeme with examples from digital and social media, looking at advertisements and memes. We then move on to the importance of the use of enthymemes in storytelling. Lastly, we consider how enthymemes can still work in a silent world. Taking an umbrella view, we then consider why it is that enthymemes work so well in persuasive situations. Here, we especially focus on the role of the recipient and how he/she can become willingly involved in his/her own (self)-persuasion. In the final section of this chapter, we produce a pedagogical proposal, drawing on all the previous sections as to how the enthymeme might best be taught, and why. We adhere to the philosophy that knowing what enthymemes are, how they work, and also that they are around us every moment of the day, in both verbal and visual modes, can help to equip us with the tools that we will need to become a productive critically thinking member of society. In rhetorical citizenship terms, it is our goal to help people become critical, rhetorical consumers of both verbal and visual enthymematic arguments. This is important, not merely for its own good, but for the greater good of our discursive society.