Cicero's Five Canon Of Rhetoric

BA in English and Communications
Freshman English 2
Term Paper
Final for grading The importance of the art of rhetoric

The art of rhetoric was very important starting from times of a great orator Cicero and as the history is filled with good or bad orators even today, we can assume that it continues to be one of the trickiest things to the present day that needs attention and hard work in order to succeed as a speaker or leader. The ability to perform as a good orator or a leader that will have constant followers requires knowing and using the five canons of Cicero that I am going to present in this paper by comparing different successful or bad speakers of our history using the
The first canon is called inventio, which means invention, and it claims that the speaker should make an argument and only then start developing it and supporting with valid evidence in order to concern the audience. Secondly, there comes the canon of dispositio, which means arrangement that represents the process of structuring the whole speech in right order so the audience will get the idea of argument correctly. After that goes the third canon, which in fact differs from others and depends on the speaker, but it is the one that defines that person as a leader who has its own style. As you have assumed it is about style and it is called elocution, which correspond to the idea of choosing a proper way of representing things
History tells that Luther King succeeded because of his speech. When we analyze the text, we can see that he clearly stated his argument and constructed his address in a way that the message was delivered right, because he repeated the line “I Have a Dream” many times by pointing out his wish that should become true. Thus, we can see that Luther king follows Cicero’s first two rules of the processes of making an argument and arranging it in the text in a right way. Then, if we watch the videos of his speech, we will notice how perfectly he uses the rest of Cicero’s rules. Mr. King had a nice style of presenting his ideas, making his “I” to “We” by that showing that he is the ordinary one from the crowd. He addresses with confidence, with loud but still calm voice by using only the notes and mainly looking to eyes of crowd, by showing gestures that seems so familiar to people. It is very important to watch the video and focus on that details that indeed were the ones described in Cicero’s influential work. That is why Luther King is considered to be not only a good leader, but also a perfect orator. Moreover, he was not an exception because now it is time to present how an Afro-American woman used Cicero’s memoria and