GIFTS: Dueling Rhetors: Teaching Aristotle, Cicero, and Burke Through Debate Tournaments

• In Event: GIFTS: Great Ideas for Teaching Students

Abstract

This activity use a debate-style tournament to teach students how Aristotle's artistic proofs, Cicero's canons of rhetoric and Burke's pentad complement each other. In small groups, students analyze various texts including speeches and commercials and are then asked to debate, from the perspective of their assigned rhetor, why the proofs, canons, or pentad are the best rhetorical constructs with which to analyze a text. Activity can be repeated using different types of texts to create a small tournament depending on class size and time constraints. A few variations on the activity are included in the paper.

Author

• Colleen Arendt, Fairfield U