The Ethos of Rhetoric.

• Author: Rowland, Robert C.
• Position: Book Review

The Ethos of Rhetoric. Edited by Michael J. Hyde. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2004; pp. xxviii + 231. $39.95 cloth.

In The Ethos of Rhetoric, editor Michael Hyde and a number of distinguished scholars use theoretical essays and case studies to inform our understanding of ethos. A strong argument can be made that a sustained examination of ethos is in order. Over the past twenty-five years, critics have focused in great detail on the strengths and especially the weaknesses of rational forms of rhetoric. Considerable work also has investigated the various means of producing an emotional response in an audience. Related to the consideration of logos and pathos, Walter Fisher and a host of others have focused on the way that narrative forms serve argumentative functions and work as public moral reasoning. Given these developments, it would be easy to argue that the third Aristotelian mode of proof, ethos, has been given short shrift and deserves reconsideration.

Hyde and the other authors, however, take a different perspective. With few exceptions, rather than focusing on ethos as it relates to either classical or contemporary theory, or using case studies to illustrate the concept, a more expansive approach is taken. Hyde develops this approach on the very first page of the introduction, where he argues that "one can understand the phrase 'the ethos of rhetoric' to refer to the way discourse is used to transform space and time into 'dwelling places'.., where people can deliberate about and 'know together'" (xiii). He continues, "Such dwelling places define the grounds, the abodes or habitats, where a person's ethics and moral character take form and develop" (xiii). Citing Aristotle and Heidegger, Hyde argues that ethos is best understood in relation to an audience's "way of being situated or placed in relationship to things and to others" (xviii). In such an approach, the "ethical practice of rhetoric" requires the "construction of a 'dwelling place' (ethos) for collaborative and moral deliberation" (xviii). Here, Hyde foregrounds ethos as a term not only encompassing how a speaker creates credibility and other forms of connection with an audience, but also reflecting on the social knowledge or shared enthymemes for a given audience. There is also an evaluative dimension to this discussion of ethos, especially in the implication that the ethos found in certain types of societies or settings is required for ethical...