Thomas Wilson

Thomas Wilson, although spending the least time on it, suggested that Pronunciation (or utterance) is one of the 5 parts of rhetoric (or rhetorique). He says, in his strange dialect, "Utteraunce therefore is a framyng of the voyce, counternaunce, and gesture, after a comely manner." Essentially, it is the orators job to pronunciate and communicate with his or her audience.

This becomes important because, like Aristotle, Wilson relied heavily on the triangular approach of ethos, pathos, and logos. Wilson spent a great deal of time talking about logos and it's separation from logic, but this blog post will focus more on the ethos.

Wilson never once uses the term ethos, but it is certainly implied. Wilson uses style and pronunciation as his way of dealing with ethos. An orator or rhetorician will create his ethos, credibility, character, or what have you by how he stylistically argues or persuades. This seems pretty obvious. Shifting to pronunciation, it becames painfully important that they use correct, but not necessarily flowery, utterances. Without correct speech, a rhetor looks uneducated, and more important, not credible.

On flowery language, it is important to understand that using words that disconnect from the audience will actually do the opposite effect than creating credibility. A rhetorician today may try to assert intelligence by using huge, poetic words. However, if the audience fails to connect and fully comprehend this pronunciation, they will be turned off by the speech.

An intelligent person must be able to explain intelligent ideas to unintelligent people in their terms. It's as simple as that. Rhetoric may not have been lost back in the ancient and medieval times, but today it is important to being able to use the pronunciation and utterances that Wilson spoke of in a manner that will help connect with the audience. In it's own way, it is a type of pathos as well. Which is something Wilson avoided in his "The Arte of Rhetorique."