A frivolous argument or inflated claim is often dismissed with the reply, "That's just rhetoric!" But as Scott Crider explains in The Office of Assertion, the classical tradition of rhetoric is both a productive and a liberal art. The ability to employ rhetoric successfully can enable the student, as an effective communicator, to reflect qualities of soul through argument. In that sense, rhetoric is much more than a technical skill. Crider addresses the intelligent university student with respect and humor. This short but serious book is informed by both the ancient rhetorical tradition and recent discoveries concerning the writing process. Though practical, it is not simply a "how-to" manual; though philosophical, it never loses sight of writing itself. Crider combines practical guidance about how to improve an academic essay with reflection on the final purposes --educational, political, and philosophical--of such improvement.
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“Mr. Crider’s Office of Assertion is the best guide to the writing of essays that I have ever seen, in many years of college and university teaching at Columbia and Dartmouth. It is designed for good students at either of those levels. It goes beyond the essential preliminaries to the elements that produce a genuinely good writer, and, far from being dogmatic, it is exploratory and immensely practical.”— Jeffrey Hart, Professor of English Emeritus at Dartmouth College and author of Smiling Through the Cultural Catastrophe: Toward the Revival of Higher Education
“Scott Crider has done what I thought impossible: he has found the strong elements of current composition theory and folded them into crisp, cogent account of traditional rhetoric. The result is a brief, lucid, yet thorough introduction to rhetoric for students, as well as a handy refresher for their professors.”— R.V. Young, Professor of English, North Carolina State University
“Scott Crider has done what I thought impossible: he has found the strong elements of current composition theory and folded them into crisp, cogent account of traditional rhetoric. The result is a brief, lucid, yet thorough introduction to rhetoric for students, as well as a handy refresher for their professors.”— R.V. Young, Professor of English, North Carolina State University
“In The Office of Assertion: the Art of Rhetoric Scott Crider has written a brief, elegant text on a topic all too often treated esoterically. He adjures readers, in a reference to Wendell Berry, to ‘stand by’ their words, proceeding to demonstrate the way in which clarity and conviction, logos and lexis, can be welded together in ‘soul-leading.’ The process makes of rhetoric a liberal art as well as a formidable instrument of persuasion. Particularly helpful is his chapter on revision, in which he makes clear that style is no mere decoration but a final result of both insight and labor. Though primarily intended for college students charged with creating that ‘small universe’ of the academic essay, The Office of Assertion becomes in the end a guide to truthful utterance on all levels, with skill in language leading to fuller participation in culture and a nobler concept of the human.”—Louise Cowan, Professor of English, University of Dallas, co-author of Invitation to the Classics
About the Author
Author Bio: Scott F. Crider is Associate Professor of English at the University of Dallas, where he teaches courses in advanced composition and classical rhetoric. He has written extensively on Shakespeare and the English renaissance and is at work on a volume titled With What Persuasion: An Essay on Shakespeare and the Ethics of Rhetoric.
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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Use the best tool for the job--this is the best tool.,
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This review is from: Office Of Assertion: An Art Of Rhetoric For Academic Essay (Paperback)
There are lots of books on writing, but Scott Crider wrote a book aimed to help college students understand why they write (to learn, explore, and persuade) and how they should write.He follows Aristotle's definition of rhetoric as "the faculty of discovering the possible means of persuasion ..." (5), and then suggests how to "discover" arguments, how to organize a paper (he advocates replacing the "5-paragraph-essay" with the six-part (not paragraph) "Classical Oration"), how to use language to say what you mean ("Style"), and how to evaluate and rework (and rework and ...) what you have written, returning at the end to his opening point that "rhetoric moves an audience" and good rhetoric moves an audience--as it has already moved the rhetor--toward that which is true. This is a gem of a book, not a word, sentence, or paragraph out of place, and every facet cut to lighten the student's way.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Undergraduate Tool!,
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This review is from: Office Of Assertion: An Art Of Rhetoric For Academic Essay (Paperback)
A fine little text on rhetoric. It is a must read for all undergraduates before they write their first academic essay. Students are introduced to the basic meaning and understanding of rhetoric beyond its misuse in today's media.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Very Useful Book,
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This review is from: Office Of Assertion: An Art Of Rhetoric For Academic Essay (Paperback)
This little book will prove a classic. It shapes Rhetoric into a most useful tool for facing down the academic essay. Clear and spare, it's a keeper.
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First Sentence:
[1.1] "Rhetoric" is a term of abuse, of course: Immediately after someone has distorted the truth during an interview on television, for example, the journalist will comment, "We know that was just rhetoric." Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
immanent design, public individuality, rhetorical community, subordinate conjunctions, academic essay, poor leader, rhetorical situation Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Classical Oration, Middle Style, Five-Paragraph Essay, Homer's Iliad, Richard Weaver, The Ethics of Rhetoric, Nicomachean Ethics New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
[1.1] "Rhetoric" is a term of abuse, of course: Immediately after someone has distorted the truth during an interview on television, for example, the journalist will comment, "We know that was just rhetoric." Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
immanent design, public individuality, rhetorical community, subordinate conjunctions, academic essay, poor leader, rhetorical situation Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Classical Oration, Middle Style, Five-Paragraph Essay, Homer's Iliad, Richard Weaver, The Ethics of Rhetoric, Nicomachean Ethics New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 46
books:
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cites this book:
- The Ethics of Rhetoric by Richard M. Weaver on 5 pages
- The Nicomachean Ethics (Oxford World's Classics) by Aristotle on 4 pages
- The Origin Of Species: 150th Anniversary Edition by Charles Darwin on page 21, page 22, and Back Matter
- On the Origin of Species (Penguin Classics) by Charles Darwin on page 21, page 22, and Back Matter
- The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin on page 21, page 22, and Back Matter
See all 46 books this book cites
- Wisdom and Eloquence: A Christian Paradigm for Classical Learning by Robert Littlejohn in Back Matter
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