Rhetorical devices in Imam Hassan’s speech

Abstract EN

Religion is established on persuasion and not on violence or force and rhetoric is the core of persuasion.

To trace back the relation between persuasion and rhetoric, it has been assigned that the answer may be located if the word 'rhetoric' is classified and applied according to the five methods based on both contemporary and classical research.

The five methods classify the scope of rhetoric accordingly: 1.

Rhetoric as an example of speech-making or oratory.

2.

Rhetoric as a persuasive style.

3.

Rhetoric as an instrumental function of language use.

4.

Rhetoric as an educational program that effects the skill of the rhetoric man.

5.

Rhetoric as a notion about human communication (Worthington, 2007:6).

Arendt (1958:26-7) asserts that the study of persuasion is originated through the study of rhetoric.

He adds that Greeks were the headmost to support the significance of rhetoric, persuasion, oration, and communication for the similar order and working of deliberative democracy within and among the Greek city-states.

The power of persuasion was understood as critical to the revival (i.e.

human happiness and the highest end of human life, good life) of all people living within democracy, on account of its power to motivate free interchange of views and inverse arguments within the political field, which would ensure access at a political assent on the ground of free choice and persuasion, rather than through violence and the civil conflict.

The political assent means that everything was settled through persuasion and words not through violence and force (Arendt, 1958:26-7).

So, it can be concluded that the religious orator who demands to be persuasive should be armed with rhetoric and particularly with the rhetorical devices that make his words so divine that the hearer can grasp them with acceptance.

Accordingly, this study has set itself the task of answering the next questions: 1.

What are the main rhetorical devices utilized by Imam Hassan's speech? 2.

What are the functions of rhetorical devices in his speech? 3.

What are the purposes behind using specific devices more than others in that speech?