Practical rhetoric

Collection of practical exercises on the subject "Rhetoric"

Task 1.
Give definitions to the concepts of language, speech, culture, culture of speech. What is the relationship between these concepts?

Task 2.
Read an excerpt from Cicero's On the Orator.
“Why are there so few outstanding speakers? I have repeatedly looked closely at people with extraordinary and gifted extraordinary abilities, and this led me to the following question: why among all the sciences and arts, eloquence has put forward the least remarkable representatives? In fact, no matter which direction you turn your attention and thoughts, you will see a lot of people who have distinguished themselves in any branch of knowledge, and knowledge is not small, but one might say the most important. If we judge famous people from the point of view of the usefulness or greatness of their deeds, then who does not put, for example, a commander above an orator: and yet everyone will agree that in one of our states we can indicate the most excellent military leaders, almost innumerable, but outstanding orators - barely a few people ...
Difficulty in eloquence. But this is explained by the fact that eloquence is something that is given more difficult than it seems, and is born from a lot of knowledge and efforts ... "
Answer the questions:
Are there really few outstanding speakers in our time?
Can you give us an example of an eloquent person?
What person do you think can be considered eloquent?

Task 3.
Prepare material about one of the outstanding Russian speakers: M.M. Speransky, F. Plevako, I.A. Ilyina and others.
You can use the book: Adamov E.A. Outstanding Russian speakers. M., 1963.
Task 4.
Read an excerpt from Plato's dialogue "Phaedrus", in which Socrates specifically speaks about two "directions" of human thought: from the particular (kind) to the general (kind), and about the opposite - from the general (kind) to the particular (kind)
"Socrates. We have argued that love is a kind of frenzy. Is not it?
Phaedrus. Yes.
Socrates. And there are two types of frenzy: one is a consequence of human diseases, the other occurs when the gods divert us from everything that is usually accepted.
Phaedrus. Of course.
Socrates. We divided the divine frenzy emanating from the four gods into four types: we elevated inspired divination to Apollo, initiation into the sacraments - to Dionysus, creative frenzy - to the Muses, and the fourth kind - to Aphrodite and Eros. We argued that the love frenzy of everyone is better ... Adding a not so unconvincing reasoning, we with due reverence ... glorified ... the lord of Eros ... "(Fragment from Plato's dialogue" Phaedrus ").
Highlight Socrates' definition of love. How does he prove his thesis? What structure-semantic model was used by the philosopher?

Task 5.
Read the following definitions about the same subject matter. What, in your opinion, is their singularity? Name the types of these definitions.

Mathematics is the study of the relationship between formulas devoid of any content.
David Hilbert
Mathematics is the only perfect way to lead yourself by the nose.
Albert Einstein

Pure mathematics is a subject where we don't know what we are talking about and we don't know if what we are saying is true.
Bertrand Russell
Mathematics is the science of ingenious operations performed according to specially developed rules on specially invented concepts. It is clear that a particularly important role in this is assigned to inventing new concepts. The stock of interesting theorems in mathematics would quickly be exhausted if they had to be formulated only with the help of the concepts contained in the axioms.

Eugene Paul Wigner

Explanation: At the same time, the mathematicians from the listed authors of the aphorisms are the Englishman Bertrand Russell (who is also a philosopher, logician, sociologist, public figure) and the German David Hilbert. Albert Einstein and Eugene Paul Wigner are physicists.
Task 6.
Analyze the text of I. Brodsky's speech to the graduates of Darmouth