Definition:
The parts of a speech or, more broadly, the structure of a text. One of the five traditional canons or subdivisions of classical rhetorical training. In classical rhetoric, students were taught the "parts" of an oration. Though scholars did not always agree on the number of parts, Cicero and Quintilian identified these six: the exordium, the narrative (or narratio), the partition (or division), the confirmation, the refutation, and the peroration. See also: organization.
Examples and Observations:
- "Aristotle states that . . . the very nature of rhetoric requires at least four components: an exordium, or introduction (prooimion), an advanced thesis (prothesis), proofs (pisteis), and a conclusion (epilogos)."
(Richard Leo Enos, "Traditional Arrangement," in Encyclopedia of Rhetoric, 2001) - In A Rhetoric of Motives (1950), Kenneth Burke summarized the classical position on arrangement as "rhetorical form in the large" involving the following: "a progression of steps that begins with an exordium designed to secure the goodwill of one's audience, next states one's position, then points up the nature of the dispute, then builds up one's own case at length, then refutes the claims of the adversary, and in a final peroration expands and reinforces all points in one's favor while seeking to discredit whatever had favored the adversary."
- "Modern mass media . . . present special complications to the study of arrangement because the sequencing of information and arguments, the order in which certain appeals reach an audience, is very difficult to predict . . .. Saturation and sheer quantity of exposure to a 'message' given in single bursts may count for more than the interrelationships of parts of a single message achieved by its carefully crafted arrangement."
(Jeanne Fahnestock, "Modern Arrangement," in Encyclopedia of Rhetoric, 2001)
Pronunciation: ah-RANGE-ment
Also Known As: dispositio, taxis, organization
