Vices of Language.
The only test for the arts of rhetoric is effectiveness, not virtue: when a rhetorical pitch calls attention to itself as rhetorical, it does not, pace Aristotle (Rhetoric, III, 1404b), or Longinus (On the Sublime, XVIII), necessarily lose its effectiveness. It simply moves over into another, more self-conscious kind of appeal, one where the rules of the game are different.
A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms, Second Edition, Richard A. Lanham, 1991
The only test for the arts of rhetoric is effectiveness, not virtue: when a rhetorical pitch calls attention to itself as rhetorical, it does not, pace Aristotle (Rhetoric, III, 1404b), or Longinus (On the Sublime, XVIII), necessarily lose its effectiveness. It simply moves over into another, more self-conscious kind of appeal, one where the rules of the game are different.
A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms, Second Edition, Richard A. Lanham, 1991
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