Culture & Arts Chapter, in Qatar University (QU) Alumni Association, organize a cultural webinar entitled: “The Rhetorical Empowerment of Audiences”, presented by Dr. Emad Abdul-Latif, Professor of Rhetoric and Discourse Analysis at College of Arts and Sciences – QU.
The webinar was moderated by Kholeh Mortaza Mortazawi, President of Culture & Arts Chapter. The webinar seeks to provide a variety of examples of audience empowerment through rhetoric in various communication contexts and historical times. It also offers strategies for teaching public rhetoric abilities in schools and universities, with the goal of equipping students with the skills they need to become rhetorical audiences.
The purpose of the lecture is to provide answers to the following questions: Is rhetorical description limited to speeches and speakers, or can it also be used to the audience? What features distinguish a rhetorical audience? What does it mean to have a rhetorical audience? What is the process through which the audience becomes rhetorical?
Commenting on the webinar, Amna Abdulkarim, Vice President of Culture & Arts Chapter- QU Alumni Association said, “We chose this topic “The Rhetorical Empowerment of Audiences” because it is a knowledge field that was developed by the recent studies of Dr. Emad Abdul-Latif, one of Qatar University’s leading faculty members in this field, and it is a science that studies the relationship between discourse construction and performance on the one hand, and the responses of the audience on the other.”
“With the goal of enabling the public to produce eloquent responses, through which it can detect forms of speech abuse such as racism, hatred, manipulation, discrimination, oppression, and subjugation, and resisting these abuses through eloquent responses that achieve the audience’s communication goals, and pushing speakers – individuals or institutions – to monitor their speeches, rationalize them, and make them more righteous, noble, humane in order to train the audience to eloquent responses,” Amna added.
For his part, Dr. Emad Abdul-Latif, said: “In order for the public to become eloquent, they must have knowledge and practice differentiating between manipulative speech intended at controlling and managing it, and a liberated discourse aimed at attaining free communication, employing misleading, falsification, and deception as tools. This understanding allows one to identify biases, exaggerations, fallacies, reality paradoxes, and internal contradictions in the speech, as well as the functions it aims to perform. We call a speech or a speaker “eloquent” if it is beautiful, convincing, and influential, and we call a person “eloquent” if he or she is good at saying or writing beautiful, persuasive, and influential speeches. How can somebody be eloquent if he can only make limited replies like interrupting, displaying admiration or disapproval by shouting or clapping, or asking a question or making other answers if the speech is delivered orally”.
“The ability to accomplish the purpose of oral or written communication is defined as rhetoric. Describing the audience as eloquent is based on the notion of rhetoric as the ability to fulfill the purpose of oral or written communication. An eloquent speaker is one who, by his rhetorical ability, is able to achieve his communication goal, whether it be by constructing powerful arguments and evidence, phrasing them clearly and attractively, or performing them in a way that is pleasing to the audience. According to this definition of rhetoric, an audience can be eloquent if it can achieve its communication goals by creating effective eloquent replies that allow it to advance its goals, by avoiding deceptive discourses and defending honest and noble discourses,” Dr. Abdul-Latif added.
Source: QATAR UNIVERSITY