epideictic oratory
Speech celebrating values
Epideictic oratory is ceremonial speech meant to praise or blame, to celebrate or condemn.
Unlike persuasive rhetoric aimed at changing minds or legal rhetoric arguing a case, epideictic addresses an audience already in agreement—at funerals, graduations, commemorations, or award ceremonies.
The goal is to amplify shared values and move listeners emotionally: The eulogy was a masterpiece of epideictic oratory.
- AristotleGreek founder of formal logic
- encomiumFormal speech of tribute
- eulogyTribute for the dead
- amplificationIncrease in intensity
- ethosCollective moral character
moral instruction · shared values · collective memory · progymnasmata · tradition · parallelism · pathos · antithesis · invention · anaphora · Cicero · wedding toast · cultural heritage · arrangement · admiration · logos · commemoration · tribute
- rhetoricrhetoric, persuasion, argumentation, debate, public speaking
- Greek oratoryDemosthenes, Antiphon, rhetor, tetralogies, tetralogy
- Roman rhetoricCicero, eloquence, rhetoric, rostra, declamation
- Ancient speechesfuneral oration
epideictic oratorydisputation
Formal argumentative exchange
polemic · invective · cross-examination · interrogation · rebuttal