I couldn't help but grimace when someone denigrates rhetoric as if it were some shameful thing, like dirty laundry not to be seen in public. Everybody does it quite often, like the store clerk who, when you haggle prices to rock bottom, grimaces and gently tells you, 'Si ma'am naman, o!' ('Oh, ma'am!') rather than calling you cheapskate. Also a rhetor — albeit a combative one — is the attractive woman you accost in the street who shrugs you off with a petulant 'What do you think I am?' instead of berating you with 'You're mistaken if you think I'm a prostitute!'

The beauty about rhetoric is that you don't need a PhD in English or a Baccalaureate in Law to engage in it. It just happens to be a most natural way for people with small or minor grievances to get them off their chests. When a jeepney driver laments, 'Sa araw ang hirap, sa gabi ang sarap' ('Hardship at day, pleasure at night'), he's doing sexual wordplay to relieve the tedium of work for at least a fleeting moment. The associations waiting in ambush behind such rhetorical constructs aren't as sophisticated as those of intellectuals or seasoned politicians, but they could delight speaker and listener just the same.