Tool three

Enthymeme Analyser

An enthymeme is an argument that persuades by leaving a premise unstated for the audience to supply. This tool helps you find the ones inside a statement you are about to make — or about to accept.

Aristotle called enthymemes the substance of rhetorical persuasion. They work because audiences complete them, and in completing them experience the conclusion as their own reasoning rather than as something asserted at them. That is what makes them powerful and what makes them ethically demanding.

The grey text in each field below shows a real example, worked through: one sentence from the Darzi Review, an NHS policy document, taken apart line by line. Start typing in a field and the example clears, replaced by your own answer. See the full case at the Darzi Review.

The statement

Paste or type the statement

A sentence or short paragraph. Enthymemes are usually compact — a strategy line, a slogan, a paragraph from a board paper.

Take it apart

What conclusion is being advanced?

State it as a single sentence, in your own words.

What must the audience believe for that conclusion to follow?

List every step that is not said. This is the heart of the exercise.

What causal relationship is assumed?

Almost every claim about change asserts that one thing produces another.

What value judgement is implied?

What is being treated as more important than what?

What alternative premise could be supplied instead?

If a different audience completed this differently, what would they supply?

Which audience is expected to complete the argument?

Who has the background assumptions this depends on — and who does not?

Would the claim remain persuasive if every premise were made explicit?

This is the ethical test as well as the rhetorical one.

What evidence would be needed to support it?

And what would count as evidence here at all?

What is the statement inviting the audience to do, feel or believe?

The ethical test

Aristotle separated rhetoric from sophistry on ethical grounds. Leaders advocating change cannot avoid rhetoric any more than they can avoid stories, and they will never make every premise explicit. The distinction is whether the premises smuggled in are ones you would defend openly if challenged, and whether the story closes down alternatives that should stay available.

Status: drafted from the manuscript · author review required · worked example paraphrased, not quoted