Truth changes its shape and colour in the manner in which it is delivered, in the way it is presented, and by the form of its narrative. Truth ultimately becomes a question of language, an issue of story. The teller of the story, the speaker and his or her audience affect the truth of the story and how this truth is perceived and understood. As Ursula K. Le Guin recognizes, relating the truth is not a simple matter of the solidity or coherency of the facts that it comprises. The language used, the style of language, its form and the presentation all affect truth. The intent is also important – the why of the narrative: is this truth, this information, this story being related to inform the audience? Is it being told to allow the storyteller to meditate and reflect? Is the story being told to persuade, to advance an argument, either explicitly or implicitly? What difference does the subject of the story make to the speaker, to the audience? Or in other words, since I have just described the elements of the Aristotelian triad, in what ways is the story rhetorical?

Ursula K. Le Guin argues, and here she echoes Kenneth Burke, that ‘all fiction has ethical, political, and social weight’. Fiction, or story, then, becomes argument, and thus is rhetorical. Rhetoric, to use Aristotle's definition, is the art of persuasion. More precisely, rhetoric is the ‘instrumental use of language’: it is language with intent, with purpose. According to Kenneth Burke, this purpose is to form attitudes and influence action, and in his all-encompassing definition, literature is symbolic action, and a form of ‘persuasive discourse’.