Thought and diction

Having treated plot and character, Aristotle turns to thought — the third of the six parts. Thought covers everything the characters say in argument, proof, disproof, the arousal of emotions, and the enlargement or minimisation of things. As a faculty, it belongs to the art of rhetoric; the Rhetoric addresses it more fully. For the purposes of the Poetics, thought is present wherever a character makes a speech that aims at a specific argumentative or emotional effect in a given dramatic situation.

Diction — the fourth part — is the expression of meaning in words, and its investigation belongs specifically to the art of poetry. Diction is the same in verse and prose as far as its essence is concerned; the distinction between prose and verse is a difference of medium, not a difference in what diction fundamentally is. The analysis of diction follows in chapters 20-22, beginning with the elements of language itself.