I feel in the last couple of days I have learned a lot about rhetoric. I will always remember the simple definition of rhetoric being described as the “art” or persuasion. I never really knew how deeply involved rhetorical persuasion is and how there are careers out there that scrutinize it’s definition. The video we watched really opened my eyes to the importance of rhetoric and how we use it everyday in our lives. When we have an argument and try to persuade with one another, there are many factors we have to consider in order to have a sound form of persuasion. We derive our form of persuasion with the help of breaking it up from Aristotle’s three categories, ethos, pathos and logos. Ethos is the source’s credibility, which is important because one has to be credible in order to be taken seriously. Logos is the major logic used in the argument that has factual evidence to help support the argument. If you have solid evidence in your argument it will be difficult to counter. Pathos is the last category, which uses emotions and vivid language to persuade. The combination of all three lays a solid foundation for your argument and greatly increases your persuasion to work. Rhetoric is also broken up into who created the message, who the message is given to, and what is that specific purpose of the message. It is important to know who the author is to find if they are credible. It is important to know who the audience is because what good would it do if you are giving a persuasive argument about cigarette smoking and it’s link to lung cancer to the tobacco company itself. Their minds would probably not change so in this case the audience needs to be selected carefully. All three of these build up the important context of the argument, which is the foundation to all arguments and speech. I feel like I have a great grasp on rhetoric and I look at communication a little bit differently now.
I took a rhetoric class in freshman year, but like many classes, I forgot nearly all of its material. The only reason I still recognized the term was becuase politicians were getting a lot of criticism for their "poisonous rhetoric." With what I've now learned, or rather remembered, in this class, I understand what rhetoric is, as opposed to just being familiar with the word. I feel the best way to describe rhetoric is the way one controls language and speech in a manner to effectively spread their message effectively through the many audiences that make up different viewpoints, lifestyles, income levels, etc. When one intends to give a message, there are many different variables that must both be overcome and adapted to in order to effectively spread the message over a wider field of people. For one, the source must exhibit their credibilty. Both in themselves and the message they intend to spread. When the source can identify himself as being both trustworthy and good-intended, people will be more inclined to listen to whatever message he has. Second, the message must include facts and truths in it that would appeal to an audience. If someone tries to sell a bad image, no one will accept it, but if someone sells an image with statistical facts or consumer surveys that promote a better image, people will be more inclined to listen. Finally, the messenger tries to manipulate the message in a way that appeals to the senses. The way a message uses lighting, color, music, etc. is all used as an effective tool to control the intended emotion they want. For example, all those very depressing animal cruelty ads and meant to be depressing. The intended message would be lost if a laugh track was added.
Well, to be honest I have learned everything I know about rhetoric in these last few days. I don’t remember ever having talked about it in any of my previous English classes, although the last one I took was in 2005 so I don’t recall very much from it. However in these last few days I have learned what a big role it plays in our everyday lives. From advertising to the way certain text, and pictures draw our attention to certain aspects and help persuade us to do things. Learning how long Rhetoric has been around and how it is has shaped our world shocked me a lot. From the time of Aristotle until now it amazes me how people use their words and situations to shape our thoughts. From public speakers to certain occupations everybody has to think about how their words or images are going to be perceived and how they want them to be looked at. The people that study Rhetoric could definitely be seen as a great value to people who have to deal with the public on a daily basis. Understanding how people think could potentially give you a big leg up on your competition. I never realized just how big of a role advertisement plays in our life until we started talking about how almost everything is trying to persuade us about something. Now I feel like I am prepared to better understand how the author is trying to convince us and I can break down the situation instead of just seeing it how somebody who doesn’t know anything about rhetoric would see it. Also learning how ethos, logos, and pathos play such a big role was very surprising. I had never thought about persuasion in those kinds of terms but now seeing those I realize that we do think in those terms but we don’t even realize it. Overall I would say I learned a great deal about Rhetoric and how it affects almost everything around us. I feel like now I will be able to better write as well as understand how certain things are going to make people think.
The word ‘rhetoric’ tends to bring groans and sighs throughout your average classroom, no matter how suppressed they might be. My last interaction with the word was winter quarter of last year. I missed out on the Freshman English course and ended up taking it the second quarter of my sophomore year, for better or worse. I attempted to comprehend as much of the concepts as possible, although my professor wasn’t the best English-speaking person, nonetheless teacher (I’ll spare the name). For example, this whole ‘art of persuasion’ idea was never mentioned in that course. In fact, the word ‘persuasion’ never came into play at all, although everything makes a lot more sense with its inclusion. That being said, I feel many students are instantly frustrated with the concept due to a simple lack of understanding. The video we watched in class would have made that Freshman class so much more bearable. I know I learned more about rhetoric in the last two weeks than I did that entire quarter (No…I’m not just saying that either). I had words such as ethos, pathos, and logos and their respective definitions drilled into my head with no frame of reference. I didn’t understand the ‘big picture’, if you will. They all were separate ways of analyzing text, although I didn’t see how they all worked together to form the perfect piece, in whatever form that might be. Realizing that rhetoric can be applied to everyday life and not just selections from a $95 textbook is also comforting in my mind. Looking at advertisements, all sharing the same obvious goal of selling a product, and noticing that rhetorical skills can be useful and critical make the topic not only more interesting, but also, well, noteworthy. I am happy to say I believe I understand at least the basic concept of rhetoric, something I couldn’t very well say even a week ago.
Rhetoric is an interesting topic. I’m currently taking two classes that are basically rhetoric classes. This and coms 342 (communication and persuasion). My freshman speech class also focused heavily on it, and i took a logic class that dove into the study of rhetoric as well, plus a class in High school. As a video production major I'm constantly analyzing visual rhetoric in movies, ads, TV shows, and music videos. I've always gotten ethos, pathos, and logos confused. I think that’s mainly because every class seems to have a different translation from the Greek term. for example logos means could mean, the message the argument, the reasoning, the principal, or any number of words which are all basically the same thing. However usually teachers focus on one “key word” so to speak. for example counting the message as the proper definition since that's what the text book for that class uses, and marking the reasoning incorrect. So occasionally things get lost in translation trying to remember which class wants which definition. This class (eng 384J) has actually helped me keep things straight by breaking it down and not focusing on a single key word. I’m slightly concerned about keeping things straight between this class and my other rhetoric-heavy class, but in the long run I think the curriculum cross over will help re-enforce the material. I find it more difficult to classify something as NOT rhetoric than identifying rhetorical arguments. every statement trying to convince you of something has at least a few parts of rhetoric, so finding something outside that large umbrella can be difficult at best.
Also, I’m not entirely sure if this is the place for questions but where does the term “rhetorical question” come from. I know Aristotle used questions to get his students to reach conclusions themselves, but what does that have to do with not answering a “rhetorical question” Probably a silly question, but I’ve always wondered.
The definition of "rhetoric" surprisingly keeps on changing as a advance further in my studies. At first, rhetoric just meant to write a paper in class; then it expanded too writing a paper in a certain manner depending on your message and audience. Finally it has come to a much more difficult definition of how to persuade a reader with specific words and how to make good, believable arguments. For example, the concepts ethos, pathos, and logos were first taught to me in this class. I think ethos, pathos, and logos are the main concepts of rhetoric. They help you understand how communication happens, which is the definition of rhetoric. The sheet that Dr. Phillips handed out to the class would make a great rubric when writing a paper. This concept of these three strategies hits all the angles of rhetoric. I also learned that rhetoric is all about persuading specific audiences with diction, pictures, and the correct advertising. Another thing that I learned about rhetoric is the importance of pictures and how a picture can literally say a thousand words. I already knew that rhetoric had to do with writing papers and appealing to audiences and making specific arguments; however, I didn’t know that rhetoric is all around us in so many different ways. For example, a billboard with an advertisement on it is considered rhetoric because it is reaching out to a certain audience, supporting an argument, and trying to persuade readers to buy or use the highlighted product. The main concept of rhetoric seems to be all about persuading the reader to think like the writer and understand the writers perspective.
Before this class rhetoric was described as a relatively bland and poorly defined portion of education pertaining to the English language. I now understand that it isn't poorly defined, but simply covers a very broad set of skills which relate to communication. The study of Rhetoric not only covers the language we use but every aspect of communication. The dialect we use, the specific words and phrases, even an accent changes rhetoric. Also, rhetoric does not just pertain to spoken words. It also has a visual aspect as well. The way we dress, our body language, pictures to elaborate and especially our facial expressions also affect how we communicate to other people. It doesn't matter how many nice words you say to a person if, you are yelling at them while scowling at them. A presentation is much more engaging when there is emotion to the presenters voice, or if they gesticulate. If they crack a joke then the person seems less formal and more laid back, making the audience feel closer to them. If the presenter remains behind the podium for the entire talk, stands straight and makes eye contact then he or she appears to be professional. Rhetoric can pertain to any of our senses, and is related to how other people use their senses to identify us and the message we are sending them as well as what they take in while we communicate with them.
The last time I took an English class was my freshman year of college since then I haven’t really thought of anything rhetorical and have put the word on the back burner. I can say almost everything I have learned about rhetoric came from this class. If someone were to ask me what rhetoric means, I would reply with “the art of persuading”. Rhetoric is used in our everyday life in advertising campaigns, politics, political campaigns and more. Though rhetoric is not the most interesting subject to some individuals, it is important to understand its use and how it effects our decisions (to buy minute maid or POM) in our everyday life.
In the last few days, I’ve discovered the art of rhetoric through class and readings. I came into the class equipped with little information about rhetoric, although I’ve used it on a day-to-day basis. The information that I had already attained about rhetoric was based off of a previous class when I learned about Plato and Aristotle. These philosophers had a lot to do with the significance of rhetoric and how we use it today. Rhetoric is most commonly known as a means for public communication in the form of persuasion. However, you cannot merely throw words together and call it rhetoric. There is a structure for rhetoric that involves composition. Once you have a topic or hypothesis, research will ensure an accurate document. Organizing and designing a composition with the use of pictures, graphs, citations, and etc, helps to make an effective piece of rhetoric. The usage of any language can be considered rhetoric. The way we decide to use language is largely determined on the audience or receivers of the context a speaker is intending to present. Although all of these factors are important to get familiar with when learning about rhetoric, the most important concepts to understand are ethos, pathos, and logos. Each of these concepts is considered to be rhetorical strategies when producing an effective form of speech. Ethos centralized on the author’s credibility and largely relies on truth with a capital T. Pathos involves emotions and useful ways of including emotion when trying to persuade. Finally, logos deals with the logistical aspects of an argument. While we often use some of these concepts in our daily conversations, an argument or speech is most effectively used with the combination of each. In conclusion, I have learned about the basics of rhetoric and how it is used. I’m anxious to discover how rhetoric can affect and benefit my future.
What is rhetoric? The last time that I had an English class was winter quarter of the 2007-2008 school year. English is not my strong areas of schooling by all means. The first day we had to write about rhetoric I had barely a half of a page because I did not know what it was. Since then I have learned a few things that I had no idea involved rhetoric, even when I do learn something about rhetoric I put it into the back of my brain also known as what I call “The nothing box”. Since starting this class, everything about the word rhetoric has been new to me. I had no idea that Plato and Aristotle were the first to start studying rhetoric. Thinking about what I have learned I use rhetoric in everyday life without even thinking about it. From class I have learned that rhetoric is used for public persuasion, it is language based on your audience, organized to meet the audience’s needs, it is text/visual/media/oral, it is the way we choose to communicate with others, and everything is rhetorical.
The way I have taken rhetoric personally is that it is the art of persuasion through language. I kind of think that that is a fancy way of saying manipulation, but it is more something with a less negative connotation. For example, when we were discussing it in class, the “manipulative” part was described as “organizing thoughts to meet an audience’s needs”. So it is basically our ability to convince others to move in one direction or the other through language.
There are three things to take into account when examining rhetoric. The first is who is the author (knowing things about the author of a text is a good way to more understand where that author is coming from). The second is audience (know who the intended audience is for a text and the audience for whom you intend to write). The last part is context (where the text was written and distributed will vary based on culture, terminology, physical location, etc.) There are three sub-categories for context which are the following: 1) temporal - where someone is at a specific time; 2) spatial - what are the social, cultural and historical origins; 3) casual - based on social interactions across time and space.
Rhetoric uses ethos, pathos and logos to further develop an argument. Ethos is a way to establish credibility in language. For example, an author may give credentials that enforce why he may be an appropriate candidate to write a medical news article. Inversely, someone may give themselves credentials which enforce that they are not qualified to write such an article. Pathos plays on using emotions to persuade the reader. If it is a light hearted piece, it might have a few jokes in it to make the reader laugh; if it is a darker piece, there would be more strong words and maybe the emotion would be depressing. Lastly, logos is the way the author creates a rational argument. This is the use of things like statistics and facts to persuade others to join the author’s side of the argument. A graph that shows the correlation between how many people own guns and how many children are killed might persuade a gun owner to buy a safe.
That is rhetoric in a vacuum packed bag to me so far. Thanks.
After several days I have learned that the importance rhetoric and its importance within society. While there seems to be a perpetual misconception of the use of rhetoric, people everyday don't seem to realize that it is used in everyday life. Even though people tend to think it is a way to manipulate people they fail to realize that they must make a series of decisions to come up with that point of view. From speech to the written word, we use rhetoric to persuade people of our particular point of view. Depending on whatever our subject is that we are trying to portray we must take into many different components into account. Our audience, which is who is receiving the intended message, the context in which we present our subject, and our purpose. To successfully try to persuade someone to see the subject through your eyes one must master rhetoric. Without the correct framework, rhetoric, in any form would be dubbed inadequate and thus pointless in the pursue to persuade.
I feel in the last couple of days I have learned a lot about rhetoric. I will always remember the simple definition of rhetoric being described as the “art” or persuasion. I never really knew how deeply involved rhetorical persuasion is and how there are careers out there that scrutinize it’s definition.
ReplyDeleteThe video we watched really opened my eyes to the importance of rhetoric and how we use it everyday in our lives. When we have an argument and try to persuade with one another, there are many factors we have to consider in order to have a sound form of persuasion.
We derive our form of persuasion with the help of breaking it up from Aristotle’s three categories, ethos, pathos and logos. Ethos is the source’s credibility, which is important because one has to be credible in order to be taken seriously. Logos is the major logic used in the argument that has factual evidence to help support the argument. If you have solid evidence in your argument it will be difficult to counter. Pathos is the last category, which uses emotions and vivid language to persuade. The combination of all three lays a solid foundation for your argument and greatly increases your persuasion to work.
Rhetoric is also broken up into who created the message, who the message is given to, and what is that specific purpose of the message. It is important to know who the author is to find if they are credible. It is important to know who the audience is because what good would it do if you are giving a persuasive argument about cigarette smoking and it’s link to lung cancer to the tobacco company itself. Their minds would probably not change so in this case the audience needs to be selected carefully. All three of these build up the important context of the argument, which is the foundation to all arguments and speech.
I feel like I have a great grasp on rhetoric and I look at communication a little bit differently now.
I took a rhetoric class in freshman year, but like many classes, I forgot nearly all of its material. The only reason I still recognized the term was becuase politicians were getting a lot of criticism for their "poisonous rhetoric." With what I've now learned, or rather remembered, in this class, I understand what rhetoric is, as opposed to just being familiar with the word.
ReplyDeleteI feel the best way to describe rhetoric is the way one controls language and speech in a manner to effectively spread their message effectively through the many audiences that make up different viewpoints, lifestyles, income levels, etc. When one intends to give a message, there are many different variables that must both be overcome and adapted to in order to effectively spread the message over a wider field of people.
For one, the source must exhibit their credibilty. Both in themselves and the message they intend to spread. When the source can identify himself as being both trustworthy and good-intended, people will be more inclined to listen to whatever message he has.
Second, the message must include facts and truths in it that would appeal to an audience. If someone tries to sell a bad image, no one will accept it, but if someone sells an image with statistical facts or consumer surveys that promote a better image, people will be more inclined to listen.
Finally, the messenger tries to manipulate the message in a way that appeals to the senses. The way a message uses lighting, color, music, etc. is all used as an effective tool to control the intended emotion they want. For example, all those very depressing animal cruelty ads and meant to be depressing. The intended message would be lost if a laugh track was added.
Well, to be honest I have learned everything I know about rhetoric in these last few days. I don’t remember ever having talked about it in any of my previous English classes, although the last one I took was in 2005 so I don’t recall very much from it. However in these last few days I have learned what a big role it plays in our everyday lives. From advertising to the way certain text, and pictures draw our attention to certain aspects and help persuade us to do things.
ReplyDeleteLearning how long Rhetoric has been around and how it is has shaped our world shocked me a lot. From the time of Aristotle until now it amazes me how people use their words and situations to shape our thoughts. From public speakers to certain occupations everybody has to think about how their words or images are going to be perceived and how they want them to be looked at. The people that study Rhetoric could definitely be seen as a great value to people who have to deal with the public on a daily basis. Understanding how people think could potentially give you a big leg up on your competition.
I never realized just how big of a role advertisement plays in our life until we started talking about how almost everything is trying to persuade us about something. Now I feel like I am prepared to better understand how the author is trying to convince us and I can break down the situation instead of just seeing it how somebody who doesn’t know anything about rhetoric would see it. Also learning how ethos, logos, and pathos play such a big role was very surprising. I had never thought about persuasion in those kinds of terms but now seeing those I realize that we do think in those terms but we don’t even realize it.
Overall I would say I learned a great deal about Rhetoric and how it affects almost everything around us. I feel like now I will be able to better write as well as understand how certain things are going to make people think.
The word ‘rhetoric’ tends to bring groans and sighs throughout your average classroom, no matter how suppressed they might be. My last interaction with the word was winter quarter of last year. I missed out on the Freshman English course and ended up taking it the second quarter of my sophomore year, for better or worse. I attempted to comprehend as much of the concepts as possible, although my professor wasn’t the best English-speaking person, nonetheless teacher (I’ll spare the name). For example, this whole ‘art of persuasion’ idea was never mentioned in that course. In fact, the word ‘persuasion’ never came into play at all, although everything makes a lot more sense with its inclusion. That being said, I feel many students are instantly frustrated with the concept due to a simple lack of understanding. The video we watched in class would have made that Freshman class so much more bearable. I know I learned more about rhetoric in the last two weeks than I did that entire quarter (No…I’m not just saying that either). I had words such as ethos, pathos, and logos and their respective definitions drilled into my head with no frame of reference. I didn’t understand the ‘big picture’, if you will. They all were separate ways of analyzing text, although I didn’t see how they all worked together to form the perfect piece, in whatever form that might be.
ReplyDeleteRealizing that rhetoric can be applied to everyday life and not just selections from a $95 textbook is also comforting in my mind. Looking at advertisements, all sharing the same obvious goal of selling a product, and noticing that rhetorical skills can be useful and critical make the topic not only more interesting, but also, well, noteworthy. I am happy to say I believe I understand at least the basic concept of rhetoric, something I couldn’t very well say even a week ago.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteRhetoric is an interesting topic. I’m currently taking two classes that are basically rhetoric classes. This and coms 342 (communication and persuasion). My freshman speech class also focused heavily on it, and i took a logic class that dove into the study of rhetoric as well, plus a class in High school. As a video production major I'm constantly analyzing visual rhetoric in movies, ads, TV shows, and music videos. I've always gotten ethos, pathos, and logos confused. I think that’s mainly because every class seems to have a different translation from the Greek term. for example logos means could mean, the message the argument, the reasoning, the principal, or any number of words which are all basically the same thing. However usually teachers focus on one “key word” so to speak. for example counting the message as the proper definition since that's what the text book for that class uses, and marking the reasoning incorrect. So occasionally things get lost in translation trying to remember which class wants which definition. This class (eng 384J) has actually helped me keep things straight by breaking it down and not focusing on a single key word. I’m slightly concerned about keeping things straight between this class and my other rhetoric-heavy class, but in the long run I think the curriculum cross over will help re-enforce the material. I find it more difficult to classify something as NOT rhetoric than identifying rhetorical arguments. every statement trying to convince you of something has at least a few parts of rhetoric, so finding something outside that large umbrella can be difficult at best.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I’m not entirely sure if this is the place for questions but where does the term “rhetorical question” come from. I know Aristotle used questions to get his students to reach conclusions themselves, but what does that have to do with not answering a “rhetorical question” Probably a silly question, but I’ve always wondered.
The definition of "rhetoric" surprisingly keeps on changing as a advance further in my studies. At first, rhetoric just meant to write a paper in class; then it expanded too writing a paper in a certain manner depending on your message and audience. Finally it has come to a much more difficult definition of how to persuade a reader with specific words and how to make good, believable arguments. For example, the concepts ethos, pathos, and logos were first taught to me in this class. I think ethos, pathos, and logos are the main concepts of rhetoric. They help you understand how communication happens, which is the definition of rhetoric. The sheet that Dr. Phillips handed out to the class would make a great rubric when writing a paper. This concept of these three strategies hits all the angles of rhetoric. I also learned that rhetoric is all about persuading specific audiences with diction, pictures, and the correct advertising. Another thing that I learned about rhetoric is the importance of pictures and how a picture can literally say a thousand words. I already knew that rhetoric had to do with writing papers and appealing to audiences and making specific arguments; however, I didn’t know that rhetoric is all around us in so many different ways. For example, a billboard with an advertisement on it is considered rhetoric because it is reaching out to a certain audience, supporting an argument, and trying to persuade readers to buy or use the highlighted product. The main concept of rhetoric seems to be all about persuading the reader to think like the writer and understand the writers perspective.
ReplyDeleteBefore this class rhetoric was described as a relatively bland and poorly defined portion of education pertaining to the English language. I now understand that it isn't poorly defined, but simply covers a very broad set of skills which relate to communication.
ReplyDeleteThe study of Rhetoric not only covers the language we use but every aspect of communication. The dialect we use, the specific words and phrases, even an accent changes rhetoric. Also, rhetoric does not just pertain to spoken words. It also has a visual aspect as well. The way we dress, our body language, pictures to elaborate and especially our facial expressions also affect how we communicate to other people. It doesn't matter how many nice words you say to a person if, you are yelling at them while scowling at them.
A presentation is much more engaging when there is emotion to the presenters voice, or if they gesticulate. If they crack a joke then the person seems less formal and more laid back, making the audience feel closer to them. If the presenter remains behind the podium for the entire talk, stands straight and makes eye contact then he or she appears to be professional. Rhetoric can pertain to any of our senses, and is related to how other people use their senses to identify us and the message we are sending them as well as what they take in while we communicate with them.
The last time I took an English class was my freshman year of college since then I haven’t really thought of anything rhetorical and have put the word on the back burner. I can say almost everything I have learned about rhetoric came from this class. If someone were to ask me what rhetoric means, I would reply with “the art of persuading”. Rhetoric is used in our everyday life in advertising campaigns, politics, political campaigns and more. Though rhetoric is not the most interesting subject to some individuals, it is important to understand its use and how it effects our decisions (to buy minute maid or POM) in our everyday life.
ReplyDeleteIn the last few days, I’ve discovered the art of rhetoric through class and readings. I came into the class equipped with little information about rhetoric, although I’ve used it on a day-to-day basis. The information that I had already attained about rhetoric was based off of a previous class when I learned about Plato and Aristotle. These philosophers had a lot to do with the significance of rhetoric and how we use it today. Rhetoric is most commonly known as a means for public communication in the form of persuasion. However, you cannot merely throw words together and call it rhetoric. There is a structure for rhetoric that involves composition. Once you have a topic or hypothesis, research will ensure an accurate document. Organizing and designing a composition with the use of pictures, graphs, citations, and etc, helps to make an effective piece of rhetoric. The usage of any language can be considered rhetoric. The way we decide to use language is largely determined on the audience or receivers of the context a speaker is intending to present. Although all of these factors are important to get familiar with when learning about rhetoric, the most important concepts to understand are ethos, pathos, and logos. Each of these concepts is considered to be rhetorical strategies when producing an effective form of speech. Ethos centralized on the author’s credibility and largely relies on truth with a capital T. Pathos involves emotions and useful ways of including emotion when trying to persuade. Finally, logos deals with the logistical aspects of an argument. While we often use some of these concepts in our daily conversations, an argument or speech is most effectively used with the combination of each. In conclusion, I have learned about the basics of rhetoric and how it is used. I’m anxious to discover how rhetoric can affect and benefit my future.
ReplyDeleteBrittany McIntire
What is rhetoric?
ReplyDeleteThe last time that I had an English class was winter quarter of the 2007-2008 school year. English is not my strong areas of schooling by all means. The first day we had to write about rhetoric I had barely a half of a page because I did not know what it was. Since then I have learned a few things that I had no idea involved rhetoric, even when I do learn something about rhetoric I put it into the back of my brain also known as what I call “The nothing box”. Since starting this class, everything about the word rhetoric has been new to me. I had no idea that Plato and Aristotle were the first to start studying rhetoric. Thinking about what I have learned I use rhetoric in everyday life without even thinking about it. From class I have learned that rhetoric is used for public persuasion, it is language based on your audience, organized to meet the audience’s needs, it is text/visual/media/oral, it is the way we choose to communicate with others, and everything is rhetorical.
The way I have taken rhetoric personally is that it is the art of persuasion through language. I kind of think that that is a fancy way of saying manipulation, but it is more something with a less negative connotation. For example, when we were discussing it in class, the “manipulative” part was described as “organizing thoughts to meet an audience’s needs”. So it is basically our ability to convince others to move in one direction or the other through language.
ReplyDeleteThere are three things to take into account when examining rhetoric. The first is who is the author (knowing things about the author of a text is a good way to more understand where that author is coming from). The second is audience (know who the intended audience is for a text and the audience for whom you intend to write). The last part is context (where the text was written and distributed will vary based on culture, terminology, physical location, etc.) There are three sub-categories for context which are the following: 1) temporal - where someone is at a specific time; 2) spatial - what are the social, cultural and historical origins; 3) casual - based on social interactions across time and space.
Rhetoric uses ethos, pathos and logos to further develop an argument. Ethos is a way to establish credibility in language. For example, an author may give credentials that enforce why he may be an appropriate candidate to write a medical news article. Inversely, someone may give themselves credentials which enforce that they are not qualified to write such an article. Pathos plays on using emotions to persuade the reader. If it is a light hearted piece, it might have a few jokes in it to make the reader laugh; if it is a darker piece, there would be more strong words and maybe the emotion would be depressing. Lastly, logos is the way the author creates a rational argument. This is the use of things like statistics and facts to persuade others to join the author’s side of the argument. A graph that shows the correlation between how many people own guns and how many children are killed might persuade a gun owner to buy a safe.
That is rhetoric in a vacuum packed bag to me so far. Thanks.
David Thompson
After several days I have learned that the importance rhetoric and its importance within society. While there seems to be a perpetual misconception of the use of rhetoric, people everyday don't seem to realize that it is used in everyday life. Even though people tend to think it is a way to manipulate people they fail to realize that they must make a series of decisions to come up with that point of view.
ReplyDeleteFrom speech to the written word, we use rhetoric to persuade people of our particular point of view. Depending on whatever our subject is that we are trying to portray we must take into many different components into account. Our audience, which is who is receiving the intended message, the context in which we present our subject, and our purpose. To successfully try to persuade someone to see the subject through your eyes one must master rhetoric.
Without the correct framework, rhetoric, in any form would be dubbed inadequate and thus pointless in the pursue to persuade.