So, from the two readings that we were assigned ("What is Rhetoric?" and "Rhetorical Situations and Their Constituents") I definitely found "What is Rhetoric" to be helpful. It helped me at least define what rhetoric was in a way that I myself can understand it. It is persuading someone. Whether it be in an unimportant argument with a friend, or a presentation on why your organization needs more funding, or in a paper in which you present your thesis. In all of these, you want your audience to at least believe that you may be on to something. You don't want them to just discount what you are saying as nonsense and for this, rhetoric comes in handy. What i found most helpful and interesting is the style that rhetoric can take. I never thought that simply emphasizing a point by raising your voice or italicizing a certain point in a paper can be a style of rhetoric. This actually helped me understand things a lot. As soon as i read this part, something just clicked...i had an aha moment.
Honestly, the essay "Rhetorical Situations and Their Constituents" was hard for me to follow and I didn't get much out of it. I did have the question as to why the author of this paper actually was the first to come up with the rhetor being one of the constituents. To me, it seems kind of obvious that the rhetor would be and that he could be considered as audience as well. Maybe that is why others never really regarded the rhetor in this way? Because they just put him in the category of audience? Or is there something that I am not quite understanding in which they had every reason to discount the rhetor as one of the constituents in a rhetorical situation?
While I do agree that rhetoric can involve persuading someone, I don't agree that this all it does. I feel that rhetoric is more displaying a truth that can be connected on between both the audience and the rhetor. While rhetors can hope to influence an audience with their writings, rhetoric is more about the rhetor addressing all the factors involved in the hopes of doing so.
ReplyDeleteOn another note, I agree with you that the "Rhetorical Situations and Their Constituents" didn't give me as much as I hoped. I felt that any important information was already addressed in the other one.
Good point on recognizing italicizing by the way. Making things aesthetically pleasing to an audience, especially subconsciously, is something that I've been beginning to recognize frequently.
Our understanding of the articles seems to be very similar. I enjoyed and found "What is Rhetoric?" educational. Although I got alot out of "What is Rhetoric?" I did not seem to get the importance of inflection however. After reading this and looking back at the text I understand why this was an ahh-ha moment.The understanding of rhetoric i have is basically communication, and a huge part of communication is how sentences and words are spoken (IE inflection. I really appreciate your understanding, it really helped me grasp the concept better.
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