Going through this class has improved my
definition of rhetoric, opposed from changing it entirely. At this time in our
1900 English class, I have learned that rhetoric is an art of persuasion
utilizing effective speaking and writing eloquently in order to convince an
audience by making a whole, concise argument. As an art, rhetoric utilizes
different compositional styles in order to achieve persuasion for an argument.
For example, persuasive appeals, arrangement, style, and delivery are
imperative in the emphasis of arguments and how effectively they are delivered.
The more and
more I learned in this class, the more I was able to interpret and recognize
different uses of rhetoric in everyday life. I understood how persuasive
appeals worked when filming movies or TV shows, how different word meanings or
inflections affected consumers in advertisements, and even when I utilized
rhetoric myself when persuading someone to agree with my argument. Let’s take
advertisements, for example, and how they use words with different inflections
to persuade consumers into buying their product. Commercials will play with
words that evoke emotion, utilizing the pathos persuasive appeal. Before this
class, I always recognized logos, pathos, and ethos before this class, but I
didn’t understand how they were utilized and what service they provided in an
argument. What’s funny is that when I notice these persuasive appeals unfold in
everyday life, I think back to whatever lecture we had when we discussed them.
Seeing the juxtaposition between class and everyday life is interesting to me.
We, as humans,
are argumentative by nature. Learning more about rhetoric and how to eloquently
phrase our arguments can help strengthen them. Utilizing rhetoric further employs
us to challenge other’s points and allows us to see the weak and strong points
within an argument. We always find more and more about how to analyze a
conversation and argument through what what we’ve learned in this class. Though
many people were critical about the paradigms in TS/IS, utilizing them helped
strengthen our papers and whatever arguments we had in Fight Club or whatever
we discussed an issue. After learning more about rhetoric, I now understand how
to create and and consolidate arguments pragmatically. An audience would not
pay heed to a speaker who does not have a sense of what he or she is talking
about, let alone follow in his or her argument. Rhetoric allows me to target
any audience, whether specific or broad, and appeal to their views. It
presented me with an opportunity to engage with my audience better through
different persuasive appeals and paradigms. Applying rhetoric in my arguments
will help me examine my debate better and how to search for information to
strengthen it effectively, while simultaneously pinpointing weak spots and searching
out naysayers. Overall, learning rhetoric is greatly appreciated, and will be
applicable in whatever I need to do.
Burton, Gideon. "The Forest of Rhetoric." Silva
Rhetoricae. Brigham Young University, n.d.Web. 04 Dec. 2015. http://rhetoric.byu.edu
