Hello, my name is Sarah and I am a senior studying Architecture at Clemson University. At the moment, in my English 314 class, we are studying what rhetoric means. I have heard that word thrown around a lot, but I was never sure exactly what it meant. More importantly, why are we talking about it in a technical writing class? Through my readings I have learned a lot about rhetoric, and I am starting to realize why it is important in technical writing.
I have found that rhetoric is the art of using a language to communicate with other people effectively. Just recently has rhetoric become an important topic. For many years, it was condemned and looked down upon. This is where I was surprised. How can rhetoric, basically persuading people to change their views, be bad? In my opinion, the more people change their views, the more our societies grow; and if people are persuaded to change their view, there is nothing wrong with that. The only conclusion I can come up with is that people get irritated when other people try to persuade them of something; we want to believe that we are right all the time.
Rhetoric is extremely ubiquitous. While most people do not realize it, rhetoric is seen in athletics, medicine, romance, at the marketplace, during our social lives and so on. People plan to use rhetoric in these situations to persuade someone else of a point, or to do something. Since there are so many outlets to use rhetoric in, the rhetor must consider the audiences feelings. I believe that rhetoric is perfectly acceptable, as long as it does not persuade someone of evil, or cause someone to hurt themselves.
I was surprised as you were that rhetoric was so common in everyday things. I even noticed some rhetorical strategies being employed on sports center the other morning. Funny how it took me this long to notice their prevalence.
ReplyDeleteRhetoric is very useful and brilliant tool in the art of persuasion, although i do think rhetoric is very often used to persuade people to do something thy wouldn't normally do. Yes I do agree that views should change, however, they change based on the audiences own opinions and experiences.
ReplyDeleteMadison, same story here. I watch sports center nearly every morning and the day after we discussed it in class was the day sports center changed forever.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that talking about issues and changing viewpoints can advance society in many positive ways but I also see rhetoric as a dangerous way to advance a certain agenda. Words can affect people in different ways, and I think it is important to question the things people push on us.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the fact that we use rhetoric more than we realize. Question: When you say, "rhetoric is perfectly acceptable, as long as it does not persuade someone of evil," where do we draw the line for that?
ReplyDeleteWho will dictate what is good and what is evil? And don't nominate me because I certainly don't have the time for it.
The problem with good and evil is that anything that can be used for good can be sadly used for evil. So what kind of acceptable, morally, worldly, biblically, they all have different things that are acceptable.
ReplyDeleteSadly rhetoric is completely subject to the ethical inclination of the user and it is difficult to determine where exactly that line of good and evil is to be drawn as well as what standard should be used. However, it does appear that the benefits outweigh the cost and thus cement rhetoric as a valuable asset to our society. The use of rhetoric has definitely allowed our society to change and develop to what it is today.
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