Rhetoric is like a car for many people. They use it all the
time to get where they’re going, but that doesn't mean they know exactly how it
works. Rhetoric is the art of persuasion. Everyone, from a two year-old begging
his mother for candy to an academic hammering away at his next book chapter,
uses it, albeit with varying levels of skill. Not a day goes by when I’m not
seeking to persuade someone of something, though some of my uses of the art of rhetoric
are perhaps better compared to stick figures than to the works of Michelangelo.
While English departments themselves are relatively new to
academia, only appearing about one hundred and fifty years ago, rhetoric itself
has been recognized since the time of the ancient Greeks. Since the time of
Plato and Aristotle, those venerable old figures who were so integral to the
foundations of western civilization, rhetoric has been studied and defined. It
was the Greeks who first proposed the five canons which lay at the heart of
classical rhetoric.
First there was invention, then arrangement, style, memory,
and delivery. Combined together and used properly these canons allowed for a
powerful persuasive speech in a time when oratory was vitally important to
communication.
Following the Greeks came the Roman ideas of rhetoric,
including Cicero’s stasis theory which allows one to come up with a more
powerful argument after finding the middle ground from which to argue. Growth in
literacy in more recent centuries has led to the greater importance of
rhetoric, not only in the oratory, but also in the written word.
Perhaps the aspect of rhetoric that most of our students are
most likely to be familiar with is the idea of ethos, pathos, and logos—the appeals
to authority, emotion, and logic. They are certainly the aspect that I am most
familiar with, as I still remember sitting in my English class my freshman year
of high school and memorizing the definitions of the three appeals in between
making flashcards of the Greek gods and being thoroughly taken aback by my
first reading of Oedipus Rex. I left
high school with these definitions lodged somewhere in my brain, but with only
a rudimentary sense of how to use the appeals I had so dutifully memorized at
age fourteen.
I think it likely that many of the students in our 1301 program
are in a similar situation as they start the class. They’ve probably heard of
rhetoric, but just because they’ve heard of it doesn’t mean that they know what
it is our how to use it. I’ve heard of ice sculpting, but that doesn’t mean I
know how to do it. Therefore I hope that this class will strengthen my own
understanding of rhetoric, so that when I become a classroom instructor I can
better communicate these ideas to my students. I want to be able to teach them,
not just dry definitions and abstract techniques, but how they themselves can
employ rhetoric to succeed not only in my class but as effective communicators
and writers in their future lives and careers.
Mary, I really like your analogy of rhetoric as a car. You're right, most people use it everyday but don't know how it works. I know that I for one only have my learner's permit when it comes to rhetoric.I feel, as you do I'm sure, that this class will help us from learner's permit to a full on license.
ReplyDeleteYou said that you wanted to learn so that one day you could teach your own students. What level do you want to be teaching at? I completely agree that while understanding the definitions and abstract concepts are important they are not nearly as important as being able to use rhetoric strategies in day-to-day life and being able to teach them in such a way that makes sense to others. I can't wait to learn more about rhetoric with in over the course of this semester.
Mary! I agree with Colleen that your car analogy is working really well, and I also really appreciate the comparison of rhetoric as a discipline to ice sculpting.
ReplyDeleteI've been thinking about your final paragraph and how our goal is to make students be able to employ rhetoric in their own work. This is part of my goal, as well. But the more I think about it, the more I am realizing that this is maybe a secondary goal of 1301 as I understand it. It seems to me to be more about the student receiving, recognizing, and analyzing rhetoric. Students will then write about their analysis, but the focus is more about the reception of rhetoric than the production. I wonder how this will change in 1302, and whether this balance will shift.
In any case, I agree completely with your goal of helping students become more effective communicators. Your point that everybody uses persuasion is well-taken (and don't underestimate that two year-old).
Mary, what a fun and interesting perspective! I think in many ways, children are more adept at using rhetoric to their benefit than adults -- Somewhere in the educational process, perhaps it is trained out of us rather than into us. The concept of memorization is no longer a focus of K-12 or university academics. I am hard pressed to remember a passage in its entirety, instead relying on paraphrasing and recontextualizing or reinterpreting content for various audiences. Many of my students from Japan and China have been trained to memorize long and seemingly impossible blocks of text, a concept we consider plagiarism rather than reproduction of great works. I feel as though teaching rhetoric in 1301 will be very narrow scope as I will only be teaching for writing in a very limited U.S. university context. I wish the students could truly be trained to master rhetoric in their educations.
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ReplyDeleteGood thinking about the canons of rhetoric here. How do we teach each of the canons in different ways? Students may have heard of rhetoric, but it always takes on a negative connotation. Same with argumentation. Still, both can be used wisely, ethically, and appropriately. That's what we need to teach students. Others have pointed out that we're providing students choices when we teach them composition, ultimately. I agree. Writing instruction is critical thinking.
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