Week #1

To be completely honest rhetoric really use to confuse me and it still kind of does.  All I can think about when I hear the word "rhetoric” is rhetorical questions.  I thought maybe if I tried to attach one single definition to rhetoric I would be able to understand it better.  Unfortunately that turned out to be no help at all.  The book provided several single-lined definitions, but I still couldn't grasp the concept of what rhetoric was.  Until I realized rhetoric isn't just one thing or one definition.  Rhetoric is used everywhere by anyone who has ever had an opinion.  From my Safari homepage of Yahoo! to the billboards I see whenever I go to the airport to fly back home, rhetoric is everywhere.  Even in the airport TVs and on the airplanes SkyMall magazine at 30,000 feet I can't escape rhetoric.  People are always trying to convince someone or persuade someone to agree or disagree, buy this and not that, or think this way but not that way.  

A big topic that comes to mind when I think of rhetoric is advertisements.  Ads are a major way companies and organizations promote themselves and their products in all ways imaginable.  Every time I venture online or turn on my TV, the visual ads appear one after the other.  I am exposed constantly to the flashy colors, celebrities, and trendy music of commercials; some convincing, some not.  The more I realize how much I am surrounded and exposed to rhetoric, the more I understand it.  The flyers around campus for fraternity and sorority rushing and the 600 emails in my mailbox for seminars, creative inquiry classes, and parking announcements for game days all have a purpose in their text.  The authors have an idea in mind that they are trying to convey through their writing in way that will persuade their audience.  Every time I email my mom asking for her to send me something in the mail I am being rhetorical.  When asking for money or explaining my classes to my mom in email I choose a style of writing that I think will convince her to agree with me or understand what I am trying to say.  I make sure to be extra nice when asking for money and always put the “please” and “thank you” in the text.  

In my Anthropology class of the fall semester I would have to write an in-class essay every week about the reading from the day before.  In the essay we would have to answer a question the instructor prompted and use detailed examples to strengthen our answer.  Whenever answering a question or providing a statement about text I read I am being rhetorical.  I am persuading not only that the answer and text I present is a correct interpretation but also that I finished the assignment and did my homework.  I use rhetoric everyday and by writing this blog I am able to explore how I use it and how it is used around me.  By finding examples of rhetoric and not limiting it to one example or definition I am able to understand rhetoric and how I can use it.