Rhetoric has, for me, been nothing but discovery. I remember the first time that it was explained to me -- after observing a tutoring session during my first few weeks at the Writing Center. I had no freaking idea what the girl was talking about. I had never heard of rhetoric before (especially as a discipline of study) and was, as Miles Nolte liked to describe me, "resistant to all that was rhetoric."
Lucky for you all, I discovered some things. Situation, in this context, translates to mode. How is the information being presented to me? I began to watch commercials, look at advertisements, listen to political speeches... and I began to see a trend in how this information was being present to me (the rhetor). Who would have thought!? Next, Aristotle challenges me to investigate my "own inner resources" once I had the information. As a rhetor, I didn't have to believe the information that was being presented to me. I knew that fundamentally, but I hadn't thought about it in regards to how information was presented. Over the next six months (the months leading up to this class) I began to embrace rhetoric. I began to question how my own discovery of it could be applied to how I presented my own discoveries. By, George -- this rhetoric thing could work for ME!
GASP.
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In Book 1, Aristotle introduces rhetoric as the counterpart of dialectic. I didn't even know what the exact definition of dialectic was (other than it had something to do with speech), so for those of you like me:
via Google (The Goddess)
The section I was most interested in Book 1 was Aristotle's introductions of logos, pathos, and ethos (Bk 1, Ch 2). I can't count how many times I have heard rhetoric being defined using these three terms. It was part of my own discovery of rhetoric (ha -- see what I did there?) when I realized where the hell those ideas even came from. Holla at me, Aristotle.
We also got the three categories in which rhetoric is used, according to Aristotle -- political, epideictic and forensic. I won't deny that even after reading, I was a little hazy about what these three categories meant. From what I gather, political is when the audience is trying to be persuaded on a "yes" or "no" action on a certain subject or topic. Epideictic is essentially an "I LOVE YOU," or "I HATE YOU." Also known as praise or blame (via Google). Forensic is basically anything that has to do with law. Someone, please correct me if this is wrong. Because for now, I'm just runnin' with it. Gump style.
There was also a lot of talk in the last few chapters regarding people's mindset and this "hedone" thing. Hedone was the Goddess of Pleasure (right?) at least from what I remember in my high school Mythologies course. From what I gather, Aristotle means this as the pursuit of pleasure. Which makes me think of pathos. Which makes me think of our current definition of pleasure-seeking. Which makes me think of advertisements. And the female personification of pleasure. And things not at all related to Aristotle. Needless to say, I'm going to do a read-over of the last few chapters of Book 1...
Kelsey, your post cracked me up! I loved how you took us through your own personal attempt to discover just what Aristotle was talking about. It definitely seems as though applying rhetoric to our own lives helps us to make sense of it more. I also like that you seemed to focus part of your understanding of rhetoric by applying it towards advertising. Do you believe there is one appeal that is most important/most used in advertising? Would Aristotle's claim that ethos is most important apply here? Just a couple of questions that started floating around. Nice post!
ReplyDeleteGood question, Molly. When you asked which appeal is most important to advertising, I couldn’t help but think of a class I took, called “Persuasive Writing in Advertising and Fundraising.” We learned that different advertising/fundraising methods relied on two different appeals: rational and emotional. I had NO IDEA then, but I was learning rhetoric! Most of the class agreed that the type of appeal you should use depends primarily on your audience. We spent a ton of time analyzing target audiences to determine the best method of appeal. This seems kind of basic to us now, but this is the first time I made that connection. Rhetoric pops up in a lot of writing classes, masquerading under different terms, but it’s definitely there. To answer your question, like Kelsey said, it does seem like a lot of advertisements rely on pathos these days. I think it seems like this because the female-objectifying ads we see on TV or on billboards have that shock value, and they stay in our brains, whether we like them or not. Advertisers are competing for our limited attention spans, and unfortunately many would rather pull at our emotions than give us useful facts or rational arguments.
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