Rhetoric: A Reflection

I’m currently holed up on the third floor of the library. I swore I wouldn’t return after spending 12+ hours here working on my critical discussion; short-term memory loss must be a side effect of finals. As I listen to the soothing (annoying?) sound of the fountain, I’m kind of struggling to start this blog post.

Perhaps that’s because I’ve been reflecting on this class all weekend. After an enormous push to write the critical discussion, I’ve been thinking a lot about how rhetoric shapes our daily interactions. For example, it wasn’t immediately easy to study cat memes from a rhetorical perspective. But after I tried—and realized it could be done—it made me appreciate how broad the term rhetoric is.

I know, I know. I’m supposed to get to the end of the semester and announce, “I understand rhetoric! I know what it is now!” I don’t mean to say that rhetoric is broad in that it is everything or indefinable. As many of you noted in your posts, we’ve come a long way from our first meeting where we attempted to sort out what rhetoric is or isn’t.

But—and this is where the blog comes in—rhetoric, to me, is broad in the sense that it can be applied to many subjects. In fact, I think Aristotle said something very similar to that in the beginning of our excerpt of Rhetoric (sorry, I’d quote, but I happily left The Rhetorical Cinder Block, I mean Tradition, at home).

I have truly enjoyed reading the ways in which all of you have applied rhetoric to diverse subjects. This semester, I’ve read about education, puns, Beyonce, text messages, psychology and many more topics. You have all helped to shape my study of rhetoric through your witty writing and thoughtful reading. Seeing you all have fun on the blog encouraged me to write in a conversational, humorous tone. That is something I value and don’t often get to share with my classmates and professors.

Thanks, everyone, for sharing your thoughts on this blog. Reading your posts inspired me to keep going, especially when our texts were dense and my margins were filled with question marks! And finally, I leave you with this: