What is rhetoric?

Chapter 1’s reading in Envision is all about how rhetoric is there everywhere we go. We could be walking to class and notice an advertisement to vote for student council. The poster is arguing that you need to vote for John Do instead of Susie Louise. The more interesting the poster, the more apt you are to stop and look at it. If the poster is dull and not appealing to your audience, less people will stop to look at the poster. In this case, who is the target audience? College students are the target audience.

So what is rhetoric? The Green philosopher Aristotle characterized that rhetoric is the ability to discern the available means of persuasion in any given situation. What does that mean? In my opinion, it means that you are liable to be persuaded at any given time whether you like it or not. Rhetoric is everywhere.

There is a rhetoric triangle that shows communication as a dynamic relationship. This is called a rhetoric situation. This is the relationship between the writer, the text, and the audience.

This chapter is focusing on verbal persuasion and visual persuasion. An example of verbal persuasion would be somebody arguing face-to-face that if you don’t do your homework you are going to fail in college. It could be your mom, your dad, or even your roommate. If they give you reasonable statistics and argue that they have experience or valid points, it is rhetorical. An example of visual persuasion would be a movie trailer trying to persuade you to see this particular movie. They might show you all of the funny parts in the movie but leave out the story in its entirety. Just think, would you have wanted to watch Paul Blart: Mall Cop if you knew that he was a divorced, overweight cop with diabetes and in love with a girl at a kiosk? Probably not.

An example of an editorial cartoon would be a picture of Harry Potter (The Boy Who Lived!) with a picture of a dollar sign on his forehead instead of his famous lightning bolt scar. This struck me as unusual because I absolutely love Harry Potter and I know for a fact that Harry Potter’s values do not come from money. This picture is arguing American capitalism and how something you loved as a child can become a lucrative pop-culture franchise.