So That’s What It Means.

Chapter one of “Envision” explains what rhetoric is and how the audience can interpret it. Before reading Chapter One, I had always thought rhetoric was something that political candidates and law makers tried to spread and that it was confined to the political talk shows of Fox News and MSNBC. Through the reading I discovered rhetoric is all around me and is in nearly everything I see. From advertisements to clothes, television shows and nearly all forms of text, rhetoric is inescapable, which is why being able to interpret it is so vital to my understanding of the world around me. According to Alfano and O’Brien, rhetoric is “how they aim at persuading particular audiences through the careful choices made by the writer in composing the text”. When I read this, it was light bulb turning on quickly followed by that same light bulb burning out type of situation. I had always known what rhetoric was, I just did not know that it was called rhetoric; however, while I knew what it was, I did not really know how to analyze it that well.

The beginning of Chapter One started off somewhat dry as the authors explained what rhetoric was and the various strategies for analyzing it, however, as I continued to read I became more and more interested in the text. It made me think about my own writing and what message others would get from it. I had never really thought that much about others while writing. While something I write may seem logical to me, others may see it in a completely different way. The situation involving Doug Marlette and the cartoon of the truck bomb driving Arab man emphasizes the importance of being able to analyze texts and know what the author is trying to say. Rhetoric is a complex relationship between the writer and the audience and it is important for both the author and the audience to understand rhetoric. If everyone simply took things for face value without really thinking about what they are viewing the world would be an awful place.