Required Reading Week 3

*You can read the textbookLinks to an external site. itself, but I have cut out some parts & rewritten sections to make them more relevant for us below. The most important sections for this week are 1.4.1, 1.4.3, & 1.5.*

1.4 Rhetoric & the Rhetorical Situation

Two people - one person speaking the other listening. The listener has a giant ear. Pixabay image.

Speaking & Listening

Do you want others to seriously consider your thoughts and opinions?
Do you want to communicate your ideas as effectively as possible in a given situation, whether that situation is a personal exchange among your group of friends or a researched argument essay written for an academic professor?
Do you hope that others view you as a credible source, someone with integrity and honesty who considers their audiences’ needs and values?
Do you arrive at your opinions through close examination of credible evidence and a full understanding of the issue?

Most of us want to be taken seriously as individuals with worthy thoughts and ideas. This is why the study and practice of rhetoric can be a significant and life-changing experience. However, there are limitations to the use of rhetoric. Consider the purposeful misuse of rhetoric to promote the perpetuation of misinformation or to mislead your audience. That is an idea this chapter will circle back to later.

To establish yourself as a person who has valuable ideas to contribute on a given topic, you must include key terms into your rhetorical vocabulary. Every time you enroll in a new course with new terms to learn, study a new hobby or interest, or develop new workplace knowledge and skills, you are engaging with new terminology in that field or discipline. Knowledgably applying disciplinary vocabulary in your course work, specific workplace terms in your job, and even your social discourse communities signals you are an “insider.”

After studying the terms intentionally, you will now know and can begin using those terms knowledgeably. In any subject, intentionally noting and using the subject’s specific terminology, rather than expressing knowledge or thought in unspecific or vague terms, will increase your comprehension and learning of new concepts.

Yes, this intentional practice takes a little extra time up front, but it becomes a time saver as you more easily comprehend and retain your reading and/or listening content. This is a simple “work smarter” approach to learning new vocabulary that also signals to your readers and listeners that you are an “insider” in terms of the literacy expectations of the situation and group.

1.4.1 Rhetorical Keywords

The first key rhetorical term to learn in this chapter is rhetoric.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, rhetoric is...

The art of using language effectively so as to persuade or influence others, esp. the exploitation of figures of speech and other compositional techniques to this end; the study of principles and rules to be followed by a speaker or writer striving for eloquence, esp. as formulated by ancient Greek and Roman writers.

A common, simplified general definition of rhetoric is “the use of all available means to inform, entertain, or persuade.”

View The Online Writing Lab at Purdue’s “Introduction to Rhetoric” video explaining more what rhetoric is and how rhetoric relates to writing. This video defines rhetoric as “primarily an awareness of the language choices we make.” It gives a brief history of the origins of rhetoric in ancient Greece, and it discusses the benefits of how understanding rhetoric can help people write more convincingly.

The second key term to learn is rhetorical situation. To understand the term, consider the roots and current meanings of both words. Situation means “(t)he exact position of a person or thing in relation to another or to surroundings; the arrangement or position of people or things in relation to each other or to surroundings.” This is not the first meaning of the word, but it is the meaning as used in this textbook. It is a good practice to read all definitions of a term you are learning as words are used differently in different contexts.

If rhetoric is the use of all “available means of language to inform, entertain, or persuade,” and as we use it in this textbook, situation means “(t)he exact position of a person or thing in relation to another or to surroundings; the arrangement or position of people or things in relation to each other or to surroundings,” what do you have when you put the two words together? The rhetorical situation describes the environment in which a rhetor communicates to a specific audience.

1.4.2 Rhetorical Situations in Our Everyday Lives

Now that we have introduced the key rhetorical terms used in this text, we can move on to exploring how rhetoric and a grasp of rhetorical situations operate in your daily life. You have a sense of what rhetoric is because you already make rhetorical decisions to inform, persuade, and entertain others by selecting rhetorical appeals that will best support your interactions with others. Some might claim we even use rhetorical strategies on ourselves when we engage in self-talk to problem solve and rationalize our behaviors!

On any given day, you might send a romantic text to your partner, convince your boss to give you a raise, tell an amusing anecdote to your friends at happy hour, post a holiday picture of your family on Instagram, and write a thank you note to your grandmother. You text your partner (your audience and purpose) to remind them that you love them and are looking forward to your weekend escape (the message, an emotional appeal). You collect evidence (relevant supporting detail, or logos) to support your argument that you deserve a raise (the message and purpose to inform and persuade) and then convincingly present it to your boss (the audience).

Sometimes you have several motives for your rhetorical choices, so you make rhetorical decisions that serve several purposes and engage multiple audiences. You post that family image of your kids in their Halloween costumes because their grandparents live 1500 miles away, and you want to keep them connected to their grandchildren. However, your more selfish motive for posting the pic is to show your friends the original and creative costumes you made for your children in hopes of receiving likes and comments to validate your effort. Even the note you wrote your grandmother and sent in snail mail was written for more than an audience of one. You know she loves showing the ladies in her retirement community the clever and heartfelt cards and letters you send her, so you make sure the original poem you include will touch all their hearts.

Reflecting on Rhetoric in Your Everyday Life: Consider the rhetorical situations in which you have found yourself in your everyday life. Can you think of two or three examples in which you crafted a message to influence or shift the perspective of someone else? Did you appeal to the person’s/other peoples’ needs, wants, and values? Or, did you press your perspective without considering your audience? How did that go?

During this chapter, we have presented rhetoric as a means of empowerment and effective communication for the purpose of informing, persuading, or entertaining others. Earlier, we briefly mentioned that rhetoric could be used dishonestly to manipulate an audience. Rhetoric has supported and perpetuated the shared values of a nation, and rhetoric has shattered the founding ideals of nations. When we possess rhetorical skill, we can use that gift to benefit the greater society (like TED Talk speakers do, for example) or we can use it to get our way and mislead people. Can you think of situations in your life or in American society that illustrated this dark side of rhetoric?

1.4.3 Ethos & the Academic Writer

A rhetor is a person who intentionally crafts communications to inform, persuade, and/or entertain their audience and achieves their purpose by appealing to their audience’s values, needs, and even genre expectations. Most of us want others to take their ideas, whether written or spoken, seriously. How can you, as a college student, convey to your readers or listeners that you are trustworthy and a credible source of information? As a college student writing for a variety of audiences about a variety of subjects, how can you build your own credibility as a rhetor?

As a rhetor, you can take specific approaches to creating your audience’s trust and belief that you are trustworthy in the ways you support your views and signal your ethical values. When a rhetor establishes this sense, we say the writer or speaker has ethos.

Along with logos and pathos, one of Aristotle’s key appeals is ethos, an appeal to values and ethics. Communicators use the ethical appeal effectively when they integrate credible support for their message from credible external sources, experts, and moral leaders. This is known as external ethos.

When rhetors establish their credibility and trustworthiness with their audiences, the rhetor is said to possess internal ethos. If you want your readers and listeners to take you seriously, to trust you, to believe you are credible, you want to convey your character and credibility through your rhetorical identity and external ethos you choose bring to your message. So, what strategies can you use to create trust, a sense of your ethos, and even a shared bond with your audience

Key Takeaway: How to Establish Your Internal Ethos

Acknowledge your audience’s values and needs and connect with those you share that are relevant to the message.
Establish your rhetorical identity. In other words, how do you want your audience to see you? Compassionate? Informed? Reflective? Curious? As an advocate for social justice?
Cite your sources and give credit where credit is due.
Support your claims with credible sources and experts to establish the external ethos of the sources.
Represent your source information ethically; that is integrate the support with the meaning associated with it in its original context.
Cite a variety of credible, trustworthy sources rather than supporting your perspective with one source that matches your own.
Use language that reflects careful thought and specificity, but words and phrasing that will not make your audience feel as if they are an outsider to the message you are communicating. Treat your audience with respect using language to set a tone appropriate to the subject, intention of the communication, and reflects the quality of your character.
Demonstrate you have examined or research alternate views and discuss them respectfully, even when you are countering them.
Be generous in conceding points in argument.

If your audience trusts you and your character and you make the effort to connect to your audience’s values, experiences, goals, beliefs, wants, and or needs if good faith, your audience will take your essay, speech, or project seriously. Establishing a rhetorical sense of yourself as a rhetor with internal ethos will build your agency as a communicator. Your audience will know who you are and what you stand for. You will have claimed your voice, and your message will be heard.

1.5 Your Discourse Communities

Colorful image of a diverse group of people with speech bubbles over their heads. Accessed on Pixabay_1825513_1920

As explained by Dan Meltzer is his Writing Spaces chapter, “Understanding Discourse Communities,” “(w)riting teachers and scholars have come up with the concept of ‘discourse community’ to describe a community of people who share the same goals, the same methods of communicating, the same genres, and the same lexis (specialized language)” (111). What are your discourse communities? These discourse communities can be informal skateboarding groups, fan fiction groups, biology class study groups, musical bands, family groups, online gaming groups, work groups, chess clubs, interest or hobby groups consisting of people who use a common vocabulary, share common goals, and apply the literacy and genre expectations the group expects. These discourse communities often shift with our interests and responsibilities throughout our lives, but there is no doubt their influence upon us is significant.