I have never taken a course or studied in depth anything about rhetoricial discourse so I’m learning something new every page I read. I found it very interesting how rhetorics was being defined a as “a way to argue” and I might be completely wrong but after reading the articles I did not find this true at all. Finding it evident in what Vatz states, that the art of rhetoric should involve “integrity” with every situation the rhetor may face (Grant-Davie). This and many other scenarios that had been described in the reading brought a discussion and a sense of reasoning between individuals or a group to a common place.
I found this statement to be very true, as everything we interact with usually has at least one variability. Every situation arises within a context-a background of time, place, people, or conditions within the context they are relevant and should be considered part of the situation because they have the potential to act as positive or negative constraints on the discourse (273, Grant-Davie). Every individual reaches differently to a situation because of their background or something that they have experienced leading to the possibility for every situation to have a different outcome.
In the Covino and Joliffe article I appreciate the quote “rhetoric is the art of knowledge-making” (8). As the article indicates some scholars study the changes through time and others through text, providing students like me with the chance to enjoy past history and culture.
I think that's why it is why you really need to know your audience (your second paragraph touches on that). In order to have effective dialogue, we really need to understand where the other person or group of people are coming from. We all bring our past experiences and prejudices to the table. If we are aware of what baggage we are bringing with us, we can filter out what is the unimportant stuff and focus on the really great issues at hand.
ReplyDeleteThe point you make about "rhetoric is the art of knowledge making" is great. Without decent methods of rhetoric, regardless if we are aware of them or not, we would be just spinning our wheels and not moving forward.