Rhetorical Reflection

I can honestly say that I had never been exposed to the wide world of rhetoric until this semester. At first I found the concepts utterly mind boggling and I was quite distraught thinking that I didn’t understand an important aspect of my chosen career. However, when I sat back and broke down what was being said I realized that I had known these things all along, just not in such eloquent and superfluous terms. Things that to me had been common sense became a jumbled mass of jargon in my brain. So I’m going to break the key terms down in the hopes that you might not be as baffled as I originally was. The most important things to understand are; rhetoric, rhetorical situation, and composition.

Rhetoric is such a broad field, but in the simplest terms it is the use of language to influence or persuade and audience. Throughout history the exact definition has been changed and manipulated countless times however that basic concept remained. If you follow Aristotle’s model then the five steps to a rhetorical speech are; invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery. Within those five steps are the four elements of a speech that play a large part, they are the introduction, the statement of the issue, the argument, and the conclusion. If you can perfect the art of the rhetoric with those guidelines then you can master any discourse situation. Based on these steps and definition it becomes apparent that the rhetor and the consideration of the audience are extremely vital in rhetoric.

Bitzer defines rhetorical situation as “a mode of altering reality… through mediation of thought and action” but basically it lays the ground work for rhetoric to occur. it is paramount to recognize that rhetoric gains its existence and significance through the presence of a fitting situation and thereby it is suiting to explicitly understand a rhetorical situation. A situation is rhetorical insomuch as it facilitates a need for discourse that is appropriate and alters the reality of the situation it stems from. All rhetorical situations must consist of three main components; exigence, audience, and constraints. In simpler but longer terms this means that there must be a problem that can be changed through the means of discourse, an audience of people who are capable of being influenced and facilitate change, as well as constraints that limit the decisions and changes that can occur.

Essentially composition is coming up with a concept and seeing it through to the bloody end. Through the brilliant scenes, the unsavory moments, the so-so bits, and the writer’s block we must trudge forward, more faithful then the US Postal Service in our dedication to delivering our stories. Mailmen don’t have to face down self doubt, what’s six feet of snow compared to that? I love what Carol Berkenkotter says about revision being “the way skilled writers internalize their audiences and then use this sensed audience and their relationship to it to help them modify.” To me, revision is one of the most important aspects of composition because you go back over your work, check for errors, eloquence, and assure that it is fitting for the intended audience. Another aspect of composition that goes hand in hand with revision is the reflection. It is important to detract one’s self from the work and view it as a whole rather than the pieces you put together. In this way a composer can look at their creation, not with the intent to change it, but with the intent to understand as a whole what they have produced.

An interesting side point to explore when speaking on rhetoric is knowledge. Is new knowledge ever truly created or is it all just a reinvention or prior knowledge? In my opinion it is possible for new knowledge to come into existence but its constraints are based off of preexisting knowledge. Does that make it less original? Perhaps, but if that is true then nothing in life has been wholly original since the creation of existence.