Who Has the Fiarest Reflection of Them All?

At the beginning of this class...

Original frustration over key words...

It’s kind of hard to believe that we are already going into our seventh week of the semester already. I feel like we’ve been so busy in class that in some ways the time has kind of flown by. When I stop to think about it, though, I can still remember the different topic’s we’ve discussed so far and then the time line makes sense.

When we first delved into the world of Key Words in Composition and Rhetoric I felt like I was back in elementary school with spelling and definition tests. When I was through reading through all of them, though, it all clicked with me about how important it is for us to understand what these words mean so that we can effectively use/execute them when composing. As a whole I would define the key words as necessary. Just like with any other subject, we need to know the history of rhetoric and composition so that we can understand how we got where we are today.

Just seeing the list of words on the page was a little overwhelming at first but, again, after reading through it’s easy to see that almost all of the words connect together in one way or another. The word canon, for example, was defined as was the five other words which make up the five canons: invention, arrangement, style, memory and delivery. The same can be said of the various theorists that were defined in the readings. A theorist would have a definition, giving some brief information on their beliefs and works and then farther down the list one of the beliefs or works would be defined. To me the overlapping of key terms mean that they are all related and they are all necessary to understand in order to be successful with rhetoric and composition. From there we can make our own interpretations and grow as composer.

I think reflection is one of the most important parts of composing because reflecting is how we learn. I know that I reflect on almost everything I do in composition related things. When I was in the Speech class required by Florida State I was constantly reflecting on other people’s speeches to figure out the best way to deliver my own. From speech to speech I would reflect on my own performance so I could learn how to enhance my presentation and better deliver the speech to my audience. Reflection is an important step for anyone to keep in mind. It’s important to reflect on things you’ve learned and mistakes you’ve made in order to grow as a composer and become more successful.

I feel like “knowledge” is very tricky to try to define or explain. I mean, at some point there wasn’t really any knowledge, right? I think back in history there were a lot of “firsts” as far as knowledge went: the first guy who ‘invented’ fire, and so on. Then there are records of things people back in the day thought qualified as knowledge and fact which today we know to be ludicrous ideas (I’m thinking of the Real Vampires reading for that statement. I mean really, people who drank pretty much automatically made them a vampire.). As far as today’s world goes I’d have to say that it’s almost impossible for any real knowledge to me 100% new. Instead I would say that we are building upon old knowledge to expand into new ideas. I think we have to rely on prior knowledge to understand theories back then and understand the theories we have now. This is particularly important with our class because knowledge as far as composition and rhetoric goes is almost constantly changing. Right now we are in such a digital medium driven world that as composers we now have to look at old knowledge—used with the written word—and redirect and refine it for the digital age.

It's amazing what we can do with the English language