Re-Tor-IC

Rhetoric. From my understanding rhetoric has to do with analyzing the modes and histories of discourse. It is a slippery little word and difficult to put it into the context of the classroom. When my students ask me, “what is rhetoric?” I usually give them a speech about ethos, pathos, logos and Socrates, but I don’t know if this does them any good. Reflecting on my practices, it might be easier if I explained to them like this:

Ode to Rhetoric

There once was a man with some words,
Who intended to have his voice heard.
Members of the audience disagreed,
There was too much at stake you see.

So he wrote a little speech one night,
Realizing that people would fight.
So he crafted his words for the ears of the herd,
And decided to acknowledge their rights.

When he got on the podium the next day,
He had a little joke to display.
The crowd liked the humor,
And their minds were set at ease.

The lecture had some good points,
Considering logic, emotions and ethics.
And although some people disagreed,
He appealed to their concerns you see.

So in the end he won the fight,
And much to his constituents delight.

So, that is my little ditty about rhetoric. Although I had fun writing that ode (I’m not sure if this is technically a ode), the type of discourse that I reference in my ode is political or to be more specific, persuasive but this is merely ONE mode of discourse. And thus the challenge stands, as Lindeman puts it “Textbooks urging students ‘to be clear, precise and concise’ reflect a neoclassical preference for the plain style, a view that has been questioned recently in studies of women’s language, the language of power relationships, and the different registers sanctioned by diverse academic disciplines and professions” (59). With the invention of the World Wide Web, there are more modes of communication than ever before. For example this blog, what type of voice should I use here? Do I write academically, do I write Facebooky, or do I write personally? I am having a difficult time writing ‘loosely” in the academic context. What does that tell us about rhetoric in the 21^st century? Rhetoric appears to be evolving at a pace too blistering for the theorists.