Habitation of Rhetoric

First of all, I must admit a personal disclaimer that the language and discussion of these essays were very dense and complex. Therefore, if I have somehow missed the point of either of these discussions, this should come as no great shock to you all.

I must say, however, that I was intrigued by the discussion of the habitation of rhetoric. It seems that the discussion focuses on rhetoric as an action, as opposed to a substantive "thing." Personally, I developed an illustration of rhetoric as a car; alone, its worthless. However, if you have roads to drive on and places to go, it becomes the action that takes you there. The article states, rhetoric is a "form of action that generates or manages material without ever resting in material embodiment." Its a hard concept to understand, but as simply as possible, its a driving force.

The article reads, "since it is a pure force, it is a container that constantly shifts its own configuration as it responds to circumstances, social interest, or the free play of linguistic whimsy." Thus, rhetoric is not a substantive form that is fixed in time and place. Instead, its an adaptive tool, or "formula" if you will, that is molded into the situation at hand. For example, Andrew Young's speech was molded around the MLK celebration as well as current events in our world today. Therefore, rhetoric is like clay words that are molded around our present circumstances to generate action.

One last point in Habitation of Rhetoric that I thought was an enlightening point was the concept of a message. The article reads, "a message is an abstracted thing, distanced from the voice of the speaker or the hand of the writer, embedded only at the point of its impact." Again, I felt this point was intriguing because a message isn't something that you can write it out. Its a collaborative product of an entire unified speech, or composition. Theme-like if you will. You can only determine the message after you have read or heard. Thus, rhetoric works to bring words and thoughts alike together to yield a message. Where is the message? Embedded at the point of impact with the individual, where the message connects with you.

Essentially, rhetoric is an action, a sort of process, to produce "the effect" and it habitates within words, speeches, and compositions to cause something to place that will yield a change.