Well, I am graduating in two weeks, so I went to my last class EVER last night. I was much more sad than I had previously anticipated that I would be.
BTW, for all of you who are in town for graduation, I am getting together as many people as aI can to go DT to celebrate with all of us who are graduating so...I hope to see you all down there. Kevin - you owe me one last dance at TD's :o) HaHaHa!
One last thing before I get into the "final blog" - Rebekah, I agree with you 100% about the annoying people in the library during exam week. One more ocmplaint is that you can never find a place to park or study. They need to have reserved ares for people who use the library for more than one week a semester. I had to sit on the floor last semester to meet with a study group. Ok, I'm done with the rant.
On to what to change about the way rhetoric happens. I must say that I have to agree with Christy and Rebekah. Education of rhetoric is the most powerful tool. The most important thing that I feel like I have learned this semester is how to analyze rhetoric in people's arguments so that I am not conned into something without understanding the argument and the rhetorical basis of the argument - especially the individuals ethos.
In my Holocaust lit. class, we read a bok called "Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing" by James Waller. The book basically describes that the people who committ these atrocities are ordinary people, like you and I, that in certain circumstances and in certain conditions are promted to committ extraordinary evil. The premise of the book is that if you are educated to look for certain things and you understand that you are capable of this kind of evil, then you are protected from doing it. I'm applying the same sort of premise to rhetoric. If you know what you are looking for such as logos, ethos, pathos, kairos, telos, deliberative, forensic, etc., and you understand how these devices work along with the way the rhetorician is using them you can make better judgements about their message.
I feel like a lot of people get conned into things because they are not educated in certain areas and don't know what to look out for, but if you go into a situation being educated, you can protect yourself from making a bad decision. When listening to someone speak, whether it be someone trying to sell you a vaccuum or the next president, understanding the design under their speech makes a difference. Understanding the dynamics that make up a speech could cause you to choose on side over the other. So, I feel that if I could change how rhetoric happened, I would make it so everyone understood the design and underlying techniques so that people wouldn't be fooled by someones trying to take advantage or persuade them in a negative way.
Good luck to everyone on finals! I know this week sucks. Also, congrats to all graduating seniors!! Hope to see you all DT!
No comments:
Post a Comment