English 5361: Week 13 Post - Even More Contemporary Rhetoric

This week's reading covered even more contemporary rhetoric, leading me to believe that we have devoted more time to a relatively brief period in rhetorical history than to the thousands of years that came before, but that is the nature of the survey course.

Michel Foucault, of course, featured prominently in this week's readings. I have heard the name Focault before, mentioned by other students in previous classes, although, I may be out of place by admitting that I have never previously read any of his work. Focault never featured much in my undergraduate degree.

I found it fascinating that Herrick reports that "even his biographers sometimes confess 'ignorance about what Focault is doing'" (p 246). When statements like that are made by people who have studied the man's work intensively, what hope have I of grasping the true intentions of his work. Focault's work seems to focus on insanity and power, definitely on power. He who has the power makes the decisions.

My thoughts on power are very simple. Those who have power want to keep it. Those who do not have power want to obtain it. Look at the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on political campaigning. Politicians do not spend that money in search of the comparatively small salaries that the roles provide. They do not spend it seeking to do good; they could do more good by donating the money to charities. They spend it seeking power.


~~~An aside on Assignment #3~~~~~~
I have decided to focus on view of truth from a rhetorical viewpoint. This may be difficult to narrow, and I only have a couple of weeks to finish, so wish me luck!

English 5361: Week 12 Post - More Contemporary Rhetoric

This week we focused on even more contemporary Rhetoric. And next, week even more. Hopefully, soon I will get a blinding inspiration for my trackback composition. I can't wait much longer if I am actually going to successfully compose something, but I am drawing major blanks on this one. Anyone willing to prod my inspiration, perhaps something related to scientific interests?

For this week's blog, I am going to focus on what Herrick calls "among the most famous lines in the great corpus of Kenneth Burke's work," which is "You persuade a man only insofar as you can talk his language by speech, gesture, tonality, order, image, attitude, idea identifying your way with his" (Herrick, p 223). This is an interesting idea, especially in light of the universal audience concept from last week. Once again, to persuade your audience, you must adopt your audience behaviors. This seems to link to the idea of trying to run your idea by a universal audience or keeping that audience in view.

In a way, it seems as though the ideal rhetor would have no personality of his or her own. She or he would be a chameleon, perhaps even robotic, except when exposed to the audience, in which instance, the rhetor would absorb and reflect the audience, with their opinions, morals, and views. Or in another case, the rhetor would put on a mask of audience behavior to convince the audience members that the rhetor has their best interest at heart, so that the rhetor can convince the audience to accept his or her viewpoint.

Either case seems sad in a way. I am the person that I am. I could not become someone else to trick people into believing what I believe. Perhaps, then, I will never make a good rhetor, but should study it from afar.

English 5361: Week 11 Post – Contemporary

We are moving into modern times in our whirlwind tour of Rhetorical Theory. It seems like just yesterday, we were reading Plato, and today we are moving onto much more modern times. Here we see more of the move toward Rhetoric of the Written word versus that of the Spoken word. A modern theory of Rhetoric must be more about writing than speaking. People hardly even speak on the phone any more. Yet, even in the contemporary theory of Rhetoric, the audience is king. The dominance of the audience has been a recurring them throughout the history of Rhetoric, and I imagine it will continue to be a predominant part of the Theory throughout the foreseeable future.

According to James Herrick, "three audiences are particularly important in Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca's theory of rhetoric. This is because these three audiences can reliably test the rational quality of arguments" (p 200). The three audiences are the universal audience, the audience of one, and the self as audience. Of these, the one most troublesome to me is the universal audience. I dispute that it is possible for one or even a few rhetors to determine the universal audience. Each of us have different taste levels, educational backgrounds, languages, cultures, societal mores, etc. What I make think of as universal would be ridiculous for someone else. I still remember my Russian suite mate in college bursting out laughing when someone suggested a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. She was stunned that we were serious. She and her friends had decided that references to peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in American books had to be jokes because no one could possibly eat that.

Do you think that there is truly a universal audience?

~~~~An aside from the discussion in class~~~~
When we discussed morality in science, I believe that I may not have been clear. Scientists do not view science as having an inherent morality. The scientific method has no spot for the morality of the thing being studied. Morality is truly a social construct and is dictated by societal pressures and laws, not by science. The morality of a scientific study is not decided by science itself but by the morals of the scientists performing the work and the morals of the society in which the work is performed. For example, when Pasteur discovered the small pox vaccine, he actually tested it on people, purposefully exposing them to disease. This would not be acceptable in today's research climate but was fine when he did it. Morality evolves with society, and society assigns the moral value to the work in question.