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.
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.
posted by Jessica Badger at
7:19 PM
3 Comments:
Hi, Jessica,
In thinking about your question about a topic related to science, I can think of at least two: perhaps you could look at how various rhetors have defined “truth”---I would think about Plato, Bacon, Campbell, Locke, Darwin, and Augustine in that regard. Or, you might look at the concept of “evidence”---artistic proofs (Aristotle) vs. observable details (Bacon) vs. sensory perceptions (Locke), vs. faith/Bible (Augustine) perhaps----you could probably tie in subpoints about objectivity and subjectivity, which would allow you to bring in more of the modernist perspective, too.
Cris
I can see how it would be frustrating to have to adopt the views of your audience in order to persuade them, but I think that you might also consider that if you are speaking to inform or to spark your audiences interest it is important to be yourself. If you are a politician trying to convince people to agree with you or a lawyer in a courtroom speaking to a jury then it would be very important to apeal to your audience. As a teacher we are trying to infrom and create interest among our students and much like animals they know when we are not being our true selves. Is it possible that the intention of the rhetoric determines the way that the rhetor addresses the audience?
Jessica,
To persuade your audience, must you "adopt your audience's behaviors" as you state in this post? I don't think it is necessary to adopt behavior as much as it is important to truly study the audience and what they stand for, believe in, agree with, disagree with, etc. While adopting behavior may be quite useful, it's not always ethical, which can be much more problematic than it's worth, as we all know! I imagine what you mean here is that we have to find those common places where we may already understand each other in order to build on places where we hope to instill the desire for change or improvement.
Emily
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home