I have discovered that I may indeed edit posts after the fact, so there is no reason not to start this early.
My impressions of the word "rhetoric" prior to reading the assigned reading are the following:
My limited experience, mostly through books and movies, of the word "rhetoric", has shined a negative light upon it. The immediate definition that comes to mind is "using language to manipulate logic to convince people of an argument".
Wikipedia's definition of rhetoric is the following: "the art or technique of persuasion through the use of oral language."
So I'm not too far off from what they have to say, except my word "manipulation" certainly adds a nice touch of cynicism.
The way I see it, a computer can use logic, but not rhetoric. For example: my friend plays
nomic, a game that allows the players to create and change the rules of the game (including, for instance, the rules that determine how to win). He had been playing
blognomic for a while, in which people post in blog-style proposals for new rules. He then switched over to
perlnomic, in which players propose and enact new rules using the scripting language Perl. Using blognomic, the ambiguities of English allowed users to manipulate the rules based on how they are phrased. This is impossible with perlnomic, because the programming language makes everything completely unambiguous.
So, I suppose my point is that anything that tries to persuade by using things other than just pure logic is by nature unfair, and, well, illogical.
But I'll see what the reading has to say about this...
Ah, I see. Well, based mainly on the Herrick readings, I have reached the following conclusions:
I believe in the good of argument, one component of rhetoric. It brings up points the audience may not have considered, and it advances the overall knowledge of the people involved.
However, I believe that the other components of rhetoric as put forth by Herrick--appeals, arrangement, and aesthetics--have no value other than as an art form. Using them to persuade seems to me to be nothing but trickery. They are a glamour, a spell used to disguise the truth in the argument.
Any point about which one would wish to persuade can be broken up into the following two categories: first, it could be a point in which there is an absolute truth, wherein there is a
right decision and a
wrong decision. In these cases, obviously logic should predominate, and the use of anything else to persuade simply clouds the issue.
The second case is one in which there is no absolute truth. In this case, it must be up to each person to decide him or herself what is "right". Of course, information may still be useful to them in making this decision, so argument is still a fair tool in this case. By listening to the argument and making arguments themselves, each person may advance his or her view of what is right. However, in this case, relying on appeals, arrangement, and aesthetics to convince someone of a point, does nothing but manipulate them away from what
they actually believe in.
So, I have reached two main conclusions from the readings: first of all, rhetoric as a tool for persuasion is not all bad, however, its only redeeming quality for the purpose of persuasion is argument. The only use of aesthetics or arrangement that may actually
help is in making the point more clear.
Second, although I believe that arrangement, appeals, and aesthetics have no place (other than promoting clarity) in persuasion, they are still a valid art form and are perhaps worth study. A great speech can be great not only for its persuasive nature, but also for its beauty in language, in which those three "A's" can help a great deal.
