Charles Vivian
AP Language
Mrs. Vanbrocklin
Journal for EGR
Chapter 1
Quote from the Story My Thoughts
People are being persuaded to act, think, and do certain things through language or symbols. And that process, perhaps, at least in part, is what makes up the study of rhetoric. (pg 3) I thought for a first page of a first chapter that this had a really solid, basic definition of “rhetoric.”
Consider this definition from The American Heritage Dictionary (pg 3) Again, I really like how they hit it off for beginners, explaining what rhetoric even is. I like that he has five or six common definitions of what it is on the page (variety of definitions makes it easier to understand if the definitions are simple).
A discourse can be any speech,
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Exigence is to understand what the situation is and why it needs to be changed. The audience is who is persuaded by the speaker to support this change. Constraints are what keeps the exigence from happening.
Chapter Four
Quote from the Story My Thoughts
Think about a decision you made, whether it was purchasing music or deciding what class to take or whom to date. (pg 35) The author explains that most decisions involved these three factors: logical (logos), emotional (pathos), and personal (ethos).
In rhetoric, topoi are the general forms that arguments take, regardless of their actual content. (pg 40) Again, lots of new words to learn. Topoi are the “forms” of the arguments. He further explains this by stating that the Greeks thought of arguments as things floating in space. If the speaker knows his way around the space, he can find the argument.
Presumption (pgs 44, 45) Presumption is what is used to decide who won an argument when the two speakers can no longer debate with each other. Sometimes it simply gets done to them telling each they are wrong because neither of them have any more facts to back them up. So that’s when presumption comes in and people decide who the winner was and who had the best