Rhetoric, Its Origins, and What I Expect to Do With It (For ENGL 5060)

What is rhetoric and why do I need to learn it? I didn’t exactly know the answer that question when I first started my English B.A. program, only really knowing that rhetoric was a derivation of rhetorical question. When learning about rhetoric when taking the First-Year Writing Program at Tech, I figured that rhetoric would mean an argument laid across when writing a paper or giving a speech. But after looking up rhetoric in a dictionary, I see that Webster or some facsimile describes rhetoric as “the art of speaking or writing effectively.” That definition sounds more apt than my broad guess at rhetoric's meaning, because the definition implies that rhetoric means writing a well-supported argument instead of just writing an argument or claim. Anyone can write down a simple opinion like “Climate change is real,” but that’s not necessarily rhetoric because said opinion does not explain why climate change is real to its perceived audience nor does it illustrate such a point with examples. If you can show your audience that the scribbled yammering that is your paper has solid evidence and can be relied on as something more than face value, then odds are good that your scribbled yammering can be identified as “rhetoric.”

            Of course, there can’t be a reasonable comprehension of rhetoric without knowing its history and the various people who helped shape the rhetoric of today. These various people are the philosophers of ancient Greece, including Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Such venerable Greek rhetoric like Plato’s dialogues and Aristotle’s Politics resonate with scholars and readers to this day. In addition to types of teaching that foster discussions among students being labeled as Socratic in reference to Socrates' leveled critical debates with colleagues, the Western world struggles between following Plato's philosophy of finding enlightenment through spiritualism and following Aristotle's philosophy of finding enlightenment through materialism. <http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/tip-sheet/article/60264-5-reasons-why-plato-and-aristotle-still-matter-today.html> Such proof confirms that the ancient Sophist musings are still the most influential works of rhetoric out there. Later writers like John Milton, Stanley Fish, and Friedrich Nietzsche also have their own resonant shaping of rhetoric; in fact, all literature from Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to Upton Sinclair's The Jungle can be argued to be rhetoric, since they contain messages that effectively reach audiences in one way or another.

            That being said, I suppose that I want to use this class’s content to delve deeper into how I can establish my creative writing and my formal writing into reachable rhetoric that effectively gains solid reactions from audiences. I’d like to learn what the strengths of my rhetoric are, as well as my rhetoric’s weaknesses by following the guidelines that I gain from this class and its assignments. Most importantly, I would like to use this course to learn the ropes as it were of being a teacher. When signing up for graduate school, I notified that I was interested in the Part-Time Instructor program, despite having little to no teaching experience. So I’d like to at least learn about the essential guidelines in terms of teaching an English course or composition course before I become a P.T.I. Other than that, I'm casually optimistic that this course will help me out with my career in writing and in rhetoric.