Audrey Yoder

9/10/2017

Prof. Graves

What Rhetoric Means to Me

My initial experiences with writing are not particularly interesting, but they have shaped

my thought processes on what makes writing presentable and persuasive. I learned to read from a

fairly young age and have always carried an appreciation for good storytelling. As a younger

child I liked to read simplified abridged versions of classics, such as The War of the Worlds and

worked my way up to more time consuming and detailed books. By nine I read the entire Lord of

the Rings trilogy which I believe influenced my interest in fantasy and historical fiction novels. I

found these books so intriguing due to the vivid details and the scenes the authors were able to

create. It also helped that I came from a family that put value in reading, and my mother has

always kept full bookshelves, which gave me a variety to choose from. At the time I was able to

get away with shirking my less interesting subjects like math, which I still avoid for as long as

possible, for reading. I was intimidated with the aspect of writing however and although I had

generally been able to maneuver essays, I had until senior year of high school always dreaded the

aspect of starting one. As a child I never got into any kind of creative writing, which is almost

ironic seeing as there were a few poets on my mothers side of the family.

My writing style did not see many drastic improvements during middle school, and

although I know I did read somewhat during that time nothing quite stands out. High school

however, gave me a fairly decent platform of knowledge on writing that I believe has prepared

me for college. It was in my first AP English class that I learned about rhetorical writing themes.
There I was introduced to ethos, logos, and pathos which I still consider when I read persuasive

texts. It was during that time that I realized writing was much more methodical and formulaic

that I had originally thought. My Ap teacher introduced our class on how to make effective

outlines depending on the type of writing we would do whereas before I was not used to creating

multiple drafts. These drafts and outlines helped to categorize what I was writing by giving a

solid structure to work off of. The rhetorical ideals shaped the way I thought about writing, and

now I see that in order to create a strong argument, one must be able to effectively incorporate

reasoning, emotional investment and credibility to their writing. It showed me writing has a

strong balance of all three of these themes, and in class we would strengthen this idea by

analyzing different types of texts to see where the author placed them into his/her argument.

Having this formula to work with made me interested with rhetoric, which in turn allowed me to

become comfortable with writing.

I remember one class discussion in particular that influenced the way I think how

rhetoric is used. My AP teacher Mr. Harbin asked the class to decide to for ourselves, Is

rhetoric used constantly in our daily lives or is it something that we only purposely use to

persuade?. This question appeared to have the class divided. During the discussion a student

who believed that rhetoric was only used to intentionally persuade gave an example stating, Not

every conversation we have needs rhetoric, say for example ordering food off of a menu at a

restaurant, you are not trying to persuade anyone of anything. Another student sitting across

from me then refuted his statement by saying, Its not rhetoric in the conventional sense but

you are trying to convince that person to listen to you and take your order, every interaction

requires someone to listen. This back and forth left an impression on me because I could see the

valid points both sides were making, and it got me to think more about rhetoric on my own.
 Due to my interest in the topic, I resonated with Victor Villanueva's development and his

appreciation for rhetoric in his book Bootstraps. Villanueva sees rhetoric as a form of power and

writes down his thoughts on the subject, So much of what we do when we speak or write is

suasive in intent. So much of what we receive from others...is intended to persuade. Recognizing

how this is done gives greater power to choose. But rhetoric is still more. Rhetoric is the

conscious use of language. I especially liked this statement of his because Villanueva describes

rhetorica as a tool that can be improved upon . However unlike Villanueva I believe that rhetoric

is used in our daily lives, in our conversations, in our writing, it is there whether we intentionally

incorporate it or not. For example, using the statement from earlier, even in casual conversations

we use rhetoric by trying to convince others to listen or pay attention to what we are saying. A

teacher uses rhetoric when lecturing in class, we use it when conversing with friends or talking to

coworkers.

Over the past year my appreciation for rhetorical writing has grown, even if I was

academically indifferent during my high school years. It was not writing intensive classes that

have given me a more positive outlook, but rather my science courses from when I had originally

planned to be a biology major last year. Of course introductory biology and chemistry courses

may not be stacked with writing, but when they were assigned it would be in the form of a

immensely dry scientific report. These reports were made to follow a rigid outline with almost no

freedom to deviate. This may sound ideal to some, but to me it was ghastly. Scientific writing

felt like it only allowed for two of the rhetorical themes: logos, and ethos. It always felt like there

was not enough there to hold a persons attention, though most would say that pathos has no

place in a lab report. However this is not to say that scientific writing is not rhetorical, given the

scientific communitys intended audience in this instance professors, patho may just be used in a
 different sense. After all, pathos is how you are able to connect to your audience; in a scientific

paper writing precise and clear facts is the best way to prove your point. I hold an appreciation

for science but soon realized it was not for me, by that point I had begun to miss the type of

writing I had done in my AP classes during high school. At the end of freshman year I was ready

to go back to standard essays, and I will be happy if I never write a scientific report again.

Though I by no means consider myself a skilled writer, I believe that it is important for

everyone to encounter rhetorical writing sometime in their academic career. Thinking of

rhetorical themes when reading has personally helped me think about my own writing and

enables a more in depth analysis when reading persuasive pieces.

Citations:

Villanueva, Victor. Bootstraps: from an American academic of color. Urbana, IL, National

Council of Teachers of English, 1993.