Response to Ch 6 in ARCS

For this week’s reading response, I decided to focus on Aristotle’s notion of character and how “…rhetors can invent a character suitable to an occasion-this is invented ethos” and “….if rhetors are fortunate enough to enjoy a good reputation in the community, they use it as an ethical proof this is situated ethos” (Crowley and Hawhee, 198).   I find invented ethos to be rather interesting because it reminds me of the old saying, “fake it till you make it”. The text, “Ancient Rhetoric’s” also discusses how character is created from the voice of the rhetorician. I believe voice is absolutely vital in attempting to persuade your audience and we can see this in many historical and present day speeches. In the rest of my blog this week, I will briefly examine a well known speech by Martin Luther King in regards of character, ethos, and voice, and finish up by explaining why character is essential not only in speaking, but in life in general.

Of course we all have heard and seen Martin Luthor King’s well known speech “I Have a Dream”, so I’m not going to talk about the context of it, but I will quickly detail how he performed his speech through great ethos, style, and voice.  In this case, King has situated ethos because he was already an important leader in the African American civil rights movement.  Throughout the speech, King uses the term “we” quite frequently to gather his audience with him as one. This is a prolific use of style that ultimately allows his audience to get on the same harmony as King. Confident voice is also important in oral speaking, and King integrates this in his speech very well.                                              

When we think of Martin Luther King’s, “I Have a Dream” speech, we always will remember it with his dominant voice.  In the text, “Ancient Rhetoric’s states “Voices affect the rhetorical distance that can seem to exist between rhetors and their audiences” (Crowley and Hawhee, 213). The King had definitely developed a relationship with his audience in the way he spoke; therefore he was experiencing a intimate distance, resulting in closer Identification and more persuasive potential.  Finally, good character is fundamental trait to have not only in speech, but in everyday life as well.

 I believe character is the sum of all a person’s parts, and what we perceive of him/her.  While I was in high school football, my head coach would always preach to the team about having good character. I was adamant about having good character throughout the rest of my senior season and school year.  Ever since then for the most part I have attempted to live my life with high spirits, a positive attitude, and stress free.  I’m not just bull crapping you either. Seriously, wake up tomorrow before class, and tell yourself, “Today is going to be a great day”. I guarantee you will have a great day.

Reflection on Imitatio

Reflection of Imitatio

Before I began this assignment it was important for me to become familiar with the theory of imitation.  I stumbled upon a web document that detailed the mimetic theory. I found that “Human beings imitate each other in everything, including desire. As a result they choose the same objects and compete for them” (Girard).  This is a rather interesting concept to grasp because it refers to imitation as a result of competition. In this case, humans constantly emulate each other in everything they do; hence eventually, leading humans to reprisal.  After further understanding, I wanted to imitate a speech that incorporated the theme of war, and revenge. I decided to pick an ancient Roman speech performed by Alexander the Great around 335 B.C. in India.                                                                                                                                               While analyzing a short excerpt from Alexander’s speech, I established that he utilized one of Aristotle’s rhetorical devices quite frequently, pathos; thus making it fairly simple for me to begin to structure and develop my own replication of the dialogue.  To formulate an imitation of the original speech, the process I went through consisted of sentence by sentence reconstruction.  Therefore, I would take a section of the original and elaborate on specific details depending on the context of the sentence. Because this speech was based on war and revenge, the amount of pathos was easily identifiable, ultimately allowing me to write and perform my speech with great emotion.   For example, towards the beginning of the original speech when Alexander asserts, “You and I, gentlemen, have shared the labour and shared the danger, and the rewards are for us all” (Alexander), I justified this by positioning myself as a leader of my army (class), and we had just won a war against bed bugs. Overall, the whole procedure in regards of step one to this assignment was relatively unproblematic for me.  Subsequently, step two was the most enjoyable and erudite part of this assignment.                                                              As far as understanding the original speech by Alexander the Great, I researched that he had exhausted his army after conquering most of Greece and Egypt. But, through the art of rhetoric and persuasion, Alexander was able to convince his armies of a new battle that offered an even greater reward. I kept this in heavy consideration while I planned an emotional scheme to assist me in my presentation.  I took pride in performing my entire speech and I focused on providing the audience with excitement through the tone of my voice as if I were Alexander the Great himself.   I discovered that the experience of step two made me appreciate pathos as an extremely helpful tool in oral speaking. I found out that not only did the use of pathos intrigue my audience, but it allowed me to remain calm, confident, and compose myself in a manner to successfully present my speech. Although ancient rhetoric might seem obsolete today, it is still employed in all human discourse.                                                                                                                                            Today, the translation of ancient rhetoric to modern times has allowed humans to understand and use rhetoric not only in oral speaking, but in every aspect of culture. For instance, time and practice in the study of rhetoric has allowed humans to engage the field in different ways. Rhetoric is everywhere: advertisement, political campaigns, old war speeches, courtrooms, classrooms etc. However, the root of rhetoric and the rhetorical devices of persuasion (pathos, ethos, and logos), have remained the same. From the words of a well known rhetorician and Greek philosopher, Aristotle once urged, “…all men make use, more or less, of both; for to a certain extent all men attempt to discuss statements and to maintain them, to defend themselves and to attack others” (Bizzell, and Herzberg, 179). When confrontation arises, people assess from past experiences on how to successfully argue their point or defend themselves, depending on the given situation.  Human’s still do this today, and will continue to do this until the end of time. It is the human endeavor to constantly advance in their effectiveness of persuasion, but the essential theories of rhetoric from ancient times to present will always remain the same.  

References:

Bizzel, Patricia, and Bruce Herzberg. The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings From Classical Times    to the Present. 2nd ed. Boston New York: Bedford/St. Martin, 2001. Print.

Girard, Rene. "Account of Mimetic Theory." Imitatio. Rene Girard, 2009. Web. 20 Sep 2010.             <http://www.imitatio.org/about-imitatio/about-imitatio.html>.

Response to revenge, victory, and pleasure

Lines 1369 to 1371 of From Rhetoric in “The Rhetorical Tradition” elaborate on pleasant to quite an excess. It states “Everything too, is pleasant for which we have the desire within us, since desire is the craving for pleasure” (From Rhetoric 202).  This statement is very true to life in my opinion because we as humans, desire satisfaction. We can’t even count the amount of things in this world that bring us pleasure; the list of pleasure is endless. Throughout the rest of this blog I will briefly analyze and discuss the short section on revenge, and victory in “The Rhetorical Tradition”, and finally finish with why pleasure will ultimately allow humans to live longer.

Revenge is an interesting concept. “The Rhetorical Tradition”, applies revenge to pleasure, “…it is pleasant to get anything that is painful to fail to get, and angry people suffer extreme pain when they fail to get their revenge; but they enjoy the prospect of getting it” (From Rhetoric 203). It is funny to think of how the process of revenge brings pleasure, but the satisfaction of it almost makes you feel guilty. Placing this in context might make a little more sense. For example, imagine yourself squirting Easy Cheese into your friend’s sleeping bag because a few hours earlier he threw your shoes in the lake. We have all heard of the saying, two wrongs don’t make a right. We all enjoy the humor of the Easy Cheese, but when all said and done; your inner self may be reluctantly telling you that that was a little harsh.                                   

Victory also creates pleasure within us. We all love to win,“…the winner sees himself in the light of a champion and everybody has a more or less keen appetite for being that” (203). Not many people enjoy loosing, that’s a weak statement, let me rephrase that. Not one person enjoys loosing. Dating back to 335 B.C. with Alexander the Great, victory is what fueled the souls of his armies.  If Alexander himself and his armies never experienced victory throughout their journey, the elation of his armies would have been minimal, resulting in an end of their campaign. We can see how victory plays a heavy role on our emotions.  Likewise, pleasure plays a heavy role on our emotions.                                                                                      

Have you ever heard of the concept about how if you smile more, you will live longer? I believe this to be very true. We as humans need pleasure and joy once in a while to aid, and comfort our lives. The physical fact of smiling and the feeling of excitement affect’s mental health, and promotes longevity in our lives.  Overall, we see how revenge and victory impacts our emotions of pleasure, in essence increasing our lifespan.    

Engl 360: Response to Plato's Phaedrus

Engl 360: Response to Plato's Phaedrus: "For this weeks reading response, I found Plato's Phaedrus about the art of rhetoric to be one of the easier, yet interesting section of RT t..."

Response to Plato's Phaedrus

For this weeks reading response, I found Plato's Phaedrus about the art of rhetoric to be one of the easier, yet interesting section of RT to read. Although I dread classical writing, it was quite interesting to see how the art of  persuasion in ancient times, has remained very similar to the process of persuasion today.

The Phaedrus is a dialogue written by Plato with two men, Socrates and Phaedrus. The discussion between the two men, focus's around the art of rhetoric. In the Phaedrus, Socrates explains to Phaedrus how to successfully influence the soul through words. In this case, Socrates states "To influence the soul, the rhetor must know the truth. To know the truth, the rhetor must first make distinctions among things, that is he must analyze- and then he must be able to recombine his ideas, he must synthesize" ( Plato 85). Socrates is a master of speech!  I found this to be very similar to the way I would prep myself before attempting to persuade my roommate to help clean our apartment. Again, since my comprehension level for classical writing is rather novice, I decided to implement the context into my everyday life.

I am a master at the art of persuasion now. These are the steps I would take before approaching my roommate in order to successfully persuade him into cleaning the apartment. First ask yourself, whats the truth? Well the truth is that our apartment cannot clean itself, and I certainly wont do it myself all the time, I need his help. Next, we analyze. I can remember when we lived in our old apartment, never once did he vacuum, sweep, or wipe counters. Even when we had to clean the apartment at the end of the year, you left without cleaning a thing.  Finally, we synthesize, I organize all of the times where he never helped to clean in the past and remember to say those ideas carefully. While this is a simple, yet silly way to prep yourself for persuasion, we can see how Socrates steps are actually very similar to the way people persuade today.

Furthermore, Socrates makes a solid point towards the end of Phaedrus. He argues "...in effect, that a written text can only remind us of what we already know: that is, it depends on contextual information for its interpretation. Oral dialogue between congenial souls is far superior to writing because it can lead to truth" (Plato 85). Many people are afraid to write the truth because it is extremely hard to fight your argument through text. For example, (relating back to roommate) If I were to text him to help clean the apartment once in a while because he never does, my voice is not there to back up what I'm trying to get across. In essence, the sound of emotion in one's voice will help bring out the truth (meat) of what you are attempting to persuade.