Rhetorical Situation

A time that I misjudged my rhetorical situation was when I was a new freshman back in August 2017. During the month of August, Texas Woman's University held multiple events for first-year students. One of the many events that I attended was Pioneer Camp. I remember sitting in my dorm room and reading through the Pioneer Camp pamphlet that I was given. I took note of the events that were being held during the week of Pioneer Camp that struck my interest. One of the many events that struck my interest was the involvement fair. I wanted to take advantage of this opportunity to meet new people and find organizations that I could possibly be involved in. I knew that this event would give me a glimpse of what the student involvement is like at Texas

Rhetoric is the study of how writers and speakers use words to influence an audience. Pathos, Logos, and Ethos are examples of rhetorical devices, where the rhetorician would appeal to an audience to prove a point. In both the Declaration of Independence and The American Crisis #1, the authors use several examples of rhetoric to persuade their audience in the 1700s, to separate themselves from England.

Rhetoric seems like a big word but the meaning is simple- persuasion. In the book Julius Caesar, Antony and Brutus, two major characters, are fantastic at persuading the Roman citizens. When one is reading the story, they might think that both have equal amounts but when you look closer, Antony has the better rhetoric strategies. In just a few short sentences, Antony convinced the people to believe that Caesar needed revenge even though he never came out and told them that. Just a couple of minutes ago, the citizens were on Brutus’s side and thought that Caesar needed to go.

Often times in daily life, a person will use rhetoric. Whether it’s arguing with a sibling or the sound of an alarm, rhetoric is in use. Rhetoric is effective persuasion and persuasion is swaying someone to do or believe in something. The reason rhetoric is important to be taught in school is because not only does it often show up in daily life but it can show up in the media as well.

In reference to the 100A assignment sheet for the rhetorical analysis, a rhetorical analysis is a written work that focuses on analyzing and understanding a published article. In this assignment, students will get opportunities to develop their writing and improve deep analytic skills to identifying rhetorical strategies that writers will use to achieve the purpose of a well-written document. The audience for this analytical paper will be my classmates, professor, and the committee members of the 100A.

Rhetoric is a form of writing that has a persuasive effect on the reader. The term pathos is a quality that evokes emotions and pity. Pathos is used in rhetoric writings because it allows the speaker to make a personal and emotional connection with the reader. Once an emotional connection is made, the speaker has a higher potential in gaining the support of the audience. The term logos means it is an appeal to logic. Logos is used in rhetoric because it enables the speaker to persuade its audience by connecting to their logic, or intellects. The term ethos is a form of persuasion that appeals to ethics and the credibility of the speaker. Ethos is used in rhetoric because it is a way of gaining the audience's trust in the speaker. Essentially,

“rhetorical discourse comes into existence as a response to a situation…the situation controls the rhetorical response…rhetoric is a mode of altering reality…by the creation of discourse which changes reality through the mediation of thought and action…Let us regard rhetorical situation as a natural context of persons, events, objects, relations, and an exigence which strongly invites utterance” (Philosophy & Rhetoric, Volume 1, 1 –

I exploring in rhetorical situation. I learned to know more in detail of rhetorical terms such as audience, exigence, intertexuality, kairos to apply in writing situation. These rhetorical terms help I guide my writing situation for example: I am using exigence in writing to persuade audience to believe in the existing problem. Also, rhetorical situation applied to Aristotle’s description rhetoric; logos, ethos, pathos. Author should apply Aristotle’s rhetoric to get audience’s attention. What I learned from Writing about writing book is rhetorical situations and their constituents is rhetorical situations may help students better understand and response to their rhetoric. There are so many languages are using to communicate, it could be how we use the language to response

Speaker, Occasion, Audience, Purpose, and Subject are 5 different interactions that is shown throughout literature. SOAPS is the acronym for these 5 interactions. Rhetoric is when you or someone were to be persuading a person with writing or speaking to them. Rhetoric is broken down into 3 different types of appeals which are ethos, logos, and pathos. Ethos means appeals to ethics-convincing someone with previous experience (Ex. Doctor), logos means appeals logic, and pathos is appeals to emotions. Both the rhetoric appeals and the 5 different interactions can be mixed into a form of writing. These 5 different interactions and the 3 different types of appeals can be found in variety of texts like the texts that had interactions with the moon landing in the late 1970s. Those of which are the printing press writing about the moon landing, a speech that was prepared by President Nixon if needed to be stated, a person stating his opinion of the rocket ship taking flight, and a drawing created to be a political cartoon.

Rhetoric gives you an avenue to tell a story from your perspective in a way that connects with the intended audience without having to be one hundred percent substantiated. This writing style is evident in almost everything we read from billboards to Internet ads and even political speeches.

Great writers appear in many different ways. Some people are great at creative writing, others are good at essays. Some people even get thousands of likes for making simple posts that others find relatable. A gifted bunch of people can write all well. What do these writers all have in common? They all understand how to use rhetoric, the art or skill of speaking or writing formally and effectively especially as a way to persuade or influence people (site). Below, you may see that I am able to understand rhetorical situation and adapt my posts to the environment it is to be viewed in.

No one wants to read a boring paper. It will make people tired within minutes. Most textbooks have no word or images that captivate their readers. That’s why people avoid reading them because there’s nothing fascinating about it. Writing about a topic that has conflict and visual literacy will keep the audience interested and wanting to read more about it. In a rhetorical situation, there are tones used for different types of audience. Rhetoric is used for different communities. It needs to be a reliable in a specific topic in order to communicate effectively.

Rhetoric is simply a form of communication -- a way to persuade, inform, or entertain someone with your words.

After reading the first couple of pages of the RWS 100 Course Reader and They Say/ I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing, I have gathered that rhetoric is a form of writing, thinking, or expressing ones ideas in a way that not only gets your point across, but allows your audience to develop their own ideas. Rhetoric is more like regular everyday conversation as you don't develop your ideas unless it is prompted by someone else; you are simply agreeing , disagreeing , or indifferent with what someone has just said. Rhetoric is different from what we learned in high school, in which we simply developed our own ideas. Rhetoric is used to develop your own ideas, but is sparked by the ideas of someone else. I am excited to learn more

Rhetoric is described as a way to pursuade someone to feel or think a certain way to benefit your beliefs whether they be true or not. Rhetorics are widely common in student essays, magazine articles and speeches. The good thing about rhetorics is that a person has the ability to voice their positioning on something, and tries to get others to open their mind to other possiblilties. The bad thing about rhetorics is that it’s an appeal to emotions, meaning it’s pursuasive, but not necisarily true.