Reading 1: “Rhetoric: Making Sense of Human Interaction and Meaning-Making” by Doug Downs
Reading 2: “Argument as Emergence, Rhetoric as Love” by Jim W. Corder
Choice: I decided to read this essay by Corder because I was intrigued as to in what way rhetoric could be considered loving.
Summaries: Both of these essays express the different ways one could approach argumentative writing. In “Rhetoric: Making Sense of Human Interaction and Meaning-Making,” Downs describes the different ways in which rhetoric is embedded into our daily lives and how being bias is part of our human nature. He also discusses motivation, rhetoric situations, and the different ways in which people make their arguments convincing. In “Argument as Emergence, Rhetoric as Love,” Corder compares rhetoric to personal narratives and argues that rhetoric should be passionate, yet caring. Corder makes this argument by emphasizing the importance of ethos and entering an argument with a will to discover a solution, rather than simply a will to fight.
Prompt 2: Both of these essays really got me thinking about ethos and how to apply it to an argument while also being passionate. This is a balance I’ve struggled with anytime I had to do argumentative writing because sometimes I think my voice might come off as condescending, which is something that frustrates me because I don’t typically have a very skeptical view of the world, I guess until I sit down and think about it. I try to combat this concern by thinking of the ways in which different authors appeal to me in persuasion and by thinking of how my audience will react to my voice. In “Rhetoric: Making Sense of Human Interaction and Meaning-Making” Downs states that “Ethos ultimately addresses the question, how does who you are influence what you’re saying and how others should respond? (475), and this quote reminded me to involve my personality in my argumentative writing as well as my voice, because it turns out that sometimes my writing voice doesn’t actually accurately represent who I am. In “Argument as Emergence, Rhetoric as Love,” Corder states that “A genuinely provocative and evocative ethos does, in fact, hold the audience wholly in mind, does view matters both as the arguer sees them and as others see them” (616), and this also reminded me to refer to my audience in a positive way. These techniques are things that I will definitely keep in mind as I begin to write my argumentative blog post for ENGL 324.
Prompt 7: I thought that “Rhetoric: Making Sense of Human Interaction and Meaning-Making” was a really helpful reading that enabled me to better understand argumentative writing, and I can definitely see myself using this essay to introduce a class to rhetoric. In my future classes I would like to have students explore rhetorical writing through creating an argumentative blog post, and I think that reading this essay would help show students how to make a persuasive argument, rather than just a convincing argument. Throughout this essay, Downs emphasizes the reactions of the body when faced with a narrative that challenges our ideas and ways of life, and I think students will relate perfectly to this experience, and this will show them how to be passionate, yet respectful in argument. I would also want to point out to students the reference Downs makes to the rhetorician George Campbell and Campbell’s ideas stating that, “[...] to move people to action, Campbell said, they can’t just think --- they have to feel, literally in their guts, the problem” (472). I think that this quote will show students the importance of the concept, show don’t tell, in narrative as well as show them the importance of emotional appeals. Since this essay is a little long and kind of advanced, I think it would be best suited to 11th graders and I might even consider reading sections of this essay aloud to them during class as they follow along, so I know they are getting the information. Reading aloud to students is something my mentor teacher at Derry has talked to me about, and she says that this technique is a great way to ensure that both visual and auditory learners are being immersed in any text.
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