Blog 2- What is Rhetoric?

Throughout my high school career, I constantly was presented with the question of what rhetoric was and how it was used to get a specific message across to an audience of readers.  Through workshops and class discussions, I developed a general idea of what rhetoric was and how to detect certain techniques in an author’s piece.  As I came to learn, rhetoric was a type of persuasive language that was construed through various types of figurative language.  Seen in nearly every speech I ever read and various articles, techniques such as logos, pathos, and ethos constantly being added in helped to boost the argument of the speaker or author and make a more real-life connection to their audiences.   Taking AP Literature and Composition definitely exposed me to more complex forms of rhetoric and taught me how to detect more difficult types of rhetoric such as an antithesis, allusions, and anaphora. 

This week, after reading Herndl and Brown’s “Introduction to Green Culture: Environmental Rhetoric in Contemporary America,” I was introduced to a different type of rhetoric regarding the environment and how figurative speech has an effect on the world as we know it.  I was introduced to concepts such as “ethnocentric ethos” which describes nature as a resource, “ecocentric pathos” which describes nature as a spirit, and “anthropocentric logos” which describes nature as an object. The use of these writing techniques creates rhetoric. Every time an author uses a technique mentioned above in their writing of the environment it, in a way, personifies nature, allowing for the audience to see an importance in protecting it and making the world an eco-friendlier place.

In reading “Inflategate” there was an emphasis on the importance of using strong rhetoric when discussing things such as concussions.  Getting across the danger of these things makes it crucial for strong, and the right type of rhetoric to be utilized.  Rhetorical devices will be changed depending on the topic at hand and the audience. It is important when writing, to pick and choose how to use certain rhetorical techniques in order to create the strongest argument possible and truly speak to your audience.