Rhetoric: Cover Letter

The meaning of the word rhetoric has changed for me a lot throughout the course of one unit. At first glance I understood it as the art of tricking people into thinking what you want them to think, but deception and half truths. But then, as the unit progressed I realized that rhetoric is all about abolishing those first impressions that humans naturally have and looking deeply into an argument to understand another person. Most people see things purely on a superficial level and judge arguments based only on their conclusions and do not stop to watch the process of the arguments and consider its truths.
The bases of rhetoric began with the concept of a controlling value and a context and a purpose. As readers we must learn to look for the authors controlling value in their writing and to understand it before we understand the point of their work. As people we must look for the controlling value or worldview of other people around us and attempt to understand them through the light of what they believe. The Campbell, Joy, and Gallop essays were used to develop the skill of recognizing and being open to the controlling value of others. The next step was taking these same essays and learning how to accurately represent them as a summary. This taught me the ethics of reading and writing. An author has made a point and it is wrong to misrepresent their point by using information of theirs in an essay of your own to prove a different point, even if it is properly cited. The concept of ethics has much to do with respecting and accurately representing others which can be applied to everyday life and not just academics or writing.
The next step was recognizing the arguments and being able to map them out to organize them in order to understand what the author is saying. Using the pieces of writing in the book “Conversations”, opposing arguments on different subjects were analyzed and mapped. The argument I chose was racial discrimination in the current justice system of the United States. Again, I found that I approached the situation with an opinion and was determined not to be swayed on that opinion. However, the more I mapped an analyzed the arguments I realized that either view could be true based purely on the arguments of the author.
The last step was learning to look at the argument through the perspective of the intended audience. This was a very crucial step in learning about rhetoric for me because until this point I was unable to see the validity of most of the authors’ arguments. However, once I became familiar with the audience I learned that the arguments contained some valid points, they just did not appeal to me because I was not the intended audience.
By putting all these steps together, we were able to write a paper about rhetoric, using rhetoric. This included making all the types of rhetorical appeals as well as writing to an audience with the intention of convincing them of the usefulness and benefits of rhetoric. By understanding rhetoric I am able to understand people and their thoughts and opinions.