Metamorphosis, Cookery, and Justice

“A Hoot in the Dark” is a rather apt title, as our beginning pages present Rhetoric as large, significant, and amazing, but shadowed from a clean-cut description. Thumbing back over the pages, following is a selection of the numerous definitions of Rhetoric I underlined:

· “…The energy inherent to communication: the emotional energy that impels the speaker to speak…” (Kennedy, 106)

· “…the diffusion of energy and the growth of information in communication.” (K, 117)

Moving on to the less Gambit-ty ones… (energy diffusion, anyone?)

· “Rhetoric…has to do with the production/interpretation of symbolic acts and usually has to do with persuasion.” (Ramage, 1)

· “Every symbolic act, including some that appear not to be symbolic…” (R, 9)

· “…a voluntary association of people on a more or less equal footing engaging in symbolic activity both for pleasure and enlightenment.” (R, 9)

· “Making the determination of what is possible in ‘any given circumstance’—in this particular time and place, for this particular audience in response to this particular sort of symbolic art—is what constitutes method in rhetoric.” (R, 16)

· “…an organized attempt to discover ambiguity and to use those discoveries to leverage new possibilities for meaning.” (R, 20)

· “A complex dialectical process in which two different ways of seeing the issue are tested against one another.” (R, 26)

· “…a means for generating ethical goods.” (R, 28)

Answering the prompt, the examples of rhetoric offered throughout the pages connect with my previous understandings, in that rhetoric is linked with persuasion and truth-deciding. The examples and readings, however, also altered my sense of the topic we prepare to undertake.  My foremost ideas of rhetorical persuasion were strongly methodic, but as I see through the differing presentations of rhetoric, it is not so much a cookbook with rules (ahh, cookery metaphors) as it is a cabinet from which to draw a plethora of different processes, ideas, means, manners, and styles, and apply them discretionarily, appropriately, and creatively. My mother often said, “Circumstances change things.” This communicates rhetorical purpose for me—that truth and the methods of revealing it are in motion, but worth finding still.

A story about rhetoric (I presume the prompt meant story loosely, as in narrative or

Ethics aren't always situational,
but take it from Cyanide and Happiness that context is key.

paradigm, but I’m telling a “real” story) that comes to mind occurred nearly six years ago, in my awkward tweenage times. I was arguing with a friend about something quite irrelevant now (implications of a graphic on my t-shirt), and became frustrated and flabbergasted upon recognizing that although I was right, she was the better arguer. At the time, it left me feeling defeated and caged. Now, it leads me to question the acquisition of knowledge and epistemological processes. If I was “proven wrong” at the time, did it actually alter my rightness? If I convince an assembly of people of something false, does it somehow become right? It is truth to them, and it is not difficult to argue that knowledge is subjective. Therefore, can untruth undergo a process of metamorphism and become truth? Weighty stuff.

Concurrently, I want to address the idea of “bad” rhetoric. If rhetoric is used for shameful means, does it inherently become criminal? Doubtful. I believe the same way a firearm can accomplish justice or create terror, we must look to the holder. We are here to study an art that allows us to understand: “The world is full of overlapping partial truths,” and the role of rhetoric and reason “is to figure out which is truest—most meaningful, most effective—in a given situation, setting the others aside for the time being, possibly holding them in reserve for a different occasion when one of them may be the more appropriate choice.” (Ramage, 10)

Ornithology isn’t my specialty, but I am excited to examine elements of this creature rhetoric.