Rhetoric and Persuasion vs. The Audience

Ok, I think I finally know what I want to write this first paper on.

In Chapter 3, Ramage talks about Rhetoric and Persuasion. SO, I think I want to write about how the audience gets sucked in to rhetoric because of propogandists, advertisers, lawyers, religious figures, authors, family, teachers... or anyone for that matter. I also want to get into how an audience can be "hurt" or misinformed by the use of rhetoric.

I don't know... it's hard to explain what I'm going to write about because I haven't written anything yet, and my paper will probably go in a completely different direction. I think that everytime I write a paper with one intention in mind, I come up with something better that I hadn't considered before writing. ...yeeaahhhh.

Anyway, on page 80, Ramage writes, "Rhetoric is always concerned with the effectiveness of arguments at persuading audiences, always operates under the assumption that people construct arguments in order to seek advantage of some sort and that ineffective arguments that fail to persuade audiences are more often deserving of judicious amendment than unswerving loyalty...." There's more to it but I really don't feel like typing it all out, but that's the paragraph that kind of made me come up with my paper idea.

Yeah, so I don't know if I've made any sense, but at least I'm starting to think about something to write about. I want to try to find another book or two that talks about rhetoric in this sense... and maybe they can explain it in a slightly less confusing way.

~Dani*