Chapters one and two

G’day. I’m Emily #1. (The one with the curly hair). I’m a senior procrastination major. Uh I mean writing major. I love photography, adventure, sunshine, reading, Rita’s, Mistos, and the outdoors. Unfortunately, I’m not outside as often as I’d like so I have to bring the outdoors inside with me. I have eight plants in my dorm room.

Comments on the first chapter.
Judging by the aesthetically boring cover, I thought I was getting a no-nonsense guide on how to use rhetoric effectively, but instead I got philosophy. Confusing philosophy. I really did try to under stand it-- I used a dictionary for like every other word until I got too lazy and gave up on that idea Ramage made his concepts of rhetoric very inaccessible for simple people like myself. Throughout his endless sentences, I felt very much like the kid reaching for the cookie jar on the top shelf. No matter how hard I tried to stretch myself, the cookie jar was out of reach. Needless to say, his book completely contradicts the commonly taught commandment that states writing needs to be clear, concise and simple.

On the other hand, maybe the haziness was intentional. Perhaps Ramage was fully aware of those writing commandments but he wanted to question the reader’s expectations of good writing. While today’s readers generally demand clear, concise writing, the readers of the Victorian era fancied confusing, flowery language. Regardless, it seems like Ramage wanted question the status quo. Perhaps he thought confusing language would strengthen his argument.

Comments on the second chapter
Okay, now that I have listened to Ramage’s writing for two chapters, I’m getting a tad bit more used to it. Although I don’t always understand where he’s coming from or where he’s going, I find his observations about rhetoric, life, or Harley’s rather interesting.

Ramage seems to suggest we cannot completely rely on pure logic to describe an object, but also on other attributes like association and context. First Ramage suggests that in order to understand something, we need to look at in its entire context. For instance that elderly lady in the grocery store might not see her husband as an old man with a cane who takes Metamucil tablets at 6:00pm, but rather the charming creature she fell in love with when she was eighteen. Also, to understand something fully, we cannot rely on a dictionary definition, but rather associations, connotations, metaphors and pictures. (This is pretty fun for artzy people).

Ramage uses the second chapter to build onto his arguments in the first chapter. He states that people and words are constantly evolving like truth. Okay, that’s an interesting philosophy, but I’m curious to see how this will tie with rhetoric.