Rhetoric Chapter One

1) Hello everyone! My name is Beth. I am a Sec. Ed. English major. This is my fourth year of college, but only my second at Kutztown. Although I should graduate this year, I still have a couple more semesters to go. I have a daughter that will be two on Friday, so that always keeps my life interesting.

2) I have not completely finished reading the first chapter one of our book , but what I have read has been very interesting. I was not aware that rhetoric was such a complicated subject matter. I have always only thought of the word in connection with political aspects, such as Ramage describes on pages 7-8. However, this reading showed me that this subject was much more complex. I liked the way that Ramage took the side of an Anti-Rhetoric Spokesperson for the first pages. I think by doing this, he was able to give a clear presentation of how Anti-Rhetoric person views rhetoric. I also liked how he describes rhetoric as a disregarding of the thought that everything is either real and true or unreal and false. As he discribes on page ten, in all of our conversations, we each decide what which one of our thoughts we should or should not say at that particular moment. This is a very different view of rhetoric that I have ever held. I have always associated the word rhetoric with lies, but after reading this, I see that we each use a form of rhetoric whenever we talk to each other. His discussion of using past experiences to guide you or simply following a specific map was interesting. I like how he presents the views for both sides that most people hold in the extremes, and he then conbimes them and delivers a more realistic view of how Rhetorical people and Anti-Rhetorical think. This makes his views easier to understand.