toulmin

The section on Toulmin was pretty interesting because in one of my classes we are covering toulmin arguments and writing essays using his rhetoric style. It's interesting how today most people only care about arguments and reasoning instead of the quality of the information quality. The style Toulmin uses leans towards logos appeals. It makes sense though because if you make an argument seem reasonable people will accept it and support it whether the information is right or wrong. I think you see a lot of arguments made in this style primarily among politicians and political candidates.  

Modern and Post-Modern Rhetoric intro

 `In RT the introduction to Modern and Post-Modern Rhetoric covers the twentieth century and the decline of rhetoric as an academic discipline. However rhetoric was also revived in the form of discourse which involves acceptance of language as a social behavior. One of the ways this change affected learning institutions was the change in focus from literature rhetoric to speech. The use of oral rhetoric to gain recognition and to have your voice heard became the focus. The chapter also covers the use of philosophy in order to understand rhetoric. I feel like this use is especially apparent in arguments that use the reasoning, “If a is b and b is c then a is c.”. One type of philosophy that has a strong influence on rhetoric is semantics. If using semantics you have to analyze the mental behavior of the audience to realize whether they will take something you say in the way it is meant or not. If a rhetor chose to make a sarcastic comment or a joke to the wrong sort of audience it could cause he/she to lose support from that group of people. One of the biggest differences between early rhetoric and this new twentieth century form is that the old form is considered mainly a use of persuasion, whereas in the new form rhetoric is a foundation of knowledge that persuades on its own.  

Chapter 12

 Chapter 12 is all about oral discourse and the delivery of a written rhetoric as well as the history of one. The author gives a brief introduction about how oral delivery was a common method in the days of Aristotle due to the fact that most people were unable to write. This led to the oral delivery being crucial in an argument. The problem with this was that whoever was reading the rhetoric could completely alter the piece just by adjusting the delivery which angered many rhetors such as Aristotle because it detracted from their work.

Ethos is a valuable part of oral delivery because everything you do physically affects the ethos. If you raise your voice you could be considered angry or excited whereas if you avoid eye contact the audience might find you distrustful. Hand gestures are another important piece, a lot of people say they talk with their hands and this is no exaggeration. The types of movements you make and the speed can tell the audience what your tone is and how they should be responding to your delivery. One of the ways that rhetors were able to preserve their voice in writing was in the creation of punctuation which was non-existent in early years. By putting a period or exclamation mark in the writing the rhetor could dictate how the piece was read keeping the delivery how it was intended by the writer.

Another important piece of literary rhetoric is the imagery in the writing. By using certain words that are descriptive and vivid you can put the reader in the shoes of the writer and make it feel like they are almost there. This type of relation can be extremely useful because of the strong ethos effect it has on the audience in helping them relate.  

Chapter 11

 In the beginning of chapter 11 the author tells the story of Simonides and relates it to Kairos. The gods Castor and Pollux are used as an example of Kairos because they sent a message for Simonides to come outside at the opportune moment which saved the mans life from the building falling in. However the main purpose of the chapter is to demonstrate how memory is related to the concept of Kairos. The chapter relates how Kairos and memory are alike in many ways, both require an attunment with the audience, they can make or break an argument, and the are the solid foundation for oral arguments.

Another concept discussed is the difference between and artificial memory and a natural memory. Even today this is a very applicable concept of learning and memory. A natural memory is what we use every day to recall certain situations or things people have said. An artificial memory is how we train our brain to remember things, for example associating a memory with a song would be an artificial memory. In a way artificial memory is the equivalent of studying. The most famous practitioners of artificial memory were the sophists and one in particular by the name of Hippias. He was known for his amazing ability to recollect extensive information and names. One type of memory is cultural memory which is a communal memory such as family stories or poems created to pass down memories through generations. Another type of memory is organizational memory in which we use a sequence to remember information, such as counting or the alphabet and associating that sequence with a memory such as fingers or food with the same first letter. Lastly we use literacy to remember things by recording them in books, electronicly, and paraphrasing so that we can return to the idea and recall it from our memory.  

Chapter 10

 Chapter 10 of ARCS discusses the third cannon of rhetoric known as style. One of the important figures in the history of rhetoric and style is Gorgia's who was credited with the discovery that extra ordinary uses of language were useful in not only poetry but prose. This ornament of language is useful in exciting emotion the audience and creating a mental sketch of the argument instead of explaining it. The main purpose of the chapter is to discuss the many ways that rhetors enhanced their ethos. By enhancing that ethos the rhetors were able to become closer to the audience which make it easier for the audience to support the argument if they take a personal stance in it. Another tool used by the rhetors is the trick of reasoning by question and answer. This trick allows the speaker to repeat their position more than once as well as state an opposing view or question the audience may have. You hear much of this in politics today and religious speeches especially where the speaker is trying to move the audience into an emotional frenzy. The question and answer trick is also commonly used in inspirational speeches such as pre game by coaches. I know I personally have heard my coaches ask us if we are going to lose and then answer his own question with a loud “No!” in order to get us all riled up and the truth is it works.  

RT Enlightenment

 In this reading the author discusses how rhetoric developed from the 17^th to 19^th centuries and how the conception of rhetoric evolved during that period. One concept that was discussed was the theory presented by Francis Bacon on how the brain is divided into three faculties of memory, imagination, and reasoning. The author talks about how his theory that reasoning could move imagination which in turn would move will. The author states that this is not true which I agree with seeing how we tell people everyday things are bad for them such as smoking and yet people still do it, even with the imagination producing images of what can happen if they continue to smoke.

Also brought into discussion was the 18^th century Elocution movement during which there was a heavy focus on correctness in language pronunciation. I think that this is visible in many older movies that I have watched. Like the book said it was also a sign of class whereas it isn't so much today. If you were of a certain class you were expected to speak gentlemanly with your pronunciation. Today there are many people of high-class that have terrible pronunciation and grammar. For example many hip hop artists speak and pronounce words so badly that it could almost be considered another language.  

Essay 2

Travis Porter

Engl 360

10/20/2011

Essay 2

The Printing Press and Rhetoric

Elizabeth Eisenstein was an American historian during the early 19^th century and was known for her historical study of print, writing, and the first study of the transition between manuscript to print. She took a particular interest in one important factor of this transition, the printing press. The first printing press was developed by a German named Johannes Gutenberg around 1450. This machine was probably the most influential tool of rhetoric ever created.

Before the creation of the printing press all text and print was hand written as manuscripts by hired individuals. If copies of this manuscript were wanted the author had to have it re written each time which led to discrepancies and errors between texts. This process was also slow and a highly inefficient way to spread any kind of knowledge or rhetoric among the population. The Renaissance printing press on the other hand, could produce three thousand and six hundred pages a day. Each of these pages being written the same exact way with the same exact text. As you can imagine this had a great deal of influence on rhetoric and the rate it could be used to bombard an audience. The book written by Elizabeth called “The Printing Press as an Agent of Change”, analyzes these effects cause by the printing press and shows how it led to the advancement of rhetoric.

In Elizabeth Eisenstein's book “The Printing Press as an Agent of Change”, she talks about how much study has been done on the developments that led to the printing press and how it has become such a successful tool today.(Eisenstein 4) However she states that her main focus in her book is to explain the consequences of such a device. There is even a cited passage in her text from a writer stating that “The Immense and revolutionary change which it (the invention of printing) brought about can be summarized in one sentence: Until that time every book was a manuscript.”. This statement alone is a statement of ignorance. I personally have not spent much time in the study of rhetoric or history of the printing press for that matter, but even I can say this is a bullshit statement. The printing press gave those skilled rhetors a very powerful tool that allowed them to reach farther and be accessible longer than ever before.

One of the ways this revolutionary machine affected rhetoric was that it allowed a piece of writing to reach anywhere in the world in a short amount of time. Manuscripts had to be handwritten which was their drawback, a printing press could kick out many exact copies at a rapid pace. This meant that hundreds of copies could be made and distributed in a short amount of time allowing a writer to reach an enormous amount of the public over a widespread area without much work. In regards to rhetoric it meant sharing a viewpoint and gaining mass support quickly. Another interesting way the printing press affected rhetoric is in the way we perceive that information. When somebody is speaking we can tell what kind of mood they are in, the importance of the information, whether or not they are telling the truth, and much, much more. When you read a book you really don't have any idea of the feeling behind the words. Sure you can choose certain types of words and use punctuation to get some of it across, but you can't tell if what your reading is the truth, sarcasm, or emotional. For example you could read about someone asking another person “What the fuck are you doing?”, and this statement could be serious, angry, confused, or joking. It could even mean something completely different from what is written such as “Why are you doing that”. This meant that when writing the author had to had separate identifiers in the text stating that it was a “joke” or “serious” or the reader may take it the wrong way.

The printing press also gave rhetors a way to give more depth to their work without detracting from the piece. In “Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students” the author talks about a concept known as “copia”, meaning paraphrasing or compressed information.(Sharon 392) The invention of the printing press allowed for significantly more of this during the 15^th century. Before the press if an argument was made orally the speaker had to be concise and give only the most prevalent and moving information he/she could or it was possible that the audience would be lost and pay less attention as time goes on. I had a teacher tell me once that the more information that is given, the less information is comprehended. If you try to give a person too much information in too little time odds are they will burn out and stop listening. Now this same theory applies to reading, if a person is given too much information to read in too little of a time they will give up or resort to “skimming” and note taking. However one of the advantages of the printing press was that if a writer took enough time to cram as much copia into his/her writing then it could be reproduced with little work through a printing press. Once the book was produced and picked up by a person then that person could read to their hearts desire and set the book down to come back to later when it became too much. The result of something like this in a speech would be the audience walking out, which is bad for the speaker. The press allowed the writer to only have to create this large amount of information once lessening the creation burden of the manuscript writer and putting it on the machine, and from there the information became available to retention at the consumers leisure.

Not only did the printing press allow for a better delivery method of more information, but it also allowed for new and improved knowledge of both subject and rhetoric in the world. This unrelenting hailstorm of literary material allowed for the market to be saturated with educational material, novels, studies, and any other genre of information that one might come up with. When you add all of this together you can come up with one sure reality, competition. The large amount of material that represented the same area of study or the same genre of story caused writers to compete with one another to create a better work, whereas before the printing press there wasn't much competition. It took so long to accumulate material to write about and get it written that not many people got their work out. This new competition allowed people to take information from one side and combine it with the other to create new knowledge that would have never been discovered before. The competition also cause the writers to work harder increasing the quality of what was produced. This also meant that it revolutionized knowledge in a way that discredited what was once true. For example one may have read a manuscript about how the world was flat and believed it because there was no refutable work or there was no access to such a thing in the area that person lived. After the printing press that same person may encounter one of many copies of a different book that said the world was round and that book could change that person's mind, upon which the person would spread the information that would ultimately lead to the “flat world' theory being discredited.

Not many people would think a machine could affect things such as freedoms or creditability, but it does. Up until not long ago in the grand scheme of things people were discriminated against for sex, age, and even color. These factor could lead to even the best rhetor being discredited and even put in physical harm. Writing changed this by creating an anonymity that could keep such things from readers and therefore not drawing the attention away from the work. The problem is few of these people could write and even fewer could do it well enough to reproduce any number of manuscripts. The printing press changed all of that, if you could make one copy you could make thousands. It did not matter if you were white, black, twelve, female, or were born with three legs. As long as you could produce something that could be edited and then used in a printing press you could some day be a famous writer. The machine gave those few who had to be anonymous their chance to stand out and be heard all over the world.

Despite all of these important reasons the printing press revolutionized rhetoric and literature I believe the most important change it brought was in religion. One of the most powerful books ever written was the bible. From the bible has stemmed, war, happiness, genocide, and the unification of many different kinds of people under one particular belief. The printing press allowed for the many different kinds of religions to spread their word and educate their pupils. It's common knowledge that every religious text whether it be the bible or Qur’an are not small texts. Each one of these could take a writer weeks to make just one copy meaning that religion had to be spread orally. This also meant that what one group of people might hear about a religion in one area could be completely different in another. Once the churches were able to mass produce their writings they were able to unify the teachings by giving everyone a book so that each person received the exact same religious knowledge. It also made expansion of the religion much easier because of how quickly literature could be spread. The printing press brought many things from knowledge, freedom, and even power and completely revolutionized rhetoric from the moment it was discovered.

Works Cited

Sharon, Crowley. Ancient Rhetoric for Contemporary Students. 4th. New York: Pearson Education Inc., 2009. 392. Print.

Eisenstein, Elizabeth. The printing press as an agent of change: communications and cultural transformations in early-modern Europe. 1st. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979. 4. Web. <http://books.google.com/books?id=WR1eajpBG9cC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0