Rhetoric is largely defined by audience. I feel as though, if you were to know the exact effects different word choices and word orders would have on people, you’d be able to manipulate, somewhat, the way they will respond and react to you and your ideas.
I’d say rhetoric is the lurking science behind writing and the English language. It would be, in a sense, part of creative writing but simultaneously its direct opposite. It’s writing with a purpose other than creativity while still necessitating imagination. Its purpose being well thought out, calculated writing, which would oppose the free form creative writing takes.
It makes complete sense, going along with the last two paragraphs, that as an English major I would use rhetoric, and as a writer it would be indispensable. As an anything-major it would be necessary. But what I’m mostly concerned of, outside of the writing prospect of rhetoric, is visual rhetoric. Specifically, typography and the way font, spacing, grungy, delicate, size and arrangement affects whether someone would even look at a piece of writing or not.
The lurking science. Fascinating. Great stuff. I like that a lot (poetically and philosophically). Tell me more. How does rhetoric lurk? And how is it a science?
ReplyDeleteYou know how when you see stars, water boiling, a percentage on a receipt, a pie chart or anything of that nature there is a science behind it? (Well, there is nature behind it, but we have broken it down into a science.)
ReplyDeleteSame things goes for writing, we see a novel, poem, instructions, ads, any piece of writing and we admire it, we are drawn to it or repelled by it. But behind that piece of writing was an entire scientific like process of "where should the comma go?" "should I use passive or active voice?" "who is my audience?" "what is the appropriate vocabulary for this audience?"
Scientific processes are a logical, thought out, sometimes complex addition and subtraction of ideas, numbers, words. Anything.
And it lurks because it is most effective when the audience can't tell that the way you wrote something was meant to make them feel the way they are feeling.