December 1 After Class

For the most part I stick by what I said in my blogpost though I think I could have gone more into detail about both readings, especially that of Foucault.  Specifically I may have talked more thoroughly about Foucault's theories of knowledge, discourse, and their interrelationship.

December 1

Last reading blog post of the semester.  It was interesting how well thought out and organized Toulmin's model involving claims, data, warrants, and backing was.  Also interesting is that claims were qualified.  I feel the Toulmin model of argument would be a strong one considering nothing is left unsupported and not only is it supported it is backed up by information which is in turn backed up.  Another thing that would make the Toulmin model strong to use is the qualifier, though this may make one's point seem less strong and definitive it would allow the writer a way out for the outliers in the information, it's like that saying 'every rule has an exception' the qualifier would deal with the exception.  The Toulmin argument seems like a well backed up system of checks in which each piece of information is balanced by a large amount of back up and is proven to be true by such, if one piece of information is questioned the information to support it is included, as is the information to support that, and sometimes further still.

I also found Foucault's idea that knowledge comes from discourse interesting.  To me it seemed like the idea was that the more we consider something the better understanding we will have about it, this could imply that we never stop learning, which I completely believe is true.

November 15 After Class

I thought more about this during class but it seems as though throughout history rhetoric went in and out of the limelight a lot.  I wonder why it never really has consistently been seen as important or otherwise.

The dialog section of our in class lecture was interesting.  Specifically I found the idea that to the writer the audience is a fiction and to the audience the writer is a fiction really intriguing because I have never thought about written works that way, but it totally makes sense.

November 15

Divisions in the teaching of rhetoric were interesting to me in that it started with one small freshman English course and later also expanded into speech in the US while meanwhile in Europe rhetoric was no more than a secondary level schooling course requirement.

In this reading I found it a little hard to follow when they were describing semantics and semiotics, what they were, what their differences were, and what was the same.  I'm still not clear on what either apply to fully, but partly that could be because both of the two were described in the same section and the words start with the same letter which makes it easy to confuse the two.

November 10 After Class

In class I found our miniature discussion of voice the most interesting in that it is true that voice can be incredibly important in a paper, but is nearly impossible to define.  It is a quality which makes good writing but it is one that is only recognizable by its existence or the fact that it is missing in a paper.

November 10

It is sort of amazing to me that all five of the cannons of rhetoric, delivery, memory, style, arrangement, invention, which were used by ancient rhetoricians still apply in some way today.

One thing that was particularly interesting about this reading was the change in connotation of the word hypocrisy from then to now.  This was additionally interesting because words with change in meaning over time have been appearing throughout this book.

Also interesting was the differences in voice based on oral or written delivery.  Especially when talking about written delivery and the many different ways in which punctuation marks can be used.  It is actually somewhat amazing how completely different a sentence can be based on the usage of lack-there-of of a simple punctuation mark; it may be tiny but it is important!

Of course grammar and visual layout greatly affect rhetoric in the modern era as well.  Both of these are quite self explanatory however.  Visual rhetoric, I think, may be something people think about less, especially when writing a paper, but the layout of a page can easily make something appear more or less cluttered, etc.  Organization is important.

November 8

Following class I had a much better idea of what specific types of memory or memory tools fit into which category of memory; categories being natural, artificial, and external.  Mostly some of what I was questioning was what counted as artificial versus natural being that as a child I learned to tie my shoes, but now I do not have to think about it while tying my shoes, or brushing my teeth, or driving my car, or a number of other things.  Basically it was these ingrained activities which I was unsure about and I also did not fully realize that things like studying are also artificial memory, I was thinking about it as a much more complicated process like the ones of the mental image of the filing cabinet or house described in the book.

The blogpost by a fellow classmate I read today was a very nice, easily read summary of the chapter.