September 15

The discussion of ethical proof in Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students was quite interesting.   I thought it quite sensible that a rhetors persuasion capabilities related to their character considering if you do not trust someone then why would you believe or listen to them.  The same applies to character appearance, who will the audience be willing to listen to?  Not to mention how much of it is actually character and how much is simply perceived character, I mean if you do a good thing and no one sees it how do they know you did a good thing?  I do disagree that acting a way makes you that way to an extent, you won't become a good person just because you act like one if your doing it for bad reasons, but at the same time doing good things may influence someone in a good way.  The concept of invented ethos as a whole was interesting to me, especially that it was so important in arguments when people doubted that side.  I also find it appealing that ethos operates on the idea that the rhetors "must seem to be intelligent, to be of good moral character, and to possess good will toward their audiences." (201) considering I see these as good traits to begin with.

It was mentioned that ancient rhetoricians "were interested in the virtues that counted in public affairs: courage, honesty, trustworthiness, modesty, intelligence, fair-mindedness," (199) but that we do not put so much emphasis on these things any longer in our public figures or politics and I wondered, why?  Should we not also think about these things?

The idea of intimate distance meaning closer identification and more persuasive potential and that more attitude meant more intimate distance was also interesting as was the flip side.  The flip side being formal distance meaning less identification and less persuasive power while less attitude, or more formal, meant more formal distance.

I also really liked the quote from Isocrates' Panegyricus " if all athlete should acquire twice the strength which they now possess, the rest of the world would be no better off; but let a single man attain to wisdom, and all men will reap the benefit who are willing to share his insight." (196).  I really liked this because it is totally true to, you can't share strength, but you can help someone to learn.

Now time for critique in the form of a mini-rant.  The second part of the chapter was repetitive of many of the things most, if not all, of us learned years ago; such as informal versus formal language and how it can help our audience identify with us, or the concept of first, second, and third person, or tense, or word size, or qualifiers, or punctuation.  Maybe I (first person) was just in a bad mood when I read (past tense) this part of the chapter (qualified) but I found it REALLY (punctuation) unnecessary (all in informal language and without big words).  Hypothetically, therefore, the sentence immediately proceeding this one should considerable shorten the rhetorical distance between my audience and I.  Speaking of things we learned a long time ago, how do the authors not know that long block quotes are a big no no if you want to keep your audience awake.