To kick off this project, I’ll be writing up a definition of what rhetoric is in my mind. Since this is a rhetoric blog, I’ll establish a meaning for it at the very beginning. That way, I’ll have something to come back to at the end, after I’ve learned a lot, and see how my definition measures up. I hope no one’s going into this thinking I have any idea of what rhetoric really is, because I’m arguably the most amateur of anyone who reads this. Yeah, let’s just establish that right now: I am learning and please don’t use this blog as a reference for anything.
Rhetoric is a word we hear occasionally, like when someone asks a rhetorical question. A lot of people don’t really know what it means, though, or even that it’s more than just a word. Technically there’s no real way to know exactly what it means, but the definition is something that each person develops individually.
To me, rhetoric is a way of communication. That is a grossly oversimplified definition, so I’ll explain a bit more. Rhetoric examines the methods and reasons people communicate, and both of those things have massive scopes. I line up with the more modern belief that all communication can classify as rhetoric. Rhetoric is about communications through symbols, in other words it uses one symbol to mean something else, another idea or word, that is indirectly related.
By the time we reach the last in this upcoming series of posts, I aim to have made a lot of progress in understanding rhetoric. I hope you enjoy the ride.
Buried Relic 