Blog 9

In Chapter 10 of ARCS I thought it was interesting how they really started breaking down writing into sentence structure and such.  I find it difficult to analyze writing so much, especially as you're doing it.  I also feel that style is somewhat less important once we get to written culture.  There are very clear differences between a good speaker and a bad speaker and there are also clear differences between a good writer and a bad writer, but bad writing is easier to overcome.  For example, Kenneth Burke is not a very good writer but is considered the most influential rhetorician of the 20th century.  Also, Stephanie Meyer who writes the Twilight books is a really horrible writer and has written one of the most successful series of fiction ever.  While there's a difference between a good story and successful rhetoric, I think style is much more important in oral culture.

Essay 2

The change from oral culture to written culture not only changed the way people learned information, it started a revolution and completely changed a person’s relationship to text.  The world went from a place where everything anyone knew came from something someone said to them to a place where information could be looked up and primary sources were more than just the person who originally spoke a thought out loud.  Not only did the world become a bigger place, the way people thought completely changed.

                Today writing and literacy is considered an essential skill for everyone to have.  However, when writing first began it was not looked at as such a positive thing.  Plato, one of the most famous rhetoricians from history, famously thought that writing was the end of learning.  He thought no one would remember anything anymore and thought that it was essential for people to be able to communicate with the person making the argument so the person making the argument would have a chance to defend themselves.  Writing had a near immediate effect on the church as soon as people could read and interpret the bible themselves and also effected rhetoric with rhetoricians like Ramus learning the history of rhetoric and interpreting it for themselves (Ramus).  In a way, writing was the beginning of individual thought and learning.  While people had original thoughts before, learning was discussed with others and not individual like it can be today.  Many famous artists and musicians are self-taught, something they wouldn’t have been able to do as easily without writing.

                One of the most important changes that happened when written culture began was for thoughts to last longer than the life of the person who verbalized them.  While information had been orally passed down in oral culture, a game of telephone clearly demonstrates that it is hard for information not to change over time when only spoken.  Spoken learning gives authority to the speaker, and in the case of the church many people felt that power had been abused.  According to an article by Robert K. McIver and Ray C. Roennfeldt, “time brings changes in ideas and attitudes to all social organizations, including religious organizations.  Authoritative texts, such as are found within many religions, do not change with time.  Hence, social change brings with it the need to develop suitable means to determine what changes are consistent with the principles laid down in the authentic documents of the religion, and what changes are incompatible with them.”  However, there is only so far one can get by themselves.  In the same article the authors mention that “closer examination has revealed that there are other important considerations that influence how [authoritative texts like the bible are] understood.  Church leaders have the ability to shape the changes that take place within their denominations, although this ability is limited by what membership of that  denomination is prepared to find acceptable.”  In the case of the church, while many people felt misled and outraged when able to interpret the bible for themselves, oral culture is clearly still a major factor when it comes to religion suggesting that not everyone is eager to learn for themselves or feel the need for a second opinion from a trustworthy source.

                An article from the Journal of Popular Culture compares news given in the form of a revue versus a newspaper relating it to the change from oral to written culture in history.  Vangsnes says “the classical rhetor was neither an actor nor a petit-style journalist…[but] could be a teacher or a politician, a man who mastered the art of speaking…the rhetorical tradition has been criticized for persuading instead of arguing.  What is important is not what you say, but how you say it.”  I think it’s important to realize that charisma was a key characteristic to rhetoric in oral culture.  Bad writing definitely exists, but there are few truly terrible writers while there are many people that do not excel at public speaking.

Another important difference between oral and written culture is the lifetime of a text.  Vangsnes believes that oral communication is temporary, “as an event the revue is a unique action and has a fleeting existence.”  People will only remember all of something they heard for so long.  While they retain the most important parts, the whole is lost.  “A text, on the other hand, is fixed meaning.  The text can be interpreted independent of time and is a more permanent character,” (Vangsnes).  This goes back to the issue of the church and people interpreting the bible independently without hearing of it only through a priest.  The article goes on to discuss how an author is separate from the text and that texts live on for no fixed period of time.  Vangsnes claims that “the author’s intention is almost irrelevant,” which I disagree with.  Text can be interpreted in several different ways, but I feel like as a culture we want to respect the author’s intentions.  Books are in many ways like art in the sense that the author or artist may have completely different meaning for a piece than the reader or viewer, but most non-fiction works are read with context about history if nothing else.  I think the author’s intention is actually very important, but it is true that in written culture it is harder for an author to express their intent or even admit if they changed their mind on a topic many years later, the evidence still exists in writing.

The most important point that Vangnes’s article makes is that in a revue the audience reacts to the things being said but “the writer does not have this kind of dialogue with the reader.  The readers of the newspaper must give their replies indirectly,” which relates back to Plato’s point about the importance of being able to react with the audience when creating a text.  The invention of writing helped give people a personal relationship to text in the sense that a person could now read and interpret a text completely by themselves, but there is also importance to the relationship the author of a text had with the listener in oral culture.  I know that I have wanted to ask an author or artist what their piece means and if I’m interpreting it correctly.  I don’t think that this is the case with every piece of text, but it’s true in some cases that I don’t always want to interpret material for myself.

We are in the middle of another transformation to multimedia and the internet.  This opens the world up to even more information, but has made it easier than ever to communicate with the author of an online text.  We are now in a world where the relationship between people and a text has crossed the boundary.  Now, you can comment on a blog or news article and receive feedback from the author while first being able to independently interpret it.  The internet has blurred the line between oral and written culture and has expanded the advantages of writing while still leaving some of the accessibility written culture gave a reader.

The change from oral to written culture allowed people to have a relationship to multitudes of texts rather than only the ones they could observe and learn about.  Written culture made the world much wider and allowed new ideas and information to spread much more quickly.  However, the relationship of the author and the reader became nearly nonexistent.  Rhetoric became accessible to everyone, for everyone to learn, but in the process lost a lot of the personal connection ancient rhetoricians had with their students and audience.  Luckily the growth of multimedia has allowed this to change and allows authors and celebrities to be just a comment or tweet away.  We are in the middle of a new revolution where more voices than ever are being heard and listened to.

Works Cited

MCIVER, ROBERT K., and RAY C. W. ROENNFELDT. "Text and Interpretation: Christian Understandings of Authoritative Texts in the Light of Social Change." Islam & Christian-Muslim Relations 20.3 (2009): 257-276. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 23 Oct. 2010.

Plato, "Phaedrus." The Rhetorical Tradition. Ed. Patricia Bizzell. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2001. Print.

Ramus, Peter. "Arguments in Rhetoric against Quintilian." The Rhetorical Tradition. Ed. Patricia Bizzell. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin, 2001. Print.

Vangsnes, Erik. "Revues and Newspapers: On Critics and Rhetoric in Local Media." Journal of Popular Culture 26.4 (1993): 101-114. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 23 Oct. 2010.

Blog 8

ARCS Ch 9 discusses how important arrangement is, saying that it is only second to invention in importance when it comes to rhetoric.  While I believe arrangement is important, I don't know if it deserves the importance that the book is giving it.  I do think good arrangement can strengthen an argument, especially when it comes to stating the position of the opposing side and then refuting it with evidence, but I think this is something many people do naturally.  I think many strengths in rhetoric are things that people do whether they mean to or not.  Not that good writing can't be learned, but I think some people are better at argumentation than others and some of that comes from a tendency to arrange things well.  We are reading Burke in my other rhetoric class and I think that is a perfect example of how arrangement is not as important as ARCS claims it is.  Burke has horrible arrangement and his work must be read many times for it to be thoroughly understood, but he is considered to be the most influential rhetorician of the 20th century.

Blog 8

In ARCS Ch. 8, they start off the chapter saying "today rhetors often assume that whatever is written down and published is accurate and trustworthy," which I disagree with.  I feel that especially since the popularity of the internet grew, we are actually taught to question everything we read.  It is true that things people write are considered to be testimonials, but now we're taught to question whether someone is really a credible resource.  Depending on their level of experience on a topic, a testimonial might no be very accurate.  For example, a restaurant critic.  Can you really judge a restaurant based on one experience?  Besides, outside factors could affect how you feel about the restaurant like if it seemed like a fair price to you (which would differ depending on your income class) or if you even like the genre of food they have at the restaurant.  While I think it is true that we are taught that good rhetoric is based on data and testimonials, I think that with the introduction of the internet as a go to source for information, we're taught to critique data heavily.  While there may be no denying the temperature recorded in Pullman today, different people might disagree on whether the weather was nice or not based on where they grew up, what they were used to, and what their living situation is.

Blog 7

I thought the section on Ramus was really interesting.  In the introduction to the Renaissance it talked about how people were taking a more humanistic approach to rhetoric and more or less dipping their toes in, but Ramus seems to go further by believing it was best to "set off on one's own pursuit of knowledge."  I also thought it was really interesting that he believed in working on something with a tree diagram and that Ong has argued that this kind of thinking could only work in a society that had shifted from an auditory to a visual relationship with language.  The reading suggested that Ramus greatly simplified rhetoric, and I wonder how much that had to do with the change in times.  I don't know if traditions changed that brought on less of a need to stick to what seems to us like a complicated plan or if the ability to write things down and refer back to them caused a need for simplification.  The Renaissance really was a huge time of change for the whole world between escaping the Dark Ages and the newfound ability for people to have new ways to get information causing them to develop opinions of their own and not just what someone had told them.  What Ramus said really doesn't seem that revolutionary to us now because we're all taught to think for ourselves (or at least try to) especially in rhetoric today.  I also find it interesting that, although revolutionary, many people agreed with him at the time because I feel like oftentimes new ideas are met with resistance.

Blog 7

In ARCS, ch. 7 says that "of all the ancient kinds of rhetorical proofs, the appeal to the emotions seems strangest to contemporary rhetors, and perhaps a bit shoddy as well."  The chapter continues on to discuss how emotions are important and on how pathetic proof can be very effective, but this first quote was very interesting to me as well as the examples at the end to demonstrate how important pejorative and honorific language is in establishing pathos.  I feel that pathetic proof is the most effective rhetorical device you can use.  Advertisers and the media clearly know this based on the ads and media we are exposed to every day.  While I definitely think that pathos is what drives people to agree or disagree strongly with your argument, I feel that in the ads for politicians in Washington right now are an example about how relying on only pathos can only get you so far.  I've seen ads for both Dino Rossi and Patty Murray that are entirely trash talking the other candidate and the only thing these ads do is make me want the election to be over.  I feel like the ads surrounding the initiatives also on the ballot are a much better example of a successful political ad.  For example, one ad against the privatization of liquor sales initiative shows a police officer discussing why he thinks the initiative is wrong.  First of all, a police officer is seen to the public as a (relatively) trustworthy source, and second of all the ad doesn't attack the opponent but instead just states their opinion which is much more effective than stating what the opposing party has done wrong.  I feel like Dino Rossi's ads would be much more effective if he focused on what he would do differently and not just what his opponent was doing wrong.  Ads that bring no new information to the table only rely on pathos and while I still believe pathos is essential to any successful argument, it has to be used properly in order to be effective.  These political ads are probably part of the reason appeal to pathos is sometimes viewed as shoddy because when used incorrectly it causes a red herring like effect leading the audience away from whatever the real issue was in the first place.

Blog 6

Boethius says that all rhetoric is either judicial, demonstrative and deliberative and the parts of rhetoric are invention, arrangement, style, memory and delivery.  He says that the tool used is oration and the function of the oration is to teach and to move.  I think that this has changed significantly since Boethius's time.  First of all, the tool used can be several things not just oration.  While speeches are definitely rhetorical, now I feel rhetoric has a bigger place in writing and advertising and also in art.  That means that the parts of rhetoric are different as well, although really the only thing that modern day rhetoric doesn't involve is memory.  Also, I wonder if the categories of judicial, demonstrative and deliberative still stand today.  I'm still confused about ancient rhetoric and whether it has changed or not and what's considered rhetoric.  I know that there are many different definitions of rhetoric but does rhetoric today still exist?  I feel like we spend a lot of time talking about how basically all things are rhetorical and at the same time saying that rhetoric doesn't exist like it did in ancient times anymore.