Elocution and delivery were focused on during the enlightenment I wonder if that is an issue at all today. There's appropriate tones considered for business letters, academic papers, etc. but I don't know that anyone would agree on one "proper" way to talk. We have rules for grammar, but I don't think it would be fair to consider one accent or vocabulary to be the standard for everyone. The world is getting more and more casual about the way we talk as we become more and more efficient.
I also thought the section on Locke in the introduction was interesting about how he divides the mind into the understanding and the will and how "tree refers not to a particular tree but to the idea we retain from reflecting upon many instances of seeing particular trees and abstracting their common features." We've been reading Burke in my other rhetoric class and he discusses symbols and I feel like a big part of his feelings on symbols are the same as Locke's. It's always interesting to me to think about how we can take information and form a picture our head about what whatever we're talking about is like even if you can't see it. The word tree can talk about the plant in general or a specific plant, but also conveys family or environmental consciousness or wilderness and nature or a map or many other different things.
No comments:
Post a Comment