At this point, trying to define rhetoric is like trying to capture the beauty of a sunset in just one photo. Maybe that’s easy for some to do, but I never thought it was that simple. Just like I have numerous cliché sunset photos on my phone, I also seem to have many vaguely formed conceptions of rhetoric. 

Rhetoric is something I’ve always heard about in school. It is one of those concepts that English teachers talk about, one I’ve probably had to “memorize” for a test, and one that I’m sure I’ve used in conversation (especially if I was trying to sound smart). It’s one of those words that I pretend like I know what people mean by it when they use it in a conversation. 

When my mom heard I was taking a class called “Intro to Rhetoric” she asked me what rhetoric meant. An awkward silence ensued after which I haltingly began mumbling words such as persuasion…ummm…speaking….art of….writing….ummm. I stopped trying after I saw her face and instead pulled out my phone to consult my dear friend google. It somewhat helped.

Fast forward to the first day of class, and my thoughts on rhetoric have become only slightly more articulate. Finding words associated with rhetoric is easy enough. Words that come to mind include persuasive, speech, writing, ethos, pathos, logos, politicians, logic, discourse analysis and more. After biting the end of my pen and staring at my relatively empty sheet of paper in slight frustration, the best definition I could come up with was “The art of speaking and writing effectively, logically, and persuasively”. To be honest, this is probably way too simplistic of a definition, but for now I’d like to think it works. 

As this class goes on I am eager to grasp a more complete definition of rhetoric. While I have the definition listed above, I don’t feel like it fully encapsulates the importance of rhetoric. This might be a lofty goal, but it would eventually be great to get to the point where I could give a definition of rhetoric that would get that “oohh I finally (that kind of finally that means totally but doesn’t sound sarcastic) get it” reaction. I’m fully aware that this kind of reaction may be about as rare as me eventually saying “Wow! This is the perfect sunset picture”.