Rhetoric in our everyday lives

What is rhetoric? Rhetoric can be defined as the art of effective and or persuasive writing. It's something that you see every single day, and something that you more than likely use every single day as well. Just this week I saw a Chevy ad that uses rhetoric, whether it seems like it or not. After first watching the ad I just sat there kind of stupefied, but I've remembered it all week and now after thinking about it with a rhetorical approach I better understand the ad and why it has stuck with me.

The ad begins with short clips of individual men walking into what appears to be a room made out of cement. You then see another man enter into what appears to be a control room and ask the men how they're doing, if they've ever been to a materials testing facility, etc. He then asks the men what their perception of steel is. It shows some of them answering with words like; "durable" and "powerful". He then asks what they're perception of aluminum is, one man says "the exact opposite (of steel) really", others say things like "light" and "easy to bend". The man in the control room then proceeds to tell these men that their are two cages in the room behind them. The one on their right is made out of high grade steel, and the one on the left is made out of aluminum. He tells them to go ahead and feel around the cages and to then return to the yellow square in the middle of the room where they'd been standing. Next, the man in the control room says that he is going to release a 700 pound grizzly bear into the room and that they had better hurry and pick a cage and get in it. Every single individual chooses the steel cage. At this point in time, I was utterly confused by this ad, but what happens next ties it all together. The individuals are asked how they fell about their choice of cages, and one man say's "He's glad he picked the steel cage", another man is asked why he choose the steel cage and his response is that "He figured it'd be harder for the bear to get in." The next man is asked if he'd rather be in the aluminum cage to which he simply replies, "No." Finally the men are asked if they'd like to see something else that is made of high strength steel and two giant doors behind them slide open to reveal a 2015 Chevy Silverado.

Without understanding rhetoric and ethos, this ad makes absolutely no sense. It's just some crazy people putting other people into rooms with grizzly bears. But when you think about it with a rhetorical approach, it makes a lot of sense. Chevy is using the credibility of steel to help make their brand and trucks seem better. To make them seem like they're as durable and strong as steel. They're using ethos, something that wouldn't be around with out rhetoric. Rhetoric plays a huge role in our lives as it can be seen in nearly everything. The things we say, read, hear, write and see can all contain rhetoric, whether it's right out in the open or if you have to read between the lines to see it. Because of the fact that it's almost always around you, it's important to understand rhetoric so that you can better understand the things that you experience every day. So that you can understand the actual message that someone or something is trying to convey, so that you don't just think that this new Chevy ad is just about crazy people putting other people in cages with grizzly bears in the same room.

A Letter From A Birmingham Jail

Martin Luther King Juniors “A Letter From A Birmingham Jail” is a letter that is about the injustices and unequal treatment that Negros have faced in America for more than 340 years, and how it’s time now for them to receive the equal and fair treatment that they deserve. The leader of “The Civil Rights Movement” says in this excerpt from his letter that “freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor, it must be demanded by the oppressed.” He also talks about how for years now he’s heard the word “Wait”, and how every Negro knows the word wait, really just means “Never”. He knows that if they continue to wait for their God and constitutionally given rights that they will never receive them. He says that the only reason that white people are able to tell them to wait, is because they don’t know what the stinging dart of segregation feels like when you’re told you can’t sit at a certain lunch counter just to get a cup of coffee. He knows that it’s now time for them to rise up, and to quit waiting for their rights, it’s time for them to go out and work for them, to let people know that just because their skin color is different they still have the same rights as everyone else. Although I have no personal experiences with racism or segregation, I’ve always found it astonishing that segregation happened here in America, that we took away the rights of human beings and citizens of America just because their skin color wasn’t white, even though our own Declaration of Independence states “That all men are created equal” and “That they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights”. It boggles me how morally wrong it was, but also that it was lawfully wrong as well, but yet the amount of people standing up to do something about it was so small. Another thing that the letter was about was that Dr. King wanted to bring an end to segregation, he says that it is segregations fault that his six year old daughter was already developing an unconscious bitterness towards white people. Again, although I have never had any personal experiences with these problems, I can’t help but to agree with this statement. There is no reason that a young, innocent little girl should feel bitterness towards someone, but I can only imagine that being told you can’t go somewhere or do something because of the color of your skin would make you dislike the people who can; whether you realize it or not. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was an amazing and inspirational man who helped to lead one of the largest and most important social reforms in American History, without him and the legacy that he left behind, we can only imagine what the civil rights scene in America would look like.

To Cultivate A Healthy Poverty And Simplicity

“To cultivate a healthy poverty and simplicity”, this is a quote from an excerpt from Annie Dillards Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. I find it to be very odd, and it really took me a while to try and decipher what I thought it meant when you read between the lines. I believe that what she’s saying is that you should strive to live/create a life that is not to wealthy monetarily that you lose sight of what is really important in life, but yet not to poor of a life either. That you should try and live a life that’s full enough that you don’t feel need, but yet aren’t living in either monetary, or yet, more importantly spiritual poverty. Annie talks about “seeing” in the excerpt and it seems to be something that to her is very important. I think that she’s talking about going beyond just seeing what is right in front of you, but rather seeing what something means to you. To see life for the beautiful thing that it is, and to not take life and the things in it for granted. As Dillard says, “There are lots of things to see, unwrapped gifts and free surprises.” I feel that she’s saying that the world is what you make it, and to quote her again, “What you see is what you get.” My Great-Grandma will be 97 this year, and I cannot think of anyone in my life that embodies this ideal more than her. She lives a simple full life, and doesn’t need much more than her basic necessities and the love of her family around her. Small things that I’d never notice give her an enjoyment that I don’t think I could ever understand. And I believe it’s because she knows how to see past the face value of what’s right in front of her, and to really see what something is worth. She knows that everything, depending on the light in which you chose to look at it, can be a gift. Even before reading this small excerpt, I’ve never felt an absolute need to have anything more then what’s absolutely necessary, and to appreciate the things that I have. Now that’s not to say that I don’t have wants and desires, but because of my Great-Grandma I know that things are more than just material objects, but that they hold meaning and are important for more than just their monetary worth.

Food, And It's Role In Life

After reading the excerpt from McKenzie’s essay, I would have to say that I find myself standing where she does on the subject of food and feeling that my personal experiences do indeed parallel hers. I would have to agree with her that food and eating are something that are done for more than just gaining the nutritional benefits that are garnished from food.  I do mostly believe that food matters because of the benefits that your body is able to receive from consumption, but I also feel as though it matters because it can be related to personal relationships, as McKenzie says, “Food brings people together in ways that other activities cannot.” I absolutely think that she is right in saying this, whether it’s a home cooked meal around the family dinner table, or a meal at a table in a restaurant, by the end of the meal there’s always been good conversation and a connection that I honestly don’t think you feel anywhere else. To quote her essay again, “The people around the table make the food worth eating.”  A good example of this from my own personal life and how it parallel’s hers, would be Thanksgiving Dinner, and lunch on Memorial Day. On each of these days my family goes to my Great Grandma’s house and all gathers around tables spread throughout her home. To be completely honest, the food is just regular food, some turkey and stuffing, some mashed potatoes and sweet yams, but I know that it’s been made with love. I know that it didn’t have to be made, but that my family members have chosen to make something to bring to enjoy around the table with others. To sum it all up, food is just food, but people, the people around the table can make it into so much more than just a meal.

Within The Trenches

Within The Trenches

911 Dispatcher Tribute

Nine one one, What's your emergency? Keeps replaying in her head.
When she lays down at night and she can't sleep instead.
Her mind keeps going backwards to when her heart began it's fall.
Memories of the other end the night she got the call.

She could hear a woman screaming, was it a husband and a wife?.
Then she heard the gunshot the night a woman lost her life.
There were many times before when on a call she'd wait.
But she prayed she'd never see the call that came too late.

Nine one one, What's your emergency? He said into the phone.
“I can't find my mommy and I think I'm here alone”.
He tried to reassure her and to keep her on the line.
One more family murdered there wasn't enough time.

So he lives his life these days beneath a blanket of the shame.
As he now bears the burden of his own misplaced blame. 
The rise and fall of all mankind right from the very start.
Buried deep within the trenches inside a dispatchers heart.

Praying still with all their heart someday the world will see.
All that's taking place today is not how it has to be.
Like a ship safe in the harbor still subject to the fall.
Each day a brand new heartache as they're witness to it all. 

Depravity in someones mind who's passions have run wild.
Buried in a shallow grave, now remnants of a child.
Haunted by what's taken place they never will be free.
As they wait for the answer to, what's your emergency?

Edwin C Hofert





Within The Trenches is a poem that was written to be a tribute to 911 dispatchers. I think that some people would find this to be an odd poem to want to write about, but, my personal connection with this poem goes very deep because my mom is a 911 dispatcher. 

The poem itself is explaining the mindset, trials and tribulations that dispatchers face every day. Although you never see them at a crime scene, you have to remember that if it weren't for them, the responding officers and emergency personnel would never know about the emergency that they need to respond too. They most definitely are the unsung heroes of emergency response. The main purpose of the poem is definitely to try and give the reader an insider’s view of what goes on in the very unnormal everyday life of a dispatch worker. It talks about the different types of calls that a dispatcher might receive throughout the day, and sadly, the different ways that those calls could end up going. The poem reads examples of possible calls varying from a domestic dispute between a husband and a wife that ends in in the woman losing her life, to a little girl who’s lost her mother and is worried that she's somewhere alone. The poem also lets you know very blatantly that these calls don't always end well, and that these unsung heroes in the trenches feel a connection to these people that they haven't been able to help. They feel that these terrible things that have happened are by proxy, their fault. They begin to feel as though they didn't do their job well enough, that they didn't react quickly enough, or maybe didn't react in the correct manner towards the situation. I believe that part of the underlying message of the poem is that these people don't get to just brush these things off their shoulders when it's time to go home. These feelings are burdens that they'll carry with them for varying amounts of time, and possibly even for the rest of their life. They can make a person feel depressed and worthless, they can make it so that the individual can't sleep at night, instead they lay awake wondering if they could have done something different, blaming themselves for the death or injury of another person, someone that they don't even know. The ending of the poem really hits home for me and I also find this to be another underlying message within the poem; it states that the dispatcher will never be the same person again because of their job, but that they'll always be there waiting for the answer to, "911, What's Your Emergency?" I can relate to the ending of the poem and feel a personal connection to it as well because I've seen first-hand what this job can do to someone, the way that it can affect someone from something as simple as being able to sleep at night, to something as deep as how they feel about and value themselves. I have a thorough appreciation for this poem and really like it because of what it's about, and how it lets people know about the hardships that dispatchers, the unsung heroes of emergency response, face each and every day, be it that they're facing them at work or that they've carried their work burdens into their personal lives.

Interpretation of "Self Reliance"

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. What on Earth does this even mean? Is it an insult? What exactly is a Hobgoblin? Well folks in this post I'm going to give you my interpretation of a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Self Reliance".


Let's start off by getting a look the quote.


       "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Out upon your guarded lips! Sew them up with packthread, do. Else if you would be a man speak what you think today in words as hard as cannon balls, and tomorrow speak what tomorrow think in hard words again, though it contradict everything you said today."




We'll begin by returning to one of my earlier questions, what exactly is a Hobgoblin? A hobgoblin can be described as something that causes fear or worry. My interpretation is that Emerson in his first sentence is stating that; a false consistency is feared by regular people, but is liked, maybe even loved by politicians, Kings and Queens, and people of greater intellectual ability then the average person. I feel as though giving people a false consistency would fair well for politicians, Kings and Queens. But as a regular person I know that when I begin to feel as though things are going to good, I begin to worry about what is going to happen next. Thus making false consistency feared by normal people, and loved by people of power. Now we'll move onto the second sentence. I believe that this sentence is stating that when things are going good, great people, such as heroes, have absolutely nothing to do. The third sentence reiterates this by stating, that the "hero" may as well begin to worry about his shadow on the wall. In my opinion, the fourth sentence is where the quote starts to take a turn away from what it was previously stating. In no way do I believe that it backtracks, but it just turns down a different avenue in my opinion. The fourth sentence states, "Out upon your guarded lips!" I interpret Emerson to be saying, stop guarding your lips and tongue. Speak your mind, do not worry about what others think about the words that you are saying. The fifth sentence continues on in this statement, by my interpretation saying. If you cannot speak your mind, then what good are your lips to you? If you're not going to use them, then you may as well sew them shut! In the sixth sentence he states, say what you think today, if you have an opinion on something, state it. Let your peers be aware of your stance or your beliefs. And, he also in this sentence says, that when tomorrow comes, be sure to again speak your mind fully, EVEN if it contradicts every single thing that you said the day before.






In my own experiences, I find Emerson's advice to be very beneficial and true. Although I cannot think of an experience off of the top of my head that I can apply it to, I do feel as though I should speak my mind and let people know what it is that I'm thinking, I have the right of freedom of speech, and I should use it to it's full extent. I shouldn't be afraid of what people think about me because of what it is that I have to say, being afraid of what people think of me is something that I can admit I do struggle with. And maybe reading and interpreting this quote can help me along the road to stop worrying about what people think about me because of what I have to say. Also, as a regular person in today's society I do tend to feel that when things are going good for me, that I am waiting for what's going to go wrong. As Emerson would say, I have a hobgoblin of foolish consistency, because even though things are going good for me now, I feel as though something is going to go wrong in the future.