Thoughts on thinking rhetorically
“From the idea of rhetoric as energy, Kennedy goes on to propose that rhetoric is prior to speech: both in the sense that rhetorical energy “has to exist in the speaker before speech can take place,” and in a historical-biological sense.”
~ George Kennedy
This statement helped me to fully comprehend what rhetoric is. We must ‘think before we speak.’ This applies to the old cliché that we can’t always say what’s on our mind; I now know that it is applied to rhetoric because we must literally think before we can say anything at all. The idea of rhetorical energy really breaks down the essence of rhetoric.
“Imagine you enter a parlor. You come late. When you arrive, others have long preceded you, and they are engaged in a heated discussion, a discussion too heated for them to pause and tell you exactly what it is about. In fact, the discussion had already begun long before any of them got there, so that no one present is qualified to retrace for you all the steps that had gone before. You listen for a while, until you decide that you have caught the tenor of the argument; then you put in your oar. Someone answers; you answer him; another comes to your defense; another aligns himself against you, to either the embarrassment or gratification of your opponent, depending upon the quality of your ally’s assistance. However, the discussion is interminable. The hour grows late, you must depart. And you do depart, with the discussion still vigorously in progress.”
This paragraph really attracted my attention because it is set in a scenario that could very well be possible. It provides an example of a way in which rhetoric can be found around us and in our day to day lives (without being in an advertisement). Most of the time, comprehension of rhetoric requires a lot of logic and analysis.
