Reading the introduction to Aristotle’s rhetoric helped to clear up a lot of lingering questions I had about the roots of rhetoric and its importance in teaching and learning. I keep thinking about the development of rhetoric in terms of its political connotations and the impact it has on educational movements, cultural values, and symbolic meaning. I often feel that a lot of what is lost in higher education is the sense of education for education’s sake. I ask students to be invested when they have been taught and rung through a system that because of external political forces has created divides of interest and genuine perceptions of learning. Granted, it could all be viewed as a learning process in and of itself but I personally tend to run on the side of honestly answering the question of, “Why give a toot?”

There is the external construction of rhetoric and education and the internal construction of rhetoric and personal investment and the focus always seems to be on delineating between the two perspectives. What I teach often focuses on the ‘why give a toot’ internal construction of knowledge but I’m also dealing with fighting the negative social constructions of teaching that our demographic brings in.

In the Prooemion it is stated, “…persuasion depends on three things: the truth and logical validity of what is being argued, the speaker’s success in conveying to the audience a perception that he or she can be trusted, and the emotions that a speaker is able to awaken in an audience to accept the views advanced and act in accordance with them (x).” What occurs from my experience in a classroom, is the perception and development of topic value. Rhetoric is only worth its value if the topic holds a certain amount of weight so that the student has the ability to invest in it. .

This is brought up in Chapter 1, pg. 35:

“Speech based on knowledge is teaching, but teaching is impossible [with some audiences]: rather, it is necessary for pisteis and speeches [as a whole] to be formed on the basis of common [beliefs] as we said in the Topics, about communication with a crowd.”

The topic here would be finding common understandings of knowledge in classrooms. This involves a lot of the thoughts I’ve had about assignment development and the importance of paying attention to the use of language. This would definitely also be a research topic to pursue further as a research topic.

In terms of thinking of persuasive language and pushing the issue of political weight in rhetoric, I’m also interested in dissecting presidential (and vice presidential speeches) in terms of rhetoric used. I think it would be a really interesting project to think about the development of rhetoric in political terms that recognize the development of speech surrounding political party affiliation.