Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Blog Posting #2
I am having a harder time finding my stand point on this issue because I think that SOME language is purely done for persuasion, but not all. I know a lot of people have ulterior motives when they talk with friends, but sometimes I think people do things without the mindset to persuade others. I think the reason I am not comfortable with saying that all language is rhetoric, meaning it’s persuasive, is because it makes all of our language seem “evil.” If we only say nice things to each other in order to persuade our peers it takes away the happiness and joy. Or if we only help the needy in order to persuade them, it takes away the selflessness. This goes back to our first class lecture about humans being innately selfish and evil… I’m beginning to see a trend here! Now I’m switching to the power that language has over humans and society. Without language we would have nothing. I definitely have a new respect for language… it’s not that I didn’t appreciate language before but I had never studied the effects as in depth as we are in this class. I don’t think this stuff is mindless at all… if humans know and understand anything I think it should be what sets ourselves apart from all other species on the planet.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Lindsey... I defidenly see your point. If we say that all rhetoric is persusaion than it does make our language seem "evil". The more and more I think about this topic I do see how everything we do in life does, can, or will persuade ourselves or someone else. In fact, its pretty creepy to think about how everyting we do is because we have seen someone else do it, or we think some certain way because we were persuaded to think that way. It is interesting concept to think about.
ReplyDeleteSo i finally got my comment name to change from Enlish 3360 to Ashley Johnson... I'm not sure wjy it was saying that to begin with!
ReplyDeleteLindsey I see your point. I also feel however, that sometimes we do or say things not knowing we are persuading someone. I think that this whole topic on Rhetoric is one to think about and really ponder. I think that this topic also goes back to our topic on if humans are innately evil. This is a very interesting topic to consider.
ReplyDeleteWhen I wrote my blog I wrote that persuading has everything to do with language and we persuade people to do things all the time. As I was reading your blog you made me think that I could be wrong as well and you bring up a very good point. I really think that we do use a lot of persuasion though and I really can't think where I would not use persuaion. I just believe this whole rhetoric thing is very confusing and it just has me thinking.
ReplyDelete