Let's Have a Moment, by Jurgen Famula

Moment #1:

The first major moment that I had in during first five weeks of class was the introduction of the idea of the rhetorical situation proposed by Bitzer. Before reading Bitzer’s proposal, I had never thought to view rhetoric as being inexorably tied to the situation in which the rhetoric was created. Seeing rhetoric in this light has changed the way I plan out my writing. Before this class, I would only consider the prompt of the assignment at hand without considering the greater context in which assignment exists. Now I plan out any piece of writing I compose with full awareness of the exigence that I am writing to address and the constants placed on my writing by myself and situation.

 The introduction of the rhetorical situation also was useful in that it helped me form a more solid definition of rhetoric as whole. In my previous writing class, rhetoric was often discussed as some-what of a nebulous concept, we would talk about it and its parts, such as the rhetorical appeals, but I could never visualize what rhetoric was in its most basic form before I came to this class.

Moment #2:

My second moment came after reading the “Rhetoric: Then and Now” piece by Crowly and Hawhee. The history of rhetoric was another area in which my knowledge was lacking prior to taking this class. I knew that rhetoric could be traced back to ancient Greece and that many of the famous Greek thinkers when rhetoricians but I had no knowledge of how much the practice of rhetoric had changed since that time. Particularly striking to me was how rhetoric and argument have almost become dirty words in America today as well as the idea that debate in American society has devolved in to hallow shouting matches that serve to entertain more than they seek to inform as can be seen in Jon Stewart’s appearance on CNN’s “debate” show, Crossfire.

 The full video is thirteen minutes long and you can skip 8:45 to 9:45 as it is the lead in to a commercial break.

I also found the shifting roles of the rhetorical appeals to be quite interesting, especially in the case of logos and the use of facts in rhetorical argument. I was quite surprised that the ancient did not view the use of empirical facts as strong method with which to argue one’s point. I suppose my surprise stems from my background as a natural science major who prefers to see quantifiable data when I need to make a decision. This reading, however showed me the weaknesses of the over reliance on cold fact and first hand counts that permeates modern discourse.

Moment #3:

My third moment this quarter came to me while I was writing the final draft of my newsletter. The assignment required me to write for a more general audience that I had typically written for in the past. As writing has never been my strong suit, my only major pieces of writing tend to be those that are writing for classes such as research papers and lab reports. As a result, the vast majority of my writing has been in academic voice. This has led to my writing sounding overly formal and monotone. I did not fully realize this until was rereading the draft of my newsletter. I found that it sounded like a robot had wrote it. The tone of writing seemed cold and the piece lacked a consistent flow. The issues with the piece’s flow could have come my tendency to what I am writing mid-sentence and then deleting the sentence and starting over, which stops my train of thought from continuing from one idea to the next unheeded. Thankfully, the news column assignment has given me the opportunity to refine my writing process and another chance to improve my voice as a writer.