Montana White Help Received: Understanding
August 31, 2017 Rhetoric Losh et al
ERH 201WX-03 M.C. White
MAJ Garriott
Understanding Rhetoric
Losh et al
My definition of rhetoric prior to reading Understanding Rhetoric was the art of persuasion. However, after the reading I feel as though I did not fully define rhetoric and would change the length of my definition. Why would I change the length of my definition? Because rhetoric is more than just persuasion, it has many different components to define it. Plato’s definition of rhetoric has a more negative view since he believed that it had the malicious intent to deceive others and lied to audiences. However his student, Aristotle had different views. He believed that rhetoric was educational and could provide examples of bad situations to large audiences so that they could learn from the mistakes. In addition to their perspectives of rhetoric, it has three main components: ethos, pathos, and logos. Ethos pertains to ethics or the credibility of the person presenting. Pathos is empathy or the emotion and logos is logic. Now, going forward, I would make sure to include pathos, logos, and ethos in my definition of persuasion, as well as the views of Aristotle and Plato. I feel that it is important to display every view possible to let others know that rhetoric can be used to be educational or depending on how it is used, could tell lies.