Rhetoric...

I found this week’s reading very overwhelming. There was a ton of information in those 40 pages. I did not enjoy reading Williams as much as I did with Elbow. This is probably because Williams is a much heavier reading than Elbow. What is rhetoric? If I were to write down what I thought rhetoric was, I would never have used anything that Williams discusses. I would have simply said that it is a part o language used to persuade someone. There is much more to it than what I could have ever imagined. I am not sure I was able to absorb everything that I read. I found that the reading became some what boring at times. I will say that I liked the concept Corax used to teach Tisias. I also found it interesting that Williams says that rhetoric might not have existed before Plato wrote his dialogue Gorgias.
I am sure everyone has heard of Socrates and his student, Plato. Socrates used the question and answer approach. I found it interesting that Socrates did not like the idea of writing. He said that it “dulls the memory.” Also, Socrates did not think of himself as a teacher, even though he had several students. Plato was his best student. We only know about Socrates because Plato documented everything that he learned. The next philosopher Williams discusses is Aristotle. He had a lot of influence on rhetoric. He thought of rhetoric as an extracurricular activity. I read that as he really did not care about rhetoric as much as other things. I believe Aristotle makes the most sense when he defined rhetoric. He defines rhetoric, in a nut shell, exactly how I defined it previously.
Is rhetoric an art or a science? My initial reaction would be to say that it is an art. After reading all the different examples from philosophers, I would probably say that rhetoric is both an art and a science. This section opened my eyes to what rhetoric actually is and from where it came. I liked that it gave a great deal of perspectives on rhetoric, even though it was some what confusing at times.
I found the last few pages the most interesting. I was some what surprised that a large number of first college students have poor writing skills. What are our high schools teaching their students? The writing assessment tests prove that schools are not teaching their students the proper skills they need to write at a college level. I would have rather read more recent issues that dealt with rhetoric, such as the last few pages.