Week 2 Reading Homework

This weeks reading was primarily composed of introducing us to rhetoric and presenting the idea that "everything's an argument".

First I will begin with rhetoric. The way that the readers were composed (all comics) is a really fun, engaging, thought provoking, and overall cool way to learn about a subject (much better then text books). The first bit we read about, "spaces for writing", I think mentioned a lot of really good points. When I first sit down and think about writing a paper my mind becomes black and as the text says I feel like I am "waiting for inspiration". Those three lines made me think, I don't need to wait for inspiration to come to me I just need to begin writing. Even if I choose to begin writing one way I can always decide to change my direction of the paper and create a truly though provoking paper. I also really liked "writing is a social activity that involves communication between people". This is very true, I mean after all you are reading my blog and potentially going to respond, that is creating social activity and a place to communicate. I feel with the more communication a person has in regards to a subject matter the more informed they can be and in turn are able to create a more thought out paper. Rhetoric has three main components: ethos, pathos, and logos. Ethos meaning credibility of the subject that the writer is writing about (ethics). Pathos uses the emotion in depute an argument (empathy). Logos means a well structured argument (logos). When you combine these three forces you create the rhetoric triangle, meaning all three aspects come together to help create a stronger purpose.



On a different note... Next we read about "everything's an argument". This chapter was primarily about how there are many different forms of an argument. There are arguments that are about the past, future, about individuals, create an argument that is more informative, and are also persuading. These are just a few different examples that can be used to demonstrate an argument. Another main point that I noticed was that anything digital can be used as evidence and therefor can be applied to an argument. Make sure you don't say anything that you wouldn't want to be used against you!