The main point of the piece was to inform the audience about the different types of rhetorical devices, as well as the history of rhetoric and when/how to use it effectively. I think one main point they were trying to get across was how often people use rhetoric, and how it’s pretty much unavoidable in our daily lives.
I was familiar with a lot of the information already, from high school, so there was not a lot that stood out to me really. I already knew about ethos, pathos, and logos, although I did not know they came from Aristotle.
One quote in particular I found interesting and somewhat confusing was “wherever there is persuasion, there is rhetoric. And wherever there is ‘meaning’ there is ‘persuasion'”. I understand the first part but not the last sentence. I think of meaning as a synonym to “fact” or “explanation”, so I am confused why it would involve persuasion and rhetoric. The author of the quote makes it seem that rhetoric applies to all form of communication, and while that is partly true, I don’t know how it applies to a verifiable truth.
The points I agreed with were in the beginning of the passage when the author was explaining the “Rhetorical Triangle” of writer, reader, and purpose. Identifying these three things in a piece of work is really important and helpful for understanding the work as a whole and how out is trying to persuade or make you think.
The topics brought up in the passage were similar to what we learned in class and the videos we watched. We reviewed ethos, pathos, and logos in class and that was heavily talked about in the passage. In class we used real life examples from ads and our own lives, which helped me understand the material more in depth.
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