Three Questions for the Week of 1/19-1/23--CMJR 205

Rhetoric and Reasoning (CMJR 205)

Questions

For the week of 1/19-1/23

1. In the eighth chapter of the text, Introduction to Rhetorical Theory, Hauser explores the source of ethos in a speaker as perceived by the audience. He thinks of ethos as a sort of authority that the audience gives the speaker. Hauser decides is a social construct that “is not a thing or quality but an interpretation that is the product of speaker-audience interaction.” Charles Larsen, in the reading entitled “Cultural Premises in Persuasion”, talks about ethos in terms three dimensions that prove the source credibility of the speaker: expertise, trustworthiness, and dynamism. I agree with both author’s perspectives on the idea of ethos. It is an interesting sensation in which people find themselves assigning ethos to others they are communicating with. I know that a person that I typically think of this trait being held by teachers. This interpretation of the person educating me is always a product that results after I have gotten to know them. First, I need to look at Larsen’s criteria for ethos. If I determine whether the teacher is wholly knowledgeable person who I feel safe with in regards to my education. Then I discover whether the person has an element of “Dynamism” to their person, whether they are engaging and confident in their ideas and way of speaking. As Larsen puts it, this kind of person takes up “a lot of psychological space.” A part of me will be more likely to be affected by their rhetoric because I am engaged by their ethos. I know that Hauser’s and Larsen’s ideas about ethos closely resemble the way that I determine whether I can be an effective audience member for a teacher. Do you follow a similar way of assigning authority to the people in your life? Do you look for different qualities in your speakers’?

2. In Irving Goffman’s Chapter entitled “Performances”, he details the different ways in which people change their “front” during social interaction and conversations. It is a look at the social need to adapt to every situation and audience. This plays into rhetorical theory as every rhetor needs to have an understanding of how to relate to their audience, sometimes through an adaptation of their front. He talks about idealization, about how some speakers will present themselves as figures that represent the absolute values and needs of their audience. He writes about the changing front of the beggar. Goffman says of street beggars, “In Western society, however, since the turn of the century, the scenes that beggars stage seem to have declined in dramatic merit.” He goes on the describe the difference between these cleaned-up families in tattered clothes and the old, oddly idealized, image of the man stealing bread crumbs from birds and sitting on the street. Do you see this idea of a beggar? Do you ever consider a homeless person as performing an rhetorically idealized front?

3. Hauser describes four different styles that represent distinctive forms of a “culture in power”: realist, courtly, republican and bureaucratic. Obama presents rhetoric that attempts to persuade the listener to vote Democratic, but also to believe his intended message of hope. After watching Barack Obama’s 2004 address at the Democratic National Convention, what would you place as the sort of culture that he is trying to promote with the rhetoric and front presented in his speech?