Speech

Rhetoric is the art of persuasion and is used daily in life to try change the opinion or viewpoint of someone. The basic goal of rhetoric is to try and show a listener and/or reader that the points that you are arguing for are more valid points than those who are in opposition. One small piece of advice though is to not try and outdo a rhetorician with rhetoric.

The three most basic principles of rhetoric that are used are ethos, pathos and logos. These principles when used well can be very efffective; if not, then persuasion will not take place and one might lose their argument. I'm here to tell you a little story about a recent experience with rhetoric from a first hand point of view.

Elders, parents, and teachers will almost always believe that what they know is correct and somehow a step above what another may believe. Mind you that opinion and bias may come into effect here from my personal experience. I have recently been put into a situation where I've wanted to argue a point to the extreme of where I got things my way. I know that life is not fair and things will not always turnout according to how you want them to. In trying to get a teacher's point of view changed, I tried using logos which is the logical appeal and use of reasoning.

My logos appeal was essentially that things are better than they were before and I had shown much improvement from the beginning of the road. This was not seen the same way by my 'superior' but more or less seen as the fact that it was expected to be much better and then flipped back around saying that it was better yes, but there are many more ways that it could have been altered to make it even better. Tell me you don't expect an amatuer on the PGA Tour to knock off Tiger Woods do you? Its not going to happen except with much experience and only then is the golfer going to have the rounds of his/her life and have Tiger have one of his off days in order to be better than him.

The second approach used was that of the ethos which is developing credibility to one arguing a certain position. Attemping to do this, I used examples from the past of my history and what I had done and what I had done to try and improve things from my past. Unfortunately, to no avail, this did not work either.

I chose not to hit on the last appeal of Pathos because it simply was not relevant. I thought that I could persuade the teacher by telling them that I had gotten numerous speakers into their class and that they had 'thrown me under the bus' on numerous occasions asking me to speak for other classes and present things, however, I chose not to take that route. Instead, I listened intently as they instructed me on the grade appeals process. That might have to be a route that I take instead. I guess only time will tell, but not too much. I guess Ill have to use the time inbetween to work on my rhetoric skills for the future. Life moves pretty quickly. If you don't stop and take a minute, you might miss it.