The Rhetorical Situation: Response (It was late and I was tired.)

Rhetoric is created when a person has an exigence, an urgent matter that needs attention. So a question is asked that creates a discourse opening the listeners mind up to the point of view of the asker. Bitzer says rhetoric is used to persuade a reader by never actually asking the audience to change. This paper has rocked my world. We live in a world where we are constantly told what to do and why. We are never given the option to see the other point of view. Rhetoric gives us just that, its whole purpose is to get us to negate our fidelity and open us up to a different perspective. The rhetorical question we are asked is supposed to sub-consciously make us see/understand something the listener does not believe in.  A rhetorical situation is technically not real, it is one polarized scenario created to avoid said scenario. Rhetoric is amazing though because ideally it is used to shift a stance from a negative to a positive. Though a rhetorical position or view is always going to be positive whether it is or is not. Looking again to the world we live in we see that everywhere. Everything is made to look beneficial to us by using one form of rhetoric or another.  A better example is in the Mad Men clip we saw, which basically said “Smoking is dangerous. So is driving a car. So is smoking really that dangerous.” Or “Our tobacco isn’t as bad as the other guys because our tobacco is toasted”. One other great example of rhetoric is in Albert Camus’ “The Myth of Sisyphus” where he argues that even though Sisyphus is suffering eternal damnation he is in fact happy. I find that rhetoric is a good thing, in the right hands, which I know is very subjective from person to person. I also find that it is a part of life, and always will be in our imperfect world. It is cool to think about a perfect world where rhetoric would be non-existent, because there would be no need for it. That’s just fantasy I suppose.