The range in which one could define a text is nearly infinite. A text can be informative, while a text can also be misleading. From a poststructuralist context, in “Work to Text,” Roland Barthes articulates a text as a process. Barthes explains that a text accomplishes a meaning that is “irreducible” (1328). Barthes also explains that a text requires a reader to combine the practice of reading and writing as a “single signified practice”, to produce the text, “open it out, set it going” (1331). Essentially, Barthes conceives that a text can be understood as a process for understanding. A work is closed, while a text can flourish when actively read. A text can only have meaning if meaning is constructed through critical engagement, rather than passive consumption. Barthes description of a text emphasizes the reader/writer relationship, ultimately suggesting that the definition of a text can tolerate multiple ways in which meaning functions in text formulation.
In “Rhetoric,” Susan C. Jarratt claims that the act of formulating texts is an intentional practice. Jarratt emphasizes the importance of rhetoric in text formulation as a centerpiece of the writing process. According to Jarratt, the standard definition of rhetoric concerns itself “with the ways human beings use speech to influence one another’s attitudes and behavior” (75). A utopian version of rhetoric Jarratt explains is “a political practice enabling free and open exchange of views by competent and authorized speakers for efficacious collective action” (74). While many scholars have expanded the definition of rhetoric in many ways, the corrupt misuse of influence in rhetorical practices has marginalized certain rhetoric activity in favor of “competent and aut...
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...anguages and Literatures. Nicholls, David G., Ed. New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 2007. 126-139. Print.
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...o engage in destructive rhetoric are held to task, rhetoric cannot simply be attributed to some state of affairs, while the rhetorician from whose lips the rhetoric emerges is held to no ethical standard. Certainly it is conceivable that rhetoric can have destructive consequences. Rhetoric seems to have played a central role in the deterioration of people’s faith in their systems of government, or the electoral process by which they choose their representatives. A view of rhetoric in which the rhetorician is accountable for the effects of the change they inflict upon the world could lead to less destructive rhetoric and a society which operates on the solid ground of personal responsibility.
The impact and effectiveness of using proper rhetoric was a strategy of “good” writing that I was not aware of until my senior year of high school. While taking AP Language and Composition my junior year, my fellow students and I believed that we had survived countless essay workshop activities and writing assignments with emphasis on word choices, grammatical structure, syntax, punctuation and spelling. By the time we had entered AP Literature our senior year, we felt we could achieve success; we already knew how to write in the correct format and structur...
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Student's Book of College English: Rhetoric, Reader, Research Guide and Handbook. Boston: Pearson Learning Solutions, 2012. 402-405.
According to Jens’ definition, the rhetoric is a certain valoric quality (bene) which supersedes the grammatical quality of a simple correctness in speech (recte). This special valoric quality forms the artistic character (ars) of rhetoric.
In the story, What is Rhetoric by William Covino and David Jolliffe, there are a wide variety of topics discussed that are inextricably interwoven with the concept “rhetoric.” Rhetoric, as defined by the authors, is “the study and practice of shaping content.” Consequently, my first thought was: Ok, this is a rather broad and opaque description; my successive thought, however, was one of astonishment, inasmuch as the authors went on to further elucidated this jargon. In doing so, the authors distilled the most crucial elements of what is rhetoric— the prevalence of discourse community, and how appealing language is often a precursor to persuasion.
The author’s main argument in “Rhetoric: Making Sense of Human Interaction and Meaning-Making” is that rhetoric does not need to be complicated if writers incorporate certain elements to their writing. Downs further analyzed the elements that contribute to rhetoric such as symbols and signals, motivation, emotion, ecology, reasoning and identification. The author emphasized that writers can learn how to deliver their writing effectively once they are more aware on how rhetoric works. Downs constantly assures that rhetoric is quite simple and does not need to provoke fuzziness. Even though the term rhetorical is applied to everything, the author of the article made it clear that the “rhetorical” thing is situated. The example provided by the author in this article, further guides our understanding on what rhetoric
Clark (2016) suggests that rhetoric isn’t limited to oral communication, but currently has a permanent foothold in written works: magazine or newspaper excerpts, novels, and scientific reports. Not only written
Gabriel, Deborah. Layers of Blackness: Colourism in the African Diaspora. London: Imani Media, 2007. Print.
22 of Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900. Rpt. in Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900. N.p.: n.p., n.d. N. pag.