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Yasmin Martinez
Mr. Matt Moberly
Writing 10
M/W 8:00-9:50 a.m.
Rhetoric: The art of effective or persuasive speaking or writing, esp. the use of figures of
speech and other compositional techniques. Whaat! After readying and trying to understand the
definition of rhetoric, my mind was still clueless on what rhetoric meant in my writing. I thought
rhetoric just meant ethos, pathos, and logos. However, after doing a presentation on Rhetorical
Analysis, I realized it wasnt just ethos, pathos, and logs. What I realized was that it not only
included ethos pathos and logos, but that it included other parts as well. The presentation that my
group and I worked on was Miss Representation. With this presentation I was able to fully
understand the steps to rhetoric.
The definition of rhetoric that appealed to me in this semester were rhetoric situations and
rhetoric appealed. I learned that a rhetoric situation involves a purpose (why), a medium (who)
and an audience (who). In between the purpose, medium and audience there myself, Exigency,
and the context. I learned that Exigency is the result of another argument or a resolved argument.
I then learned that context is the setting of the argument (in that moment/time type of situation).
After learning new terms of rhetoric situation I somehow was still clueless. However, after given
an example on how rhetoric situation was used in real life made it easier to remember and
complete the project I had of Miss Representation. The example that helped me was the example
of coffee. First the purpose is to get coffee, secondly your friend is your audience who may or
may not get you coffee, and lastly the medium is you texting your friend to bring you coffee to
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class. While this is going on the reason why you want coffee in the first place is because youre
thirsty, tired, or got late to class. The Exigency is you not getting coffee and the context is in
class having a phone to use. After figuring out the rhetoric situation on a topic then thats when
rhetorical appeal is used (ethos, pathos, and logos). As a result this was what I used to learn
about rhetoric during my class discussions.
By completing the Rhetorical Analysis assignment I learned that a lot of people use it to
convince your purpose to your audience. Some use emotions and others use statistic or
credibility to get something across as well. The knowledge and skilled I learned on rhetoric
analysis was that Miss representation was a short film promoting a trailer to a documentary. I
would have never figured this out if I had never learned what rhetoric really meant. This will
benefit me in the future because I will now be able to write a good argument essay, and use it for
other beneficial things as well.