Blog response #week1
The readings we had to do for this week were very interesting and informative. The first one, “Understanding Rhetoric – A graphic guide to writing,” was a very fun and informative. I loved the idea of visually reading the article instead of the standard paragraph forms. I consider myself a visual person, so this type of reading was great. The authors’ main point was to help the reader understand the actual definition and meaning of rhetoric and how it is commonly misused in everyday language. They date the concept of rhetoric back to Ancient Greece where philosophers like Plato and Aristotle who each had different views on rhetoric. It was interesting to me how a concept that we use so obliviously started way back in the day. Understanding pathos, logos and ethos is also essential to correctly apply rhetoric in writing or speaking. From what I understood, rhetoric is a method designed to persuade and inform a given audience and can be a powerful tool in writing or speeches. According to Aristotle, rhetoric could actually have more “educational” purposes and used it to promote desired behavior. The authors of this graphic novel did a good job putting to use the concept of rhetoric to engage their readers.
The second reading by Mary E. Hocks focused more on the teaching and application of rhetoric and encouraged the reader to partake in the use of rhetoric on the internet. With visual examples throughout the reading, I was able to understand how visual rhetoric is used online. I realized that we are always exposed to rhetoric and its main concepts. With examples from Anne Wysocki and Christine Boese, I learned the importance of audience stance, transparency and hybridity in visual rhetoric. By looking at the layouts, colors, fonts and images, the audience is either engaged or not. I believe understanding this concept of visual rhetoric and learning how to apply it in multimodal writing, will make me a better reader and writer too. – Karina Lopez
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