What is argument?

I never really thought about argument before I took this class. I have argued. I have come across the various forms of argument listed in Essentials of Argument. Nancy Wood has defined argument, stating that "the goal of argument is to bring about a change in an audience's initial position on a controversial issue" (4). She goes on to explain the two types of argument that she will explain later in the chapter. Although I never really considered mediation to be an actual argument type, Wood classifies it as such (8). I always thought mediation was pursued instead of an argument, but the way that argument is defined in this text includes negotiation and mediation with respect to the way the ends are achieved; with pursuasion. The ultimate goal is to cause someone to think about an issue the same way that you do, so each of these methods make sense. Actually, I think that it is funny how we learn this from such a young age. I think that my children might have been born with the ability to be pursuasive. Babies are able to communicate with adults by crying. If the baby is hungry, he cries. If the baby is tired, she cries. Crying is the only means of communication that an infant has, but every parent soon realizes that the crying will stop if the problem is corrected. Feed the hungry baby and he soon is content and falls asleep. Even with the limited communication, parents soon learn to recognize different cries for different problems. Infants learn that varying sounds will help a problem to be taken care of more efficiently. That is the dance of parenthood. By the time my daughter had turned three, she had already learned effective means of getting what she wanted from her Dad. She would beg and cry. She also learned that these tactics did not work on Mommy. She knows that she will not win an argument as easily with Mom, so she tries to pursuade her most vulnerable audience first. If it does not work on Daddy, it will not work on Mommy. I believe that we are born understanding how argument works, and that life is a negotiation.

I chose the October 2007 issue of Mother Jones for my magazine. There are three reasons that I chose this magazine and all of my reasons are circumstancial. The first reason is that I went to two stores and was offered a selection of three magazines from the list. Thus, the selection was quite limited. Reason number two arrived with the limited selection as well. I do not read sports magazines of any kind. I have before, but for this assignment I would have to choose something that I would spend a great amount of time with for the remainder of the semester and I could not bring myself to choose that magazine. I was left with two choices. Athough there was a really good looking guy on the cover of one of the magazines, I could not bring myself to use that fact as my primary means for choice in this case. The third reason and deciding factor in my magazine dilemma were the cover stories. I thought that School of Shock sounded much more interesting than anything that I could find in a music magazine. These decisions, of course, were based on my opinion and not on any other fact whatsoever. I am happy with the choice and I think that I might even learn something useful.

Blog #1 What is rhetoric?

According to Foss, rhetoric is "the human use of symbols to communicate" (1). She travels deeper into her definition, explaining that "humans construct the world in which they live through their symbolic choices" (Foss 2). What she is trying to define is the actuality that we, as humans, choose how we define the truth by how we percieve the facts surrounding the truth. For example, If I sent a card to someone and it just happened to be Valentine's day it might be seen by the card recipient as a proclamation of love when I just wanted them to know that I really liked the shirt that they were wearing on Tuesday. This example might be a large exaggeration, but the point is clear; not every situation is see by every person the same way. Another example could be seen in the way a person dresses. If a woman shows up in a nice business suit for a job interview, she is likely to be seen as a successful canidate for the position. If another person shows up to interview for the same position wearing sweats and a baseball cap, that person will be seen as a less qualified prospect whether they are or not. This is because of the symbolism that we have attached to certain styles of dress. In many cases like this one, the symbols that we have attached to things mean more than the the thing that we claim is important.
Just as symbols define how we view our lives, "changing our symbols changes our worlds" (Foss 2). This is how new slang changes perfectly good words into unrecognizable definitions for something entirely different. A fantastic example of this is the word gay. It used to be another word for happy. Now our culture has redefined it to mean homosexual. Most homosexuals I know are not necessarily happy so the word has completely lost its original meaning. No wonder people from other countries trying to learn "American" English have such a hard time understanding what we say when they come to visit the U.S. We are speaking an entirely different language.

Andrea Lunsford: "Rhetoric is the art, practice, and study of human communication." http://www.americanrhetoric.com/rhetoricdefinitions.htm

I. A. Richards: Rhetoric is the study of misunderstandings and their remedies. http://www.americanrhetoric.com/rhetoricdefinitions.htm