Reflection #2

This week we spent the majority of class sitting in on a lecture by Dr. Kevin O’Neal on Aristotelian Logic. Dr. O’Neal focused quite a bit on the actual structure of rhetoric, which reminded me quite a bit of a Philosophy class (General Logic) I took a few years ago.

I really enjoyed the lecture, and learned quite a few new things. I thought Dr. O’Neal did a particularly good job of breaking down the subject matter into terms anyone would be able to understand. I also enjoyed how he pointed out that the Greeks never made anything; their society was centered on speech--I had never realized this before. The Greeks spent the majority of their time talking and debating. He described how rhetoric’s purpose is to persuade someone of something. This leads into the key of rhetoric, which, as he puts it, is: “keep it memorable, keep it short.” The most effective Rhetoric is short and sweet (Think back to “Encomium of Helen”).

After the lecture, back in class, we watched a scene from Wall Street and analyzed the different kinds of rhetoric used by Gordon Gecko, many of which we had just learned more about in Dr. O’Neal’s lecture, that were used in the scene. I found this to be a good exercise, and listening to everyone’s responses made me notice examples I had missed. It made me feel more confident that I would be able to recognize all of the different forms of rhetoric in the future as well.