Enlightenment of Rhetoric

This semester has been enlightening to say the least. When I walked through the door on the first day of class, I knew nothing about rhetoric. And when we started to read the octalogs I honestly started freaking out, because a lot of their content went right over my head. However, after looking ahead on the schedule I felt relieved when saw that many of the titles of the articles/essays we were going to be reading had to do with ancient civilizations and their mythologies. (Actually, I was pretty excited, being the giant mythology dork that I am.) However, once we really got into the rhetoric of things, honestly I started getting a little confused. But eventually it all started working itself out in my head. I realized after we got in to “Rhetoric Before and Beyond the Greeks” that each civilization’s rhetoric reflected their culture and aspects of their religion.( Accept for American Indian rhetoric, which is a whole other story. Because unlike many of the other societies we looked into, American Indian rhetoric wasn’t just affected by its own culture and religions, but also white culture and its religion, and how the two interacted together in various situations. Plus then the rhetoric would vary based on the situation and the audience, the speaker (and what they wanted to achieve), etc. Which was pretty cool, but also rather confusing (to me) for a good portion of that section.) <—and yes I know these are extreme generations that don’t always apply. 

Ok, back to “Rhetoric Before and Beyond the Greeks”. So, as I stated above, the way I thought about each culture’s rhetoric, was that I thought about each society's culture and religion and how those aspects of each civilization had a huge impact on their rhetoric. Which helped me work through and better understand each culture’s rhetoric and how it functioned. I found that although this was apparent in all the different rhetoric we looked at (including western rhetoric), it was especially apparent in Egyptian rhetoric. 

In Egyptian culture, and therefore their rhetoric, Maat is a driving force. I found it absolutely fascinating that Maat was not just a concept but also a goddess. Maat was the goddess whose headdress supplied the feather, to which hearts of the dead were weighed against. If the heart weighed the same or less than the feather then the soul would pass to the afterlife, if the heart weighed more than  the feather, then the soul would be destroyed. Because of this extreme outcome, Maat became a concept, that in short stood for being a good person. And as a result Maat became an integral part of Egyptian culture. Due to this Egyptian rhetoric deeply reflected Maat. 

I found this culture-to-rhetoric happening consistent throughout all of the rhetorics. Like the Egyptians, it was especially prevalent in Chinese and Athenian rhetorics. Confucianism was more passive and therefore so was there rhetoric. Western culture is more dominant and aggressive and therefore their rhetoric was more “violent”.    

So overall this class has been pretty cool and very illuminating. And although I have learned a lot about rhetoric over the course of the semester, I still feel like I have so much to learn. 

It has been a pleasure being in class with all of you, I have really enjoyed to listening to  and getting to know all of you !