Rhetorical? What???

This was legitimately exactly how I felt.

Has that situation ever happened to you when you read something, then read it again to try to understand it, then maybe keep reading the same section over and over again just because you don't get it? That's exactly what happened to me when I read Three Meanings of Epistemic Rhetoric, by Barry Brummett. The worst part about it was that I couldn't even understand the first paragraph, and there were 5 pages. I seriously about died, because my brain was trying to work in overdrive trying to understand that article. After spending probably 5 or 6 hours on it, breaking it down and looking many words up in the dictionary, I felt as if I had a smidgen of understanding towards the article. Even still though, I can't define Epistemic off the top of my head, and rhetoric....wow... I feel as if that has so many definitions that I just say, "look it up if you want to know what it means."

Within our Digital Literacies class, we were given an exact definition for rhetoric though. Rhetoric is situated strategic discourse.... Now I feel that I'm decently intelligent, but geez, that didn't explain anything to me. My only real knowledge of rhetoric is when people say, "That was a rhetorical question! Don't answer it!" Honestly, I never really looked it up, either. I just gave rhetoric my own definition as trying to put a comment out into the hemisphere for someone to think about but not dare to answer, because most likely it will get them in trouble. I kind of like my definition, but after having only the knowledge of my definition, then reading Brummett's article, I realized there was a lot more to learn about rhetoric. To help myself understand, I looked up the three words from my Digital Literacies' class' definition, and this was what I found:

Situated: 

1. Located; placed
2. Placed in a particular position or condition

Strategic:

1. A plan, method, or series of maneuvers or stratagems for obtaining a specific goal or result

Discourse:

1. Communication of thought by words; talk; conversation.
2. A formal discussion of a subject in speech or writing, as a dissertation, treatise, sermon, etc.
3. Any unit of connected speech or writing longer than a sentence.

(Note: these are definitions found at Dictionary.com)

So....putting those three words all together seems to me as if it means saying something in a particular way with particular words in order for what you're saying to have a particular meaning.  That's a lot of particulars. Basically though, if I want to use rhetoric, I'm going to preplan what I will say so that it has the exact affect and meaning that I want people to take it as. 

Sooooo True!!! 

The whole thing is very interesting, and I'm amazed that it actually took me till I was a sophomore in college to really get any kind of definition for rhetoric. I'm really happy I have a definition now though, because rhetoric applies to soooo many different scenarios. Now that I know more about rhetoric, I feel that I have a much better chance of fully comprehending the meaning that people are wanting me to get from the things they say after they using rhetoric.