what's rhetoric?

Prior to reading James Herrick’s introduction, my knowledge and definition of what rhetoric is was very limited. My only real experience with rhetoric and my perception of it was limited to hearing political jargon on TV and listening to my friend try to describe her classes at the "University" of Minnesota, which are all named "Rhetorics..." Since I never understood what she was talking about my definition of rhetoric had to be based on the political jargon. So if someone would have asked me last week to define rhetoric, I would have told them something to the effect of "it’s basically saying something in order to be agreed with or seen as a sympathetic figure."

After reading Herrick’s introduction to rhetoric I learned that my definition wasn’t completely incorrect, because he mentions the "empty rhetoric" phrase sometimes used in politics, but there is so much more to it than I ever realized. After reading the introduction, it seems to me that rhetoric is in pretty much every aspect of communication, our words, actions, motions, pictures and so on. I learned how important rhetoric is and the many ways it can be used, especially in persuasion. I found an interesting aspect of rhetoric to be in the ethics of its use, and how that can change people’s opinion of the use of rhetoric.

Overall, the article really helped me understand how far the scope of rhetoric extends. If someone were to ask me what rhetoric is now, I would probably need a lot more time to explain it. I would make sure they understood that it is not just the sometimes empty words politicians use. In order to give them a very general sense of what it is I would probably give them the definition on page 2 of Herrick’s introduction where it says "rhetoric is, among other things, the study of how we organize and employ language effectively, and thus it becomes, the study of how we organize our thinking on a wide range of subjects."