Quote: "When audience members feel their sense of order is threatened or challenged, they are more likely to cling to familiar ways of thinking and to be less open to understanding the perspectives of others. When a safe environment is created, then, audience members trust the rhetor and feel the rhetor is working with and not against them."
Question: Is offering an effective mode of rhetoric? Can we separate our desire to persuade from rhetoric and instead seek mutual understanding and insight?
I feel like it's very hard to separate the two because people's perspective are very unique individually. I feel like those who are very close-minded are prone to only listening to themselves and not giving reason to others whereas those with an open-mind can have an opinion but see where the other person is coming from. It all depends on the person honestly, or even mood of the day if we want to be complicated. One day someone can be feeling open minded and another day that same person can just want to disagree with the world for whatever reason. The separation of the two definitely depends on the person and I believe place and time as well.
ReplyDeleteI feel like rhetor will always be used as a persuasive device, its just a matter of how we persuade. Even when using rhetor in a passive way, the ultimate goal is to convince those listening of the point being made. I guess if rhetor was used to relay strictly informative information to people, there could be an absence of persuasiveness. But still, it is arguable that when presenting factual discourse, there is still a convincing component in trying to get an audience to believe the information.
ReplyDeleteI think it is possible do separate our desire to persuade from rhetoric, or at least I believe we sometimes should. By seeking mutual understanding and insight we can learn more and even add to our own beliefs. We can't always be trying to persuade everyone. Sometimes we need to listen to others too.
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