Summary:
In this reading Janet Boyd was talking about rhetorical skills and how we all already possess it, either through books, media, or in activities we do everyday. Every time we try to talk or write something there’s a rhetoric thing that we already trying to use and reject the ones we think won’t work. In the reading Janet gave us and her students three different scenarios with three different rhetoric way to write in. Every time the results of the writing style were similar because even when we think that we don’t have any knowledge of rhetoric we all know that each professions would use a specific jargon or language in their own field. Even when we are writing randomly, we always carefully chooses words that are appropriate for the audience.
Response:
I find it very interesting that even though we never learn the jargon or the way to write like you were a certain someone. We somehow know that we needed to use a certain kind of language in our writings to depict our story and point of view like we actually work in that profession. The scenarios Janet gave out to her students was very interesting instead of writing on paper I put myself in those roles also in my head. And that’s where I realized that she was right from the beginning. I don’t have to be majoring in a specific major to know how to write like a detective, professor, or a surgeon. All those knowledge was already inside me because of TV shows, social media, and books. I agreed with all the points Janet made in the reading I think that everyone already have rhetorical skills inside them, they just never know that they are using it whether they are exaggerating things, or substituting words for comforts. Her writing style is very clear and easy to understand in this text. Clearly she knows the exact audience that she’s writing to and she already anticipated what kind of audience she would attract. That’s why she uses both formal and informal way of writing. She also uses complicated vocab words and then give the definition to them in case her audience couldn’t understand it.
Reflection:
Janet open up a whole new way of thinking for me about writing. I never think about rhetoric the way she has explain it. Her examples make rhetoric way easier to understand and it shows very clearly how they were used. Because of that in the future if I am writing something informative I will try to break down more subjects in my paper so that it would be easier for the audience to read and understand what I am trying to convey. I don’t think there are any specific connections I could draw from this text to connect to another one even though it has open up my mind way more about rhetoric. Also I like the way she had injected vocabularies and rhetoric terms into her text to help the reader remember the term easier.