Blog Post #2

For my second blog post I will be discussing two separate authors and their opinions on rhetoric. The first author is Patricia Roberts-Miller who is a professor in the Department of Rhetoric and Writing at the University of Texas in Austin. It appears that her primary audience is her peers at the University of Texas. Roberts-Miller says that “Rhetoric is a contingent, pragmatic, and generally (but not always) verbal way of approaching problems we face as members of communities” (Roberts-Miller 10). The main argument of this text is to prove how other past views or descriptions of the word rhetoric are in the authors opinion, incorrect. The texts primary rhetorical purpose is to give a brief history of the various definitions of the word rhetoric followed by the author giving her views on those various definitions, followed by her own definition of the word rhetoric. The second author I will be discussing is Lloyd F. Bitzer, who was a associate professor of speech at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Professor Blitzor’s primary audience for this text was his peers during a public lecture at Cornell University in November 1966 and at the University of Washington in April 1967. Professor Blitzor says that “In short, rhetoric is a mode of altering reality through the mediation of thought and action” (Blitzor 4). The main message of this text is to give the author’s definition of the word rhetoric and to explain the relevancy of rhetorical situations and rhetorical utterances. The texts primary rhetoric is to give the author’s opinion on definition of the word rhetoric by displaying the various uses of rhetoric in situations in society such as the fishermen in in the Trobriand Islands. I know this was part of the assignment, but one line from Blitzor’s piece that intrigued me was “In its primitive uses, language functions as a link in concerted human activity, as a piece of human behavior. It is a mode of action and not an instrument of reflection” (Ogden and Richards).