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Final Thoughts...

Overall this ILS 200 class was a great experience that really helped me to develop as a writer. It opened up the door for me to use many language tools that I was not aware were previously at my disposal. It also helped me break down my arguments to ensure that ethos, logos, and pathos were all aligned and balanced with one another. I learned many new pathetic, ethical, and logical tropes and schemes to use in my writing and fallacies to be aware of and try to avoid.

The best part of this class has been being able to have my voice heard and express my opinions in an informal setting with this blog. Things that I normally would want people to be aware of but had no real means of telling them have been easily communicated through this blog. I think I will definitely continue to read blogs, respond to blogs, and maybe even have my own blog page in the future because blogs are a great way to share your thoughts with others in an anonymous fashion that you really aren't held accountable for. In saying this, that doesn't mean that people should run around and blindly post nonsense in order to anger others or start an argument, but should keep their arguments as fair, accurate and balanced as they can to strike up a positive and constructive argument.

All in all, this class was very fun, interesting, and useful and I will definitely consider taking another ILS class in the future.

KENNY POWERS... OUT

The Enormity of Experience

Language is a very powerful tool that can be used in many manners through the use of pathetic, logical, and ethical tropes, schemes and other language tool that we learned in class this semester. As powerful as language is, I don't think it can capture the enormity of experience. By actually experiencing something remarkable and formulating your own thoughts and feeling your own feelings is unlike anything that you could ever tell me or I could ever write about to you. There is a reason that people state all the time that "you had to be there" or "you really do need to experience that." There is so much setting and aura that is present when actually experiencing something that just can't be captured by language. As hard as the author may try to paint a picture to his or her audience those details that were forgotten or just overlooked that definitely contributed to the actual experience will never be shared. If I tried to tell you right now about what happened and how I felt being at the Milwaukee Brewers first playoff win in over 25 years, I could write for hours just recalling every detail that I remembered from that day a year and a half ago. You could read or listen to me babble on for hours and even if you were attentive the whole entire time, you would probably just scratch the surface of my experience of actually being at the game. Language can help to formulate pictures, but the imagined picture will never actually match up to the still frame that the creator of the message has engrained in their mind. Every last language tool in the book can be used, but language cannot fully capture experience.

Wrap up

At the beginning of this semester I didn't know what to expect from contributing to this blog seeing as I had never written on a blog before. I have enjoyed displaying my opinions on here over the last four months. I haven't had to ever post my opinions for a class in this informal of a setting. It has been a nice change of pace to be able to craft an argument while not trying to make it sound great in order to get a good grade.

Following the different blogs from my section and the other section has been an interesting experience as well. I felt like people really opened up and displayed some interesting opinions on different topics. I was intrigued by many posts and i am glad that we had this kind of outlet to post our opinions on. I feel that without the blogs it would be much harder to get all of these opinions out in the world. As the semester went on the more thought provoking the posts. There were some that I questioned and others that made me laugh. This was a very interesting way to learn and discuss rhetoric and I felt like it's effects have shaped my idea of language and how it's used so much differently than it was before. All of the contributing factors have helped provide me with knowledge that I feel like I wouldn't have got in the traditional way of learning about writing.

Language and Experience

There are many great writers that have the ability to put the reader in a certain situation by the way the word their writing and give sensory detail. Still, this can only go so far. Actually experiencing something and being in the moment is unparalleled. Language cannot ever fully have the same effect that the experience can. If I were to read an article about a basketball game, I would find out all of the same hard facts and stats that those who attended the game did. But, at the same time, the article wouldn't have the same lasting affect on me. I would never know about all of the emotions in the twists and turns of the game and all of the adjustments that were made.

Of course there are some experiences that can be simply expressed through language and nothing is lost. If someone were to write an article about me reading a book at the library. There isn't much the person reading is missing out on. Both are boring. But for the most part if you want to know about something you have to experience it.

Experience brings into play so many factors that words cannot display. All five senses are playing a role when someone is in a moment having an experience. The smell is something that can be explained but not replicated. The same goes for the feel. No one besides those who have been to the Caribbean knows what it feels like to be there. You can get a sense of what it is like but you will never truly know until you go. Experience has a greater effect because of it's complexity. All of the surroundings are what makes one instance unlike any other. That's why there are so many funny stories that get told and the people listening don't find it funny and the person telling the story says "I guess you had to be there." The language by itself does not suffice.

The Finisher

At the start of the semester I didn't know what to make of Rhetor Rick and all of the potential knowledge and wisdom he had to offer. Now that we've reached the end of the semester I see that he could, even on his worst day, put both the Dos Equis man and Chuck Norris to shame.

I have taken numerous English classes, logic classes, and psychology classes, but this class will stand out among them in the way something ancient, appealing, and beautiful sticks out from the ordinary and familiar. It's clear that rhetoric has always been present, but that I have simply not had the tools or knowledge to see it. Now, perhaps, when arguing or being presented with an argument, I won't be caught off guard without knowing what hit me or how the blows occurred. It's clear that it will be useful in my speaking and writing, and it is also clear that I have a lot of work to do (lifelong work) to truly hone and appreciate its power, maximize its effects, and use it in the right situations with ethics in check.

Though my posts will stop with this post as the semester comes to a close, cheers to you, Rhetor Rick! I've been glad to be your disciple this semester.

In closing, please accept this deliberate attempt to divert you from my post as a token of my appreciation:



Civilian out

Can language capture the enormity of experience?

This is a question that provokes further questions that will be explored in this post. If the ‘experience’ is that of the author who is trying to share the entirety of their experience with a reader, then language is not powerful enough to capture and share the entirety of it – just like how the human brain is not equipped to handle the entirety of sensory ‘experience’ that the universe consistently churns out. I ate a big bowl of Cheerios with banana slices and skim milk this morning. If I wanted to share that experience from the first crisp bite of Cheerios to their soggy finale, then I would fail in trying to pass this experience on to my reader. They might get hungry, but they wouldn’t come close to being able to recreate it without getting their own bowl of Cheerios, a banana, and some skim milk and creating a similar experience for themselves. Good authors are probably the ones that can get very close to recreating these sensory experiences in the mind of their readers, but language is still not powerful enough to evoke all of the senses or all of the potential in our brains.

But in this regard the question is a bit silly and obvious, so I will move on to what I feel is a more interesting or reframed approach to this question.

Which experience is more valuable? Is it the original author's intended attempt to share his or her experience, or is it the experience that the reader creates for themselves? With language something is always obfuscated or hidden and not what the author truly implied. The reader picks up that story and changes it for themselves based on their own experiences. Language, then, becomes the cut and paste enabler of new, created experience that is malleable, testable, and even more powerful when put together and interpreted in the human brain. The reader allows his or her own experiences to affect the experience they have with the author’s text. In a way, this “disadvantage” or shortcoming of language allows for the “good stuff,” the malleable creation of the individual mind that warps the real story, the real experiences, and creates. When Dostoevsky died, the true “experience” he meant to convey died with him, but his language continues to live through the new sensory experience invoked by his text in the reader. Thousands of essays interpret different portions of his language trying to find new meaning or interesting interpretations, and in their subjectivity there is no right or wrong experience, just a personal one.

Thus, I would argue, that while language cannot capture the every detail, feeling, and thought that goes into someone else’s experience, this creation of a new experience for the reader using language then becomes the most important experience that transcends the original and can be captured in its entirety and then reshaped into new language for the next person to create their own fully captured experience.