The Rhetoric of Blogging (Part I)

As everyone in our blogging class know, Chris, Brett, and I took a class on the theory and practice of rhetoric last spring. Once you look at communication through the rhetoric looking glass, it's hard to go back.

The term "rhetoric" has become a perjorative term in many ways, used to describe speech that seen as shallow or insincere. To say "That's just a bunch of rhetoric" is not a compliment.

The study of rhetoric has nothing to do with discerning artifice in speech. Rather, to quote James J. Murphy, it's the art or science of men and women communicating with other human beings. Aristole was the first philosopher to study and write about rhetoric. He viewed rhetoric as "the ability, in each particular case, to see the available means of persuasion." He described three main forms of rhetoric: ethos, logos, and pathos.

Ethos is ethical appeal, based on the character of the speaker. A teacher's words may have ethical appeal, because he is in a position of authority.

Logos is logical appeal, appeal based on reason or logic. A manual on how to build something has logic appeal, as it tells you that if you do A+B+C, you will get D.

Pathos is emotional appeal. Communication based on pathos appeal to your emotion, such as an adverstisement with a woman in a bikini with her arm around a man with a beer. The unstated emotional appeal is that if you drink the beer, you will be attractive and sexy.

One of the principles of rhetoric is that all communication is a form of persuasion. This may cause skepticism at first: ALL communication is persuasive? What am I trying to do with my shopping list, persuade myself to buy groceries?

Those who study rhetoric take, I believe, a different view of persuasion. All communication may not seek to induce action in the recipient, to persuade the recipient to do something. However, I do believe that consciously or not, all communication does seek to induce some kind of reaction. When rhetoricians speak of the type of persuasive appeal, they are really talking about the type of reaction that is sought in the reader. When a teacher tells you to do your homework, you do because she has authorative or ethical appeal. When you make a shopping list, you are logically describing a need for groceries. And when the beer company puts on that beach bunny commercial, they hope you will feel sexy and appealing watching it, and hence buy the beer.

My question is, what is the rhetoric of blogging? The answer depends on the blog we're talking about. Most of the interesting ones, I think, are based on an emotional appeal, an ability to create an emotional connection with the reader. However, I plan to look at a number of different blogs and examine their rhetoric.