This is a catchup of the last few sessions for IDAT101

Rhetoric, Argument and Persuasion

In Aristotle’s Rhetoric he defined the modes of persuasion as Ethos, Pathos and Logos.
In simple terms they are:

ETHOS
Ethos is an appeal to the authority or honesty of the speaker. It is how well they are able to convince the audience of their qualification to speak on a particular subject.

PATHOS
Which is to appeal to the audiences emotions.

LOGOS
Is to use logic or reason that backs up the speakers standpoint to appeal to an audience.

In classical Rhetoric the process of persuasion is divided into five sections:

INVENTION
The search for persuasive ways to present information and arguments.

ARRANGEMENT
The organisation of a presentation to ensure that all the means of persuasions are effectively used.

STYLE
The use of correct, appropriate and effective language.

MEMORY
The use of mnemonics and to aid in Delivery.

DELIVERY
Clearly putting across the message with effective gestures and vocal modulation.

Linguistic devices can also be used to improve the effectiveness of persuasive writing. Alliteration, anthropomorphism, antithesis, hyperbole, innuendo, irony, symbol, similes, parallelism, metaphors, rhymes and oxymorons among the most common.

These are all important tools with which to write effectively and should be useful to understand for writing my blog when I wish to be persuasive.

Leading on from the task in the previous week in which we attempted to create a map of our lives and identities we have now began to focus in on the media aspect specifically and the interactions between various elements of it and people. Fortunately my work for the previous week had been done from a media influence standpoint.

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In a small group we discussed how to go about mapping the structure of the media. I suggested that the media could be broken down into three relatively distinct areas of Content, Delivery and Feedback.

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I also identified a distinction between forms of feedback to the content provider, that it could be either passive, for example viewing figures or page hits, or active such as a complaint.

Using the website MindMeister.com we were able to better organise and present this interpretation. The site allows collaborative work on the same mind map in real time over the Internet. Once I got home I increased the complexity of the diagram to include greater depth. With such a vast and interconnected field as the media some things like the various combinations of elements could not be explained in detail. An example being the degrees of which something can be both informative and entertaining.

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The diagram shows a looping system in which content is created, delivered, consumed and the feedback is then transfered back to the content creator. With this feedback content creators may adjust their output.

This way of looking seems to me to be a usefull basic model for understanding the complexity of the media and has prompted me to think though it further.