Rhetorical: A Missunderstood Word

     The word rhetorical or rhetoric is used quite often in everyday language especially in the phrase "it's a rhetorical question." The interesting thing is rhetorical, used in this context, is actually being used correctly, but most people misunderstand why it is being used in the first place.
     As a composition student, I have been learning a lot about writing and what's involved with it like the writing process, but then we started to learn about the "rhetorical situation"and how much it is actually used in writing. The thing is rhetoric means using language effectively to pursuade, inform, educate, or entertain, and the rhetorical situation means the circumstances in which you communicate. This means that the word rhetoric simply is using language to your advantage like changing the views or thoughts about a subject of a person or persons.

     The truth is, before taking this class, I couldn't tell you what the word rhetoric means, or the fact that rhetoric was even a word. Now i think that the word is stinkin' sweet, and I can go to all my friends saying things like, "did you know rhetoric is a word and it is used commonly in writing and speaking, and it means blah blah blah." It's really cool to sound smart I definitley recommend trying it sometime, but there is more to it than just the word rhetoric. The whole rhetorical situation that writers use consists of parts that make the whole. The whole is the context or the backround of the author while the parts are the audience, the purpose, and the genre. The writer has to consider all these subjects when writing. It's not an easy thing, but I'm sure it gets better, well that's what I'm hoping.