The Art of Rhetoric (E-Porfolio)

                           http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Knight_academy_lecture_%28Rosenborg_Palace%29.jpg


Rhetoric is  hide & seek.

     We appeal our personal interests and opinions on public issues to the people through a process of implementation and the people try to figure out what was said through rhetorical analysis. We live in a diversified culture in which people are in a wide range of personal interests. By delivering our voice through well-executed rhetorical practice, our voice may gain more audience than we could have without rhetorical practice. By hiding (implementation) our interest in the voice of rhetoric, we gain not only general audiences but attract people who understand rhetoric, try to seek our point and share their point of views.

Rhetoric is an inheritance.

    We live in a society where a technological advance seems to fly at a speed of light. A smartphone that I bought last year is already obsolete. Scientific theories and information can be challenged in any moment and may be changed. Living in a society in which a certainty of uncertainty dominates the atmosphere, we know there is one thing that does not change: Rhetoric. Since Mesopotamia civilization was established, people has practiced rhetoric, defined it, and  pass it down to other generations. Our ancestors practiced rhetoric, we practice, and we are supposed to pass down the art of rhetoric to our next generation.

Rhetoric is our life.

    Rhetoric is not just a subject that we learn in school but it is like H20 that we breathe in our everyday life. Rhetorical practice is not an action that we only do in public speakings or persuasive essay but we do when we communicate with our family, friends, and people. The potential range of rhetoric is broad enough to include not only communication but  our thinking and our being as well. This is why it is so important to learn Rhetoric and practice sincerely to integrate our life to better better and mature than it used to be. The sincere practice of rhetoric will enrich the quality of our life and individual in the society where everything tend to be disposable and easily forgotten.


NOW, I invite you to my E-Porfolio Website.

Everybody is different

When I am not try to performe rhetoric, such as writing an essay or a speech, I think of rhetoric in this way:

Rhetoric is a territory that I shall never conquer not because I can't but because I do not want to.

However, as soon as an essay or a speech assignment is given from a professor, my perspective has to compromise with a threat from a small number that will measure my success in college. Then, I become nervous and fall in a deep sea of agony where I try to find a way to be sound cool and awesome like J.F.K in his speeches. Some say if you like to read and are a good reader, you may be good at writing as well. However, I, being an living example, can prove that they are wrong. I love reading novels, and newspapers but I am just not a good writer. Unfortunately I think I am a good writer and my essays always seem to be like M.LK's "I have a dream," but I don't know why my essays don't look good as cool as to other people than they do to me.

So I was thinking about this problem a lot in last semester in which a grade of one class is determined by only three essays in that class and I realized I might have different tast of reading and writing than that of other people. Everybody has different taste but I think mine is something more deviant according to the grades of my essays. After getting through some big failures in getting good grades in essays, I realized that I am not a writer who loves to write heavy things, such as politics, school works, and other acadimic writing. I become a really good writier when I write letters to my friends (Yest, I still do write letters). By the way, I was little creeped out when Professor Kramer mentioned about spraying fragrance on letters because that is exactly the same thing that I always did whenever I sent letters to my friends.

Anyway, my point is that everybody has her own specialty in performing rhetoric. I am good at performing pathos in rhetoric and somebody may be good at performing ethos or logos. So, even my grade tells that I am not a good writer but I believe that my future wife will appreciate me being as a man of rhetoric as long as I don't show her my grades in highschool and college.

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Thank you Mrs. Kramer for teaching me in this semester! I just loved your lectures!

Post-Election Emotion

Hello everyone!

Yesterday was the student government election day. I hope all of you participated! So today, I would like to finish up the writing about the election. The life tells us that a loser has nothing to say but I think I have a bunch of things to talk about. Especially, the moment after I heard the result of the election.

Election result link:

http://onwardstate.com/2012/03/28/courtney-lennartz-elected-upua-president/

As all the presidential candidates do, I used SNS (Social Network Service) to campaign for my election. I created a Facebook page and invited my friends to the page so that I can deliver my voice more effectively than just posting the status on my wall. Then, I tried to reach out to the president of International Student Council to get an endorsement since I was running in the election to raise the voice of international student population. In these processes, I tried to define my direct audience clearly, then I appeal to the people who are in the same situation as I am, holding a F-1 visa. Everything seemed to be working smoothly and I thought I might be able to expect the victory in the election. Last night, all the candidates were supposed to attend at a social to hear the result of the election. On the way down to the place, I was talking to my friend, who were also a candidate for a same position, that I wished I could win the election. I was relieved that he wasn't interested in the election as much as I did, I was expecting my victory because I worked hard! However, at the end of the party, the result did not please my expectation. My friend won the election and I lost. I was deeply disappointed that I didn't win I was embarrassed that I lost to my friend and I regretted that I didn't try harder than I did. However, I give a nice handshake, said "Congratulation," and we walked back to our dorm together. Losing the election is a temporary disappointment, but I knew our friendship was something better than that. By hiding a feeling of disappointment, I gave him a positive attitude so that he wouldn't feel bad about me. I thought having a right attitude at a right moment is also a rhetorical action.

After the election, I learned a lot. I was glad that I tried out (I was the first international student who even tried for the election! plus Korean!)  and had so much fun during the election. I'm not sure whether I will try out again, but I will never know! 

Thank you for all who voted for me! See you next time!

A beauty of Public Speaking

Our society is a very interesting organism. It works as a whole, and it has different personality from other societies. In America, people believe if you work out too hard, you are going to throw up while Korean people believe that you will just faint if you work too hard. We don’t have a process of throwing up before we faint. So you can see that people do the things that they believe them to be true and I think public speaking is one of those cultural thing that people believe it to be really hard thing to do. From twenty-one years of my life experience, I realized that public speaking is one of the easiest things to do.

Public speaking is a style of communication that one person is interacting with many people simultaneously. Many of times public speaking tend to be only one direction as a general from of speech. I would say that is the attractive part that I like the most.  Since you are talking to many people at the same time, it has different responsibility than that of personal conversation. If you have a conversation with a person than you need to be more care about others emotion and future reference by meaning that it would be better or necessary to remember the person’s responses in the conversation. However, in a public speaking, you basically talk to people what you have to say. I don’t know why but I feel much comfortable in a public speaking because of that reason: I just have to say what I need to say. It may sound selfish but that was the way that I overcame the fear of public speaking. How easy is that? Public speaking is just overrated! Isn’t it? Just the culture told us that it must be a really hard thing to do.

Therefore, I believe in the easiness of Public speaking.

Being a candidate

Recently, I decided to run for At-Large Representative position in UPUA (Student government). Since our student government has relatively less impact on school than that of other schools, it is natural that not many students pay their attention to the election. So the whole election process might seem very quite and peaceful, but it's a tough time for me being a candidate. This election comes to me more important than the U.S. presidential election does.

Being a candidate, I need people's vote. Many people's vote. If I want to get those votes, then I need to reach out to people and get their votes. Then, I need a great persuasion skill in order to be successful in this process.

Think of Mitt Romney shaking people's hands and making smile. That would be a part of persuasion even though he doesn't say anything about his policy in front of the people. I would love to shake Barack Obama's hand because he is the president and famous! His situated ethos appeals to me strongly as well as his occupation appeals to people's logos. He is the president of the United States of America. However, those shaking hand strategy becomes effective only when a famous person uses it. I'm not as famous as even a random local businessmen, so why would somebody love to shake my hand for what reason? Morever, it would have been better if I was reaching out to the people that I don't know, but living in State College, you see the same faces almost everyday. Acting like Mitt Romney wouldn't be a good idea.

Then, I sense that I am reaching out to the people whom I know to ask for their support in the election. It seems easiler than reashing out to the random people, but it is more difficult than we think. I'm a freshmen and I am trying to make many good friends on campus. However, if I ask their support in my election, some of them would like to support me without any judgement, but others might think that I tried to be friend with them to get votes in the election. You will never know what do they think. Even some of my friend told me about it in a joking way but it hurt me in some way.

Now, there are only two weeks left until the election, and I am trying to reach out as mush as I can. However, I realized I lack a decent persuading skill that encouraged me to think more about who I am and what to improve in my life. I'm not sure how the end would be like but I am enjoying my election process so far. I will learn a lot after all regardless of the result.

Roommate Affair

                            http://www.thcfinder.com/marijuana-blog/news/2011/08/cops-find-marijuana-plants-after-roommates-fight


A life in college makes a hugh difference in a student's life. A student leave her home and live in a dorm with a person whom you knew or did not knew before. I assume the most students do not know their roommates when they first come to a college. It certainly is a big adjustment for everybody to get used to a new situation and some troubles may occur whether they are neccessary; and a roommate affair is one of them.

I used to live with my friend and a teacher when I was in a high school. The teacher was a single man and the friend was a korean international student. Since the three of us made an agreement that we will keep our private activities that we did outside of school, the life couldn't be more enjoyable than it was back then. After having this wonderful years in my high school, I came up to the happy valley to hang out with other nittany lions. However, as soon as I came up to the happy valley, I faced a great trouble in front of my face. I should have noticed ealier when I tried to make a call to my roommate before we met, but I didn't at the moment. I thought he was just a shy guy. Finally, I got to see him and my tough journey has started

Around a week later, I felt bad about myself when I look at the behavoirs of my roommate. He always studied in our room, then he went to bed before 12:00am, he keeps everything at the exactly the same place, he does vaccum cleaning everyday, and he used some chemical with a cotton ball to wash his face at night. He certainly came from a different world than I used to live. However, I tried to make conversation with him but we didn't have many things in common. He never went to a gym, a party, and he was a religious christian. Eventually, I got to be a good friend with him, but we still have a problem in many things.

For example, he hates when I listen to DJ Chuckie, Avicii, and some korean songs. He thinks that those aren't the musics. If I try to convince him, he just simply ingnores my argument about how good those songs are. When I go hang out with friends overnight, he believes that my life is collapsing and always says,

"Oh, Gwang Lee." It irritates me a lot but I just let him to it because that's the way he expresses his temper.

It just seems that he has lived in an extremely sheltered environment, and his experience horizon is just different from that of me. So, when I have to discuss something with him, I usually try to think in his perspective because he really do not understand my point of view even though he got so many credits from AP exams in high school. It's not because my english isn't flowing but because we do not have a large consensus.

Probably, I'm not the only one who is having a trouble with his roommate sometimes. And we really need to use rhetorical device to convince or discuss with our roommates. I might have illustrated my roommate in a negative way, but he has many good things that I can learn from him.

The Power of Thirty Seconds

http://lahori-fun.blogspot.com/2010/06/funny-wallpapers.html

When I try to persuade people, I assert a lengthy argument to haze their minds. However, more I try to convince people with my logic, more they run away from my argument further. Probably, my logic may not be convincing but the major reason would be the fact that people don’t want to listen to other people for the most of time. For this reason, sometimes, a short, brief, and direct message can appeal more strongly to the audience than a 45-minute-lecture does and the commercials on TV and Internet prove the power of thirty minutes to attract people.

While I was trying to pick the best commercial for the my analysis project, I had a hard time to find the one that I like most, since the majority of the commercials were so powerful and impressive. I used to think of those commercials as just fun attractions until I learned how to analyze those ads in LA101H class. Briefly speaking, I have to say that those brilliant ads appeal not only to people’s ethos but also appeal to pathos, and logos in thirty seconds. In order to get people’s attention, some commercials illustrate some sexual contents, such as the car commercial that is provided below. Due to the limited time offered, we can’t blame on the companies that make those sexually expressed commercials.

Throughout the huge impact of the mass media, we are being exposed to the commercials and ads all the time and those commercials became a part of our life and culture. As we know, Super Bowl festival is not only about football but we also talk about which commercials were the greatest in that year.

These commercials are fun and give the important lesson for us. A short, but powerful message can be more efficient than a long, logical argument in many cases.