Second Day (The Office) post-script

I left class wondering about this: where does our knowledge about rhetoric actually come from?  What are the sources and origins?  It's not just out of thin air, right?  So what precipitates our knowledge about rhetoric?

I was particularly interested in our attempts to DISagree in class today over the definition of the term "rhetoric."  We had a hard time!  Seems to me that the reasons were good ones: we don't know a lot about it yet, we all draw from the same sources so far, and we are TRAINED to agree.

These are all good explanations, but they are also good reasons to PRACTICE disagreeing.  New knowledge is made through the tensions and differences, seems to me (ultimately we may agree, but any new idea causes a furor at first).  

Also, it seems to me that disagreeing means in a way that you're taking somebody seriously.  When I hear somebody say only "that's nice," I think I'm being dismissed or swept under the rug, not really being taken seriously.  I don't like it!  Not at all!

Next time, I'll lecture some more about the origins of rhetoric, we'll discuss the James Porter article and your questions about it, talk about your one-page paper on "How Do College Students Use Rhetoric," and maybe finish The Office, where Kevin defines the terms of the debate, we see Oscar's lame logos at work, Kelly's goofy pathos, etc.