I was going to make this a sort of hodge-podge blog that wrapped up all the little details of this week, almost like a rhetorical burrito, but instead I found myself really thinking about one small, wuick incidence that occurred this week, so I’ll actually be blogging about that. Sorry, rhetorical burrito of hodge-podgy-ness. There’s always next week.
Speaking of burritos, this week I found myself getting a tad sick of dining hall food, and so a friend and I ventured downtown to grab some lunch at an old favorite, Chipotle. Let me first just take a moment to say that I LOVE Chipotle, almost as much as I love putting words in all caps in order to emphasize them. So there I was, happy as a clam, with my friend and some burritos, when I stumbled upon some intriguing non-verbal or written rhetoric . We were having a blast simply sitting and people watching, which is one of my favorite pass times. For the most part, we encountered college students like ourselves, waiting in line to pay way too much for their Mexican treat of choice. However, we did notice a few outliers in the population, and one that caught the attention of my friend right away. This man was sitting at a table with a large group of others, happily stuffing his face like the rest of us. The people he was with were all casual, with back packs and comfortable looking clothes. But not this guy. Rather, he was dressed in a well tailored three piece suit, with a brief case instead of a backpack.
Upon spotting him, my friend went “Woah. Someone’s important.” I laughed and nodded, before I took a second to think about it. In all actuality, I had no idea if this guy was important. In fact, he looked to be about the age of a college student, so he most likely wasn’t really all that “important” or different than the rest of us eating there. I realized that by dressing this way, this young man was utilizing ethos to make us automatically assume that just based on the way he looked, he knew what he was doing and he was in fact “important”. It made me start to think about how often we judge a book by its cover and miss the real underlying argument, because we’re so wrapped up in the rhetoric that surrounds any given work. We didn’t even take time to ponder why this guy was wearing a suit or where he might of been coming from. We just let the ethos wash over us and sink in, without really looking into the “argument” at hand.
Now I realize this is a stretch because it’s not actually an argument that I was looking at, and there’s no real, physical rhetoric at work here. However, it’s almost like a metaphor. A metaphor for how sometimes, rhetorical strategies can help enhance or highlight and argument, making it more appealing to the viewer or listener. But more often than not, they can give off, to the average observer, a false sense of why an argument is good. We assume that we should listen to someone just because they display ethos, we give money to a charity simply because the commercial tugged on our hearts. But how many times do we sign up or sign on to something because we actually agree with or support the argument presented? How many times do we support something that we actually know and understand, versus acting because of an emotional appeal, or because we thought we should agree with someone (and not their argument?)
Food for thought, huh?
(Get it, food? I like to think I’m witty sometimes.)