“That was insensitive”
When I first heard these words from a close friend I was in shock. Did she really have the nerve to call me insensitive as I gave her my most well thought out advice? Unfortunately, it was too well thought out and, what I had considered to be insightful and useful advice, she had viewed as insensitive. Initially I was confused as to how she had misinterpreted my advice as insensitive or an indicator that I did not actually care about her problem but upon further analysis it quickly became apparent where we disagreed.
Instead of using all of my tools as a human being; head, hand, and heart, I had made the unfortunate error of speaking too quickly using only my head and hands. As a lover of science and facts it can be easy for me to focus only what is the most logical conclusion given the facts using my head and then deciding on a course of action to take that would fulfill what my head said. In this particular argument my friend was not looking for the most logical course of action. She did not want me to suggest that she reevaluate the terms of her current relationship or to seek counseling. What she wanted was a friend who listened to what she had to say with their heart and not their head.
By not paying attention to the needs of my audience, or in this case a good friend, I failed as both a rhetor and a friend. Even though I thought out my response and chose how to respond to her carefully I was still missing the feeling that was required in the situation. As a result of choosing my head over my heart I hurt her feelings and gave the impression that I was not empathetic to her needs. Although as humans we generally act and speak with the best interests of ourselves and others in mind, it is easy to forget that there are three tools in humanity that need to be utilized not just the ones that we prefer to use.
https://www.iiconservation.org/
Olivia,
This post was really well thought out in terms of rhetorical situations and how they apply to real life situations and conversations. I agree that being a good friend sometimes involves straying from logical thought processing and responses, and requires dominance of the heart over the head. Technically speaking, your heart really is just another branch of your head, but we have to dodge the head’s control over that branch when we need to be empathetic. Sometimes, our audience doesn’t actually want to hear logical responses and only wants to hear something that they agree with and reinforces their feelings. I like how you incorporated all of this and stated it really well. In the future, a little more context into the experience and specific conversation itself would really help drive home the points you are referring to. Dialogue can really help that. Thanks for sharing!
Olivia, I thought this was a very good explanation of the heart, hands, head theory of rhetoric. I have to admit that I have had similar experiences to this, as I often approach situations from a logical perspective than a particularly empathetic one. However, as rhetoric is really about saying the correct thing at the correct time, it is important to consider all components of one’s thoughts, actions, and feelings when addressing someone or something. I also enjoyed how you tied in the idea of “reading” an audience to figure the proper thing to say, as I think that is an important skill that requires experience to become good at. From a narrative perspective, I would have enjoyed more detail about the specific conversation, but overall this was a very thoughtful commentary of how rhetoric applied to a personal experience in your life.
This was a great and very objective self-analysis of a personal situation that must be tough to think back on because it seems as if it was pretty awkward between you and a close friend. It is very tough to be objective about your mistakes in speaking to friends, especially in terms of giving advice, but you managed to do so and you tied in greatly to rhetoric. Your use of the three aspects of the rhetorical triangles (head, hand, and heart) was very impressive, you realized where you had gone wrong in your advice. But I have been in this situation many times before and I think an outside source of advice is good because I am not emotionally connected to the situation. This never ends up well because speakers need to take all three aspects into account when speaking to an audience of any kind, large or small.