The readings for this week reinforced the idea that word choice is an essential component of rhetoric. In Burke’s, Language as Symbolic Action he makes reference to how Pascal found a way around dueling. While his sneakiness had very little…
English 5001
Fusion of Present and Past
by uzma • • 0 Comments
Man is a symbol using animal and dramatism functions as a philosophy of human relations. Burke’s dramatism answers many empirical questions of how people explain their actions to themselves and others, and explains the different cultural and social structural influence…
Burke and Weaver and the Power of Filters
by Anne Engert • • 0 Comments
Can we ever see the world as it really is? Metaphysical questions such as this go back a long way, and my grasp of all the centuries of ontological and epistemological philosophical wrangling is superficial at best. That we are…
Sweet and Sour
by lminnis209 • • 0 Comments
How can we see another culture as rhetorically important when we disregard the whole cultures validity as an equal? Maybe soon as a western culture we can start to acknowledge Chinese Rhetoric as an equally valid discourse. Our past concerns…
Commentary 5
by Alex Janney • • 0 Comments
There are so many things in life that people say a person should “take with a grain of salt;” I can’t help but wonder if translation is something I should add to my list along with the fashion ideas my…
Week 6: Everything in Moderation
by kmontero • • 0 Comments
The two excerpts from Xing Lu’s text “Rhetoric in Ancient China” featured attempts to open Western eyes to the Rhetoric of Ancient China through a comparison with Classical Greek Rhetoric. Although only provided part 1 and 2, the reading centered…
Flowery Chinese Rhetoric and My Brother’s Mother-in-Law
by Joel • • 0 Comments
It doesn’t surprise me that the Western culture has all but diminished not only Chinese rhetoric, but Indian as well, as either meaningless or non-existent. For the past two weeks we have read about all of the false accusations about…
Yameng Liu and Carolyn Matalene: Culture Clash or Culture Bash
by Anne Engert • • 1 Comment
I first encountered the idea that other cultures might have a radically different way of constructing arguments when I was a tutor in the writing center at a community college. In that school, we had many ESL students, quite a…
Happy word, flawless sentences, clear paragraph… brilliant literary piece
by Shirley Miranda • • 0 Comments
Xing Lu takes us to an exquisite journey of the raw origins of Chinese rhetoric and the misperception of it in the Western world. Although it was very interesting and informative to learn about the different schools of thoughts that…
xing lu
by jocias • • 0 Comments
Lu’s work, “Rhetoric in Ancient China” dispels several myths about Chinese rhetoric from a Western view. The first and perhaps most startlingly misunderstanding is the notion that Chinese rhetoric does not discuss logical arguments. On this common misperception Lu writes,…