blog on readings for today

I was very enthused to read about Villanueva, a person from a lower economic status who was able to climb up the academic ladder due to a love of writing and learning. (There are so few of us!) I could relate to him, not just as a minority, but as a person who taught these kinds of students. In California, I was really proud of my minority students who worked a few jobs to put themselves through school. These kind of people are so inspiring. He also did a beautiful job blending narrative with expository information about rhetoric. I also thought it was interesting how he switched from describing himself in 3rd person to 1st person. When he refers to himself in 3rd person, is that the academic in him? Why separate real life from academics? I think the two go hand in hand.

In Perelman's writing, although a bit long-winded, he did a great job of reminding us about the historical aspects of rhetoric and doing a transcultural study of rhetoric. However, there was just so much information that I was overwhelmed by the time I reached his point about the new rhetoric. He explains that new rhetoric consists of demonstrations that may or may not conform to rules. This makes me wonder, regarding persuasion, what types of set rules are there? Does it vary depending on audience/society?

Toulmin made some interesting points about filed-invariant and field-dependent arguments. Do you think that he is talking about something like “arguing across the curriculum?” I found it strange that he was getting so mathematical. To me, math is more concrete than abstract. How can you compare something concrete like math to argument, which is so abstract?