Whately, Understood.

     With each passing week and with each new set of readings, I have noticed the definitions of rhetoric becoming less ambiguous and closer to how I would outline this system of reasoning.  I can’t decide whether the definitions have changed significantly or if the language used to describe them has just evolved over the years of the rhetorical tradition.  Either way, Whately’s Elements of Rhetoric is perhaps the most understood depiction of rhetoric in society that we have read.  It is probably the closest fit to rhetoric in modernity we’ve seen thus far, though still a far cry from what we as college students in 2013 would consider modern rhetoric.  

     Whately’s discussion of the real use of language is particularly applicable to our present understanding.  The text reads, “[…] the use of language is to communicate our thoughts to each other; […] [the] use of language as an instrument of thought.”  Presenting this information, Whately continues, “[t]he full importance, consequently, of language, and of precise technical language—of having accurate and well-defined name’s for one’s tools—can never be duly appreciated by those who still cling to the theory of Ideas” (1012).  Whately describes how proper reasoning cannot be attained without the use of language, the most primary of tools provided to man for means of said communication between one another.  I feel like he is saying people cannot communicate their ideas to one another without language, which seems a little too obvious.  I think he’s speaking more to the relationship between the mind’s ideas and the language used to convey these ideas to others.  His argument is not as plain as it first reads.  Though even this analysis seems a little too apparent, it is fundamental to what his definition of rhetoric is.  We must have the ability to access our ideas, but more importantly, the proper communicative equipment to transfer them from one person to the next in order for them to be discussed, debated, built upon, or even refuted.  This is the basis of rhetoric as I know it and as many of our rhetoricians have stated in previous readings.  

     I liked this reading because Whately avoided disguising his definition of rhetoric with obscure jargon and got right to the point.  There were a few moments where I thought duh to myself, but then realized simple terms really do lead to a greater understanding of certain subjects.  The demographic doesn’t have to be so limited.