"The Power of Words"

newscounselor.blogspot.com

As I sit in front of my computer every week, trying to find a topic for my blog post, I most often realize that most of my topics come from my own real life experience. I blog about things that come up in conversations with friends, things I observe, or things I read about in the paper or online. But this week, I’ve been so busy with papers and exams that my life has mainly consisted of studying, writing, and sleeping. I feel like I’ve barely been out in the world, I’ve been so cooped up with work. So I was somewhat at a loss of what to blog about this week, as I wasn’t able to really keep up with current events. 

So I thought about rhetoric, in general. And I realized that the most pervasive aspect of effective rhetoric was speech. The very words one uses are the foundation of most persuasion and influence. From word choice stems ethos, pathos, and logos. Without language, rhetoric would be very different from what we think of it today. We would have to rely upon gestures or facial expressions. But thankfully, we do have the ability to communicate through spoken and written word. Poets and authors have recognized this for years; their jobs are based upon successfully finding the right combination of words that touches us and appeals to us the most. Language can be crude, or language can be beautiful. We ignore what does not catch our attention, but we will give endless amounts of attention to what successfully draws us in. While pondering this, I remembered a video I saw online once presenting how effective or ineffective language can be purely based upon what words are used. This video shows how important word choice can be to rhetoric, in general. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hzgzim5m7oU