Keeping it interesting, keeping it current

Dear Classmates,

What exactly is an ugly and offensive fault? What examples can you think of that could be classified as ugly? As offensive? Now, what types of actions or words or thoughts might you describe as both ugly and offensive? For Erasmus, it's the old “repetition of the word or phrase” (Bizzell & Herzberg, p. 505)! While I found this section absolutely comical, I also nodded my way through it. When Erasmus asked, “Who has got years patient enough to put up even for a short time with a speech totally monotonous?”, I answered, “Not me!” (Bizzell & Herzberg, p. 505). In fact, my husband calls the point of monotony as “checking out”. He says that he can see in my eyes and by my body language when I “check out”. And it’s true! Tell me something once. If you want to further explain your point of view with varied examples, make sure that they are both relative and interesting. Otherwise, I get the point.

Most people are willing to listen at least once. But repetition either has to have good merit or be part of a song with a really good beat. Erasmus expresses that “the mind is always looking around for some fresh object of interest” (Bizzell & Herzberg, p. 506). And this is how good debates become good. Erasmus encourages writers and speakers to pull from a toolbox with a variety of styles and subjects. In this way, we avoid “chatter[ing] on without restraint” or saying too little (Bizzell & Herzberg, p. 505). In some instances, silence would have been better than continued discussion of the same subject in the same way. Therefore, we have to vary either the subject or the style.

Here we can return to the same argument we have seen from the Greeks. Being well educated aids speechmaking and writing because it increases the number of tools in the rhetorician’s toolbox. Still, rhetoric is a funny subject, as we have seen in the trouble humans have in both classifying as well as in assigning it relative value. It’s something to be studied, in other words, to improve the style that Erasmus discusses. But it is also something that everyone uses. Uses, I add, but not always well. And so we get exposure to those ugly and offensive experiences of repetition.

Let me diverge. Remember how the character Socrates said that “the method of the art of healing is much the same as that of rhetoric” (Bizzell & Herzberg, p. 137) in Plato’s Phaedrus? Here, we have the physician who has studied a subject and promotes/practices healing. And back then, the connection between studying rhetoric and performing public speeches was much more direct because individuals made a living by being rhetoricians and practicing speechmaking. Today, that is less outwardly so. We don’t usually defend ourselves in the courtroom today. Nor do we go to the public square and shout out a speech. But doctors are still studying medicine and practicing healing. So we can see how one profession has stayed more consistent while the other has changed more with the context.

Still, we may defend our decision at work or we may make a speech at town hall. Maybe we train others for a living. Maybe we motivate teams at work. And our physician may also perform the same rhetorical practices. So where is the value in rhetoric today?

Enter communicators. We have this field of communication today that also goes through the ups and downs of organization and value. I can’t tell you how many people questioned my decision of choosing Business Communication as a major in my undergrad years. And in my answer to them, I confessed that I really didn’t know. I just liked to write. And I didn’t like to write fiction. Eventually, I entered the world of technical writing and absolutely loved writing hardware and software manuals, which, sigh, many people don’t find value in either. Most manuals go unread unless there is a problem or unless it pertains very specifically to that person’s career. In becoming a technical writer, I learned an art. Here is a skill that not everyone performs. As Phaedrus said, to create the value, one must work for and possess “knowledge of the art” (Bizzell & Herzberg, p. 136).

Books like the one we read from Erasmus offer us such knowledge. From the outside, they seem nearly ridiculous. But you have to really place yourself in what was important at that time. In the future, my tech writing skills will become obsolete. Something will replace the manual as we know it today. I’ve seen little videos that show complex steps much better than trying to write it out. All those skills and memorized conditions from the style guide will likely seem silly. Hence, in a changing field, we have to create value, and as Erasmus demonstrated, that comes down to fine details to communicate very precisely.

Just like in technical writing, you keep it straight and never commit the ugly and offensive sin of repetition, I better close here before I say the same over again. ;)

Emily