I have a pet peeve about the use of the word “rhetoric.” The consensus in modern day usage is to use it as a derogatory term. For instance, “the politician spewed his rhetoric to convince us to think his way.” What does that mean? He shared his form of persuasive language to influence us.

We all do that. Each and every day, each of us engages in rhetoric. Got a kid? Want him or her to clean his or her room? How do you convince your child to clean a room? You use rhetoric.

Do you have clients who need a little convincing that what you are offering is really the best product/work/idea that they can get anywhere? You use rhetoric.

Want to convince your IT person that you’re really not insane and Word really did just reformat itself to mess up your entire thesis (my little rant against Microsoft Word — which thinks it knows how to format my paper better than I do — although I didn’t go to an IT person for assistance)? You use rhetoric.

Rhetoric is, simply, the act of persuading. We post images and hope that someone feels something about them. That’s visual rhetoric. I post a rant about crazy water usage by Phoenicians (who really do need those lush lawns in the middle of a DESERT!). That’s linguistic rhetoric.

It goes further but basically, that’s it. We all use it.

I was a little irritated when I was searching for videos about rhetoric and found this. I thought, oh, yeah…another video about politicians and their rhetoric. Except that it isn’t. This is a very good film on the use of words, typography, and images to produce an argument.

Rhetoric.