American Rhetorics

I have to start by saying I did not particularly like this reading. I felt that it asked so many questions back to back that it was hard to process them all. At one point it asked five critical thinking questions in a row that left my brain feeling over loaded. It also in my opinion jumped around a lot and I often felt lost.

Despite the confusion at points it was still a very informative piece of writing. I thought it was interesting when the article raised the point of, who has the authorization to speak for who? This brought me back to our discussion on race and how different ethnicities feel the need to speak for other ethnicities. It is common to make assumptions regarding other cultures with out first attempting to assimilate within the culture. As this article points out it is important to decipher between people of an actual population and people committing ethnicity fraud. It is up to readers and listeners to have enough knowledge to actively know what they are reading.

After reading the three chapters I found chapter three, Villanueva's chapter to be the most interesting. I think I liked this chapter the most because I had the most previous knowledge on it. In past classes I have learned about Barthes and then in this class and past classes I have learned about Burke. Villanueva raises many interesting questions regarding myth and ideology. For instance he states "ideologies, myths, and rhetorics enjoy symbiotic relationships." I can see the relationship among the three that Villanueva is claiming. For instance last semester I read Barthes Mythologies which had a portion of it dedicated to the idea of plastic.Essentially the myth around plastic is it can be transformed into anything. However, it takes ideologies and and rhetoric to decide the meaning behind the plastic material. Such as barbie is made of plastic but it was because of ideologies and rhetoric that it was decided that Barbie is a girls toy. Its interesting to think about how much the three concept intertwine.

I also found it interesting that Villanueva related his argument to Catholicism. A part of this argument he brings up the discussion of genocide. Genocide in this case restricted the ability to claim a completely non-Spaniard self definition that the population was striving for. This part of the text reminded me back to our discussion regarding genocide in class. Genocide is often the cause of a power struggle or an issue regarding race.

Question: Did you like on chapter more than another?
How do you see mythologies, ideologies, and rhetoric intertwined within society?