Guest Blogger: Kayla K

Isn’t true that after you realize something, it being the knowledge engraved on your brain, you often find yourself using it daily? Or in other words find the rhetorical techniques that are used in everyday life? Or is it your new interest in today’s politics and where the president travels? Well I’m going to move from using rhetorical questions to giving examples how just a few rhetorical techniques and our new knowledge are used in daily life.

After enjoying that very brief thesis it is easy to move onto the daily used rhetorical techniques. Once reading and analyzing the Declaration of Independence, Julius Cesar, the three George Orwell pieces, it is now simple to see the many techniques authors use to get their point across. But it is not only authors who use the methods of the rhetorical devices; it is used in every language. Myself being a teenager in high school, I find trouble lurking everywhere I step. For an example my mother uses great rhetorical questions to ask me in many different ways of “How do you feel?” about the laundry not being finished or “Is it okay?” to miss curfew. To be honest for her to clearly demonstrate her frustration toward my behavior, a strong use of diction is used, which may also relate to pathos or the emotion we feel while arguing. Although the techniques of rhetorical questions and diction are my mother’s favorites, she also excels in personal anecdotes, or stories, of how things used to be in her childhood.. After our little argument is finished it is explicitly stated that the laundry should be done and there is no excuse for being late for curfew. It is now easy to see how simply rhetorical devices are used in everyday life.

Not only is it important to study the ways authors and speakers present their material in literature, it is also important to use it in the life of politics. The debate was on between students as we were to present the best plan for America after the Articles of Confederation would no longer hold up. Was it the Virginia plan which appealed primarily to the larger states with a higher population? Or was it the New Jersey plan which thought the Articles of Confederation had not done wrong, and the opinion of slaves counting for population was bazaar? As much fun as it was arguing about the pros and cons of each plan the class was finally introduced to the Connecticut Compromise, which was about as equal as the opposite plans could be. Although there were a few rough spots in the compromise it would soon become the basis of today’s government. With the involvement in the debate it was easier to understand the problems and challenges America faced before the Constitution came into effect.

As I can see my diction and syntax use are not quite to the collegiate level, and the Federal papers are still a challenge to read, my only goal is to let everyone know what the seniors in the mind-boggling class of APLG are learning in the beginning of the month of October.