This is the end, beautiful friend, the end.

It has always been difficult for me to write endings. How do I bring closure to all of the thoughts I have just unleashed? How do I contrive to bring everything together in a way that is concise, powerful, conclusive, thought-provoking, memorable, and whatever else a conclusion should be? The best way to end this class, I believe, will be to look back on what it has come to mean to me.

There was a time, back when I had "free time", before high school and college and leadership positions and jobs happened to me, when I imagined being a writer. Learning to write, to express ideas in any style and context, could be learned, I felt, by study of vocabulary, grammar, forms of writing, from traditional to unconventional, and clever writers' works. The art, the creativity, the mark of a true writer, I felt, lay in the ideas themselves. Real writers, I imagined, have piles, stacks and heaps of these in their cluttered studios, entire novels diagrammed out, character names scribbled on the nearest scrap at hand, or plot twists imagined in the middle of the night.

There was a time when I felt like a writer. Or, really, I felt that I was moving in the right direction. I was building vocabulary, learning about styles, and, most importantly, accumulating ideas. This class has let me recapture that. Again, I have collections of scribbled ideas, scraps of inspiration everywhere, found in pockets, backpacks littering my desk and hastily saved to my laptop.

It takes a real effort, but this class has proved to me that despite the school and the work, writing can cram into the demands on my time. It's amazing what a strict deadline (and sleep deprivation) may produce from those small pieces of inspiration that I save. This semester is my reminder to keep collecting them.

Can language completely capture experience?

As much as I hate to say what has already been said, as much as I love to play 'devil's advocate' or to point out alternative views, I must agree with everyone and affirm that words cannot fully capture experience.

As powerful as words are, allowing us to communicate and express ideas, they are only symbols, given their power by association with experience. That which we call a rose, as Juliet reminds us, is only represented by an arbitrary sound, which we mutually agree refers to that particular flower.

Simile, metaphor and analogy are effective and widely-used language tools which function by comparison to that which is familiar. When Douglas Adams wrote, "The ship hung in the air in exactly the same way that a brick doesn't", he expected us to recognize the word 'brick' as refering to the heavy, solid piece of something like clay or stone with the distinct characteristic of not floating above the ground.

The long and short of it is that language is a representation, a symbol, and a substitution when there is no alternative; experience is unique, so some means of sharing such a thing, however imperfect, is still infinitely useful.

Good-bye Small World

After all, I feel learning different writing tactics is not just about developing writing skills. The writing for me was learning about myself, and everything we learned through this course helped me to know about myself better.



“Language is the mirror that captures the reflection of one’s thought” – Every pieces of your work will remind you of whom you are.



Before taking this class, writing for me was just painful but nothing else. Through this course, I have realized that writing is a space where I can freely and truly express myself, and Christine taught me how important it is to enjoy writing in order to become a good writer. An unenthusiastic attitude towards writing only produces valueless crafts, and I think this is why I was never a good writer before. This course gave me a broader insight into the values and true meanings of writing.




“I was trained to become a strategist at Meiklejohn 103”



In Meiklejohn 103, I was trained to become a skilled strategist. I had to learn how to use the instruments (tactics) and how to construct my thoughths (applying tactics). There is no end for the development of my skills as a writer, but this training was successful.








Good-bye small world and good-bye everybody who shared this space with me.

Language and The Enormity of Experience

When I tried to gather my thoughts to answer this question, I paused several times recalling the time when I had a hard time to explain my experiences. Then, I came to realize that there were not many times that I succeeded in converting the ideas in my mind about the experience into actual language. In most cases, I failed to do so. Then, I started thinking about what are the reasons behind it. Also, I am interested in to what extent this happens to other people.

Personally, I think that it is quite difficult to describe something visually in terms of a language. There was an experience that I was asked by my mother to describe the painting I saw at a museum. When I saw the painting, what I saw was a feeling. I saw the painting, and I just felt it. It was not something like “it portrays the beauty of nature” or “ it portrays the human misery” It was all about feelings. There were so many things that I could not explain in words, because by seeing the painting I experienced so many emotions tangled up which simultaneously converted into one form of an unexplainable feeling. It is possible that some people could explain this better than me due to their experience with art. However, I believe that there is a limit in language to describe experiences in details. Especially when the experience involves a feeling, I would say that language most likely fails to capture the complexities of that unique experience.

While the kind of experience I stated above is very difficult to describe in words, there are some experiences that you can easily interpret in words. Nevertheless, I often fail to do so in both cases. At least for me, one of the reasons why I often end up failing to capture the enormity of experience is attributed to my bad linguistic skills. This has been true for me for so many years even in my mother language, Japanese. I assume that this is because I was less exposed to reading books from a young age simply because I did not like it. Therefore, when I want to verbalize what I experience or what I felt, I face the difficulties of explaining it in words. I easily get frustrated when I cannot come up with perfect words that I am looking for in order to represent my emotional orientation or physical experience. Then, what I always think is that people with enriched linguistic skills might not have the same problems as I have. There is no end in learning a language, and this is true even if it is your mother language. I believe that language can be improved or cultivated through practices just like playing an instrument. Some people can play a violin professionally where some only can play it as a novice. What I want to say here is one’s ability to describe the complexities of the experience in language inherently depends on the practices one had in language. However, even after gaining great linguistic skills, it is still difficult or impossible for language to capture the enormity of experience.

I believe that only practicing a language cannot make one fully capable of expressing their experiences. I believe that fully developed logical thinking and cognitive processes are indispensable for one to achieve the purpose of expressing the complexities of experience in language. When we want to perfectly describe our experiences in language, we think about where we should begin to talk, where we should emphasis on, which part of your story is most important, which words we should put to explain and what is the most effective way to express it. When you verbalize or write your experience, you are going through these processes in your mind naturally and intuitively. These are just examples, so there should be more things to be pointed out. Nevertheless, these things are just crossing your head. I assume that a person who can do this process very quickly and effectively maintaining their logical thinking could be the one who is relatively better in describing the complexities of experience in language.

I do not say that language fully captures the complexities of experiences because the experiences we have are too complicated to describe in words. Describing what you experienced by listening music, watching opera or seeing a painting could be the example for this explanation. I suggested some of my ideas that possibly can improve people’s ability in describing the enormity of experience in words. However, I sill put emphasis on the fact that there is always limits to achieve it.

Bye!

Through my four years at UW I have taken many classes, but nothing that can match the relaxed atmosphere of ILS 200. I have enjoyed going to class and having a true discussion, unlike most other classes here.

I feel I have actually learned something of use no matter what job I end up in after graduation, which is something I don't think I can say about any other class.

In closing I would like to thank Christine as well as my classmates for making my time there enjoyable and informative.

The Enormity of Language

I do not believe that language can capture the enormity of experience because experience takes five senses to absorb and language cannot recreate the five senses accurately. For example, nobody can know exactly what its like what to stand on top of Mount Everest by listening or reading someone's story about it. If language could capture experience perfectly then what would be the point in traveling the world and seeing all it has to offer.

Language does give a close approximation of experience, but it can not recreate the entire feeling. Language is the best approximation we have though, without being able to actually experience certain things listening to someone tell a story about their personal experience is fun. The excitement in a person's voice as the tell their favorite story about what they have done in their life is great, but nothing can recreate the feeling of walking through completely abandoned castles in Ireland.

Although language is the closest thing we have to experiencing what other people have, nothing can recreate the feeling of experiencing life.

Au Revoir, Bon Voyage, Ciao, and other cacozelia...

Farewell to Small World, Christine, and whoever else had the time and courtesy to listen to my run-on sentences. I truly feel as though I have grown, not just as a writer, but as a thinker. I hope my writing will continue to be more intentional in all rhetorical aspects, however, I may have to look up some figures and schemes every now and then to help me out. Let it be known, I am not a literature, political science, history, or rhetoric major, but a biochemist with a keyboard and a passion for understanding the complexity of writing and language. Thank you for allowing me to fulfill this passion, it has been one (expletive) of a semester :)

"You had to be there..."

Can language capture the complexity and enormity of experience? I have often tried to describe, draw, re-tell, and spell out experiences when I often find myself saying, "you had to be there." In the end, even my own memories do not give justice to my experiences and I find myself holding on to scraps of details in what seems like a fictional story.

I used to write in a diary, and hilarious though it may be, I have a hard time recollecting the real experience itself. It has become a story written down in a book, but the words on the page still do not reflect the complexity of the experiences I described, even to its own writer.

Even if the writer him/herself is a magician of imagery, talented in every attempt to re-live an experience on paper, articulate in sight, sound, smell, even touch, there is always something missing, something indescribable we will never know about that moment. One can get an idea, a picture, even feel the emotions of the moment, but to know accurately an experience to all of its complexity is to be there, in that moment yourself. Even if two people were in the same place at the same time, in fact, both would be having different experiences (depending on age, gender, attitude, other life experiences, priorities, etc.). Therefore, not only is language inept at truly capturing the complexity of an experience, we cannot even understand another's experience when we were there ourselves.

Language can bring about imagery, emotion, logic, ideas, sounds, even smells, but to truly capture the enormity of experience, one just has to live it.

Has Public Discourse Become Too Pathetic?

As human beings it is natural that we express and respond to emotion. That is why we have dedicated one third of our rhetoric to pathos. However, we need to realize that to make a solid argument, we must also use the other two thirds of the triangle, logic and ethics.

Public discourse has in fact become very pathetic. In some ways I enjoy it, for example when John Stuart and Steven Colbert use humor to relay the news. Often times, however, pathos can contort the truth by adding feeling or emotion to the words reporting facts. This doesn't occur as much in humor, atleast as Stuart and Colbert use it. I think this is because sarcasm and humor make it easier to tell the truth. You can be politically incorrect, offensive and controversial while at the same time having people's attention - because, of course, its all a "joke". For many other emotions in public discourse, I feel as though they are purposefully added to get an emotional appeal, and to me, playing with people's emotions is a sleezy way to state an argument. For important political issues or relaying the news, using emotions takes away from the logic of the report. I know in many ways pathos is a necessary component of logic, but leave that to the individual. In public discourse, we can tone down the pathos.

Anything Goes: Pathos as essential argument

I’m sick of it: sick of hearing that dry computer-logic should govern human beings.

I embrace pathetic discourse. I have discussed very emotionally charged issues under strict parliamentary procedure. This method is terribly stilted and disrupts the crafted argument of those with compelling positions. It is important to express how much an issue matters and to explain what it means to those affected. We must remember that humanity should be defined not only by reason but also by compassion. Emotion cannot be neglected in debate which affects the lives of others.

Again I say: I embrace pathetic reason. Those who can use it well should do so. Emotion is important to humans.

The British Houses of Parliament were bombed in World War II. Upon reconstruction of the House of Commons, Churchill opted to keep the original arrangement of the chamber: two sets of benches which directly face each other. He felt that the confrontational nature of debate was essential to government proceedings of the head of a global empire.

Regarding pathetic discourse and its blatant overuse, I see emotional discourse exposing true colors. What happens when pathetic language is overexploited is this: it begins to be noticed and pointed out. Those who ridiculously overuse pathetic fallacy are countered and laughed down, AND the formerly unwitting public develops a healthy cynicism. Let us separate the wheat from the chaff: those who have mastered an effective tool from those who seek its power, yet fail to understand the device.

Pathetic Public Discourse

In my opinion public discourse has, without a doubt become too pathetic. While some of the issues in today's media are emotional at their core, pundits have looked to pathetic fallacies as a way to get their message across.
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart has almost become a show about the pathetic fallacies on the cable news networks. 10-15 minutes of every show are devoted to making fun of clips from Fox News, CNN, and the NBC family of networks. Most of this time is spent looking at political pundits using blatant scare tactics or slippery slopes.
And while I understand that issues such as health care reform or taxes affect peoples lives a great deal, that is not an excuse to take advantage of viewers emotions. The problem with this is that progress becomes more difficult to make as emotion gets more involved, and if the country as a whole ever wants to make real progress issues need to be approached with logic as well as emotion. So until people can realize that emotion should not be abused politics will be slow in getting major issues resolved.

Even the "Easy Going" have Pet Peeves

People have labeled me as an "easy-going" or rational person. I do not get worked up, frustrated, or angry easily or often as it takes too much energy to get upset about small things. Pet peeves are irrational, as they are based on exaggerating an annoyance. One cannot explain why something so small might annoy them to a great degree because it the feeling of annoyance is backed my feelings, not rationale.

My Pet Peeve: unfairness. I find myself getting very upset, angry, and irrational in even small situations of unfairness. I am competitive, and thus truely dislike unfair advantages. In a game of Cranium between me and three friends, I threw a tantrum over who's turn it was after we realized we miss-read the rules. This was supposed to be a fun game between four friends, and when everyone should have been enjoying themselves, I made it about the game - a stupid, small, board game. In the long run, I pushed away my friends (they no longer play cranium with me) and gained nothing, as the game ended soon after my tantrum. Thus pet peeves turn seemingly rational people irrational, and I am no exception.

Emotion and Language

Geoff Nunberg (2010) discusses in his article “ ‘Equation,’ ‘Gingerly’ And Other Linguistic Pet Peeves” that in modern society people often misuse some words, phrases and grammar, differing from its original meaning and the way of proper use. At the same time, he emphasizes the importance of using proper English in modern society. As we learned, pathos works as a tool to establish the relationship between you and your audience. Therefore, understanding the relationship between language and emotion is extremely crucial to appeal to your audience in the most effective way.

Every individual has their own method of using a language. Thus, it is often true that one’s use of language is not acceptable to others. When your audience perceives your language as awkward or weird, you probably discomfort or annoy them. Thus, what you try to express might not be as strong as another manner of saying the same thing. Also, it is possible that your words might not be too memorable to others, which is a failure on your part to communicate with others appropriately.

I think that linguistic pet peeves are noticed by people when the words are misused or the sentences are grammatically incorrect. As an example, the author brought up the word “oversimplistic’ and said that people do not understand how to use the word “simplistic” in the first place. According to him, oversimplistic is basically same as simplistic, so there is no point to add “over” in this word. This is a very good example that shows how logos failed and pathos catches the reader’s attention. When people use this word, they want to express their feelings about it more precisely; thus adding the word “over.” Therefore, I am comfortable with these expressions and feel comfortable listening to it, because I can analyze more precisely about how a person is feeling. Also, the author suggested some other words as well such as “gingerly”. He claimed that the word “gingerly” should not be used as an adverb because there is no corresponding adjective. However, the sentence, “she hugged the child gingerly” is still fine with me. I am not annoyed by this sentence as it flows naturally.

One of my personal linguistic pet peeves is the phrase ““I ain’t going nowhere” Obviously, “ain’t” and “nowhere” cannot coexist in a sentence because they both are negative forms of words. Thus, “nowhere” should be replaced with the word “anywhere”. As another example, I am so annoyed when people overuse the word “like”. It seems as if the speaker is not clearly telling me what he or she wants to say. Furthermore, I do not like hearing the word “technically”. As an example, “I technically went there”. The problem here is whether you actually went or not, so the word “technically” is clearly unnecessary.

Although the author seems to put his focus more on the original meaning of words and proper English, I believe that misuse of language is still fine as long as the sentence flows naturally, the definition is coherent and it is in informal usages. Because pathos is something to establish the relationship between you and the audience, if your audience is feeling comfortable with your language and expressions, there should not be any problem. In fact, languages change and differ in its meaning over the time. While the author discusses regarding the common misuse of English, I came to realize that it is still fine to accept new way of language. The author said that “She hugged the child gingerly” is not correct, because it use gingerly as an adverb. However, this sentence and the use of the word “gingerly” do not seem so weird for me. Rather, it sounds very natural and understandable; hence, I would not notice the error in here unless the author points out specifically. In Japan, where I came from, there are so many words which are misused by the younger generation. I assume that this is because our generation is exposed to many kinds of media and information technologies. I believe that language is always reflecting our current society and era. Therefore, denying its evolution is very difficult to do. What I think is that we should not hesitate to accept modern way of linguistics, because that is possibly the future of a language. It seems that the meanings of language is rather arbitrary than absolute, so we do not need to adhere so much to its original meaning. Still, it is important to use proper language in a formal situation, but it is also important to notice that the language is evolving.

Elaborating on the structure of languages is one of the most difficult tasks to accomplish. The article mainly focuses on errors in contemporary English, and how it often annoys certain audiences. Well, I believe that it is very significant to employ proper English in order to avoid making others feel annoyed for the purpose of establishing a good relationship between you and your audience. However, while this is important, we also should be aware of the fact that the definitions of English words alter and shape over the periods. Still, it is essential to use proper English in formal circumstance such as a research paper, writing essays and giving speeches in a class. However, language is constantly undergoing the process of evolution, and this is something we cannot stop.

Easy = True

I definitely agree with the article because the majority of people are unwilling to search for the things they need or want to know. So, because something is easy to find it will be seen more often. And what is true often comes from what the majority of people believe. The best example of this is the internet. The things that can be found easiest on the internet are obviously seen the most, as more people see them they will spread the word to their friends and so on. This also goes for television because whatever is seen on television news is taken for truth without question.

The article doesn’t really change the way I think about rhetoric because I already knew that it was an important part of the way our world works; however, it does speak to the power of the people who are able to understand and employ rhetoric in useful ways. I have read about many studies that show how companies or products with easy to say names fair better than those with difficult to say names. Which goes right along with what the article says about easy equals true.

In response to "Easy = True"

This post is in response to Drake Bennett's article "Easy = True", posted Jan 31, 2010 on the Boston Globe's website.



In Bennett's very first example, he states that companies with names which are easy to pronounce and remember tend to do well in the stock-market. I see a case of correlation, but not necessarily direct causation. I'm not inclined to believe that it is as easy as that. The product must be up to expectations as well, or initial interest would quickly dwindle. A simple, catchy, and memorable company name does not make the company successful in itself; it is merely one piece of an effective marketing strategy. Assuming approximately equal products, perhaps it is better overall marketing that offers these companies an edge over competitors. So, Bennett has opened up with a largely unconvincing argument, that is unless he wants to assure me that his perspective is a bit narrow-minded.

The article goes on to observe that 'cognitive fluency' and its result, easy mental processing, are effective tools in a world of excessive communication, making judgments on decisions quick and effortless.

The reasoning based on evolutionary history makes sense, but I feel that many, many arguments can be based on the strategy of coming up with a way that a trait may have been useful in prehistory. Because humans have no divine insight into the inner thoughts of evolution, it can only be a theory. The evolutionary biology majors in the crowd should enlighten us if this section of the article seems any more certain to you.

We students of cartography know that unfamiliarity is an immediate deterrent, and conventions (by definition familiar and usually very easy to interpret) are meant to be followed to ease access to the content and message of a piece of rhetoric and may be strategically broken for effect. Such conventions include features like font, one of the article's examples. Using a serif font to label water bodies is simply expected, and facilitates easy processing. Knowing immediately that the button with the triangle means 'play' helps a viewer get right to the content of a video, while an unfamiliar interface is simply a frustration.

While agreeing with the points made about the effectiveness of fluency, as an individual who thrives on the unconventional, I appreciate the acknowledgement that "disfluency is intriguing and novel" (Bennett quoting Winkielman), and I would be very interested to see some evaluation of the effective use of disfluency.

"I know it's you..."

His beard was coarse and shiny like plastic as it lay on his red velvet coat adorned with white fur cuffs, while his hands were soft, fingers long, all too similar to the ones I held in my small lap; and as I looked past the fur on his red velvet hat, past the white curls of his mustache that didn’t seem to stick to his light olive skin, above his straight nose and below his dark bushy eye brows; I looked thoughtfully into his deep blue eyes, the color of a clear sky, that perfectly mirrored my own and whispered sweetly in his ear, “I know it's you, daddy.”

The Origin of Segregation

Racism has been a core issue in societies where many cultures interact on a daily basis, while some people are subjected to segregated conditions such as the lack of proper exposure to educational environments, denial of job opportunities for equally qualified minorities and subpar living conditions often seen in the ghetto areas, where the other majority is more advantaged because of the exploitation of the specific race groups, especially the class difference between African Americans and Caucasians have been pronounced throughout the last four centuries, beginning from the days of slavery where whites from different areas in Europe invaded regions in Africa to capture and enslave the blacks who were living peacefully, with a vibrant culture of their own, which was shattered by the aggressive and unfair nature of the slave traders who made it their job to subject humans to inhumane conditions, this is the precursor to the current situation of most minorities seen in the United States.

One-Sentence Waterfall

Where the surface, smooth as glass, belied the powerful current beneath, there Louisa Lake overflowed its western shore, always pouring out but never emptying; falling, shining, and crashing over rocks, the water leapt and gleamed, a torrent of white in the shadow of old-growth cedars which scrambled all over each other for a hold in the bare rock, roots braiding and twisting like some complex Celtic interlace, as they leaned to watch the waterfall spill more than one hundred feet into Agnes Lake below.

Assignment #2

The animated show South Park, often seen as nothing more than a childish, low-brow attempt at humor that is as bad for kids as guns are, has slowly, over the course of its thirteen years, become a sharp, witty, satirical television show that is fearless in taking on America’s biggest celebrities and events, and in doing so become one of the very few truly original shows in a landscape that is otherwise littered with copycat programming with nothing new to make the viewer think.

"All that glitters is not gold."

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This expression has been in use for centuries, and appeared in writing long before Shakespeare famously used it in The Merchant of Venice (with the archaic form 'glisters' in place of 'glitters') (Act II, scene vii). It is perfectly valid taken literally, but has meanings far beyond the denunciation of pyrite.

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The phrase cautions that appearances

may deceive. It warns that true worth

may not be immediately evident.

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This saying can be examined by analysis of its two keys words-- these words being, of course, 'glitter' and 'gold.'

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What does it mean to say that something 'glitters'? In this context, the word does not refer exclusively to a literal shine. As E.A. Poe put it: "glitter... its idea has become... confounded with that of magnificence in the abstract..." (The Philosophy of Furniture, 1850). A figurative glitter, then, represents perceived splendor, the conceptual equivalent to a sparkle or shimmer.

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Gold is an ancient and universal symbol of value; it acts as a common currency, it features in the finest craftwork, and is believed to have healing effects and magical qualities. Beautiful, rare, and impervious to tarnish and corrosion, gold, in the figurative sense, implies a pure and true worth.

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To state that 'all that glitters is not gold'

is to stress that superficial appeal may hide

worthless ventures or devious intentions.

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The phrase is structured as simple and direct advice. 'All that glitters is not gold' serves as a stern warning against deceptive facades. It evokes tales of those lured to betrayal by the promise of riches and of evil which hides beneath alluring masks; it reminds that things are never what they seem.

Experience is the teacher of all things

As a human being, we are more privileged than any other species. We possess the great ability of learning, and we always value our own experience. The quote that I will be analyzing says that “Experience is the teacher of all things.” (Julio Caesar). This quote seems to be very simple at a glance, but do you realize the depth of its meaning? Experiences always take many forms, such as a failure, a success, a struggle, a discovery, a realization and many types of other emotions. People often believe that life is full of experiences, and it’s the experiences that will enrich the quality of one’s life. This is why this saying resonates among many people. To interpret this saying, I shall state three aspects of the saying: its meanings, uniqueness and its impact.

To start with, I intend to examine the meaning of this quote. One of the core meanings of this saying could be that things which we experience always provide us a clue on how we should change and how we should behave. As an example, a person will learn one’s lesson from one’s failure. Also, it may mean that the experiences lead us to understand the world and ourselves better. Another example can be, when one realizes and discovers something through new experiences. Furthermore, this quote might mean that people should be taught not by a book, but by firsthand experiences. For an instance, a child who learns chemistry only through textbooks will never outweigh the knowledge of a child who has the curiosity to carryout laboratory experiments. Though this quote is very short and simple, it can have many meanings depending on one’s perception. However, an important factor to keep in mind is that the people’s perception will always have one thing in common, which is our ability to learn through experiences since the dawn of human kind.

Second of all, I intend to lead my focus towards the features of this quote. This phrase heavily relies on general applicability and common notions. This means that the phrase applies to any aspect of human life, so it must be classified under deductive reasoning. It is also suitable to say that this quote still offers us some new insight. This is due to the fact that the saying exploits a basic fact of life which people often tend to forget. As far as I feel, a life without experiences is meaningless and worthless. Although most of us recognize the significance of one’s own experiences, we often tend to be unaware of its role in our logical reasoning. However, the saying “experience is the teacher of all things” (Julio Caesar) helps us to reconsider the value of our experiences. The simplicity of the phrase is the virtue of this saying, and Caesar used neither complicated words nor difficult expressions to convey his idea. It is just simple and short, but it still inspires people after millennia.

We might want to question the influence of this quote on people. Does this saying have a strong impact? To begin with, this saying represents the form of substitution. It substitutes experiences as the teacher of all things. This technique definitely helps to strengthen its impact of the quote by its uniqueness. Another way to think this saying is in terms of its logic. If experience is the teacher of all things, something that we do not learn from an experience won’t teach us anything. If we follow this logic, where are we going? Thus, now we are forced by the power of suggestion to think that, experience is the best teacher of all things. What I want to emphasize here is that the saying is a bit overstated. If we think that “experience is the best teacher of all things,” then we can summarize that nothing can teach us as much as our experiences do. However, this overstatement is the most important key in understanding what Caesar suggested. By overstating, the saying appeals more firmly and catches audience’s attention. Thus, I’m convinced that the impact of this quote is strong.

In sum, we as human beings seek for the meaning of our lives by evaluating one’s own experiences. The saying implies that we are encouraged to be taught or learned by experiences, and experiences always teach us great lessons. Like I stated before, some experience in life might not be pleasant. However, any experiences which we go through have its own special meanings according to Caesar’s saying. Even someone’s death or misfortune might lead you to learn or face some realizations on handling your own life. Nothing is in vain, so we ought to gain as many experiences as possible in order to able improve ourselves. The quote is just simple and unaffected, so it is beautiful and unique.

"Nothing ventured, nothing gained."

The old proverb, “Nothing ventured, nothing gained”, is apparent in its meaning, depending on the context.  There are a few different meanings of “ventured”, from the more obvious, “to expose to hazard; to risk, gamble”, to the less literal, “to offer a risk of rebuff, rejection, or censure”.  As for the word “gain”, well that can have several meanings depending on the person and the place.  The definition of gain can even be lost in the same context, depending on what the proverb-giver meant and how the proverb-listener took it.  Overall, however, the general meaning of the proverb can be defined as, “if you do not take risks, you’ll never accomplish anything.”  How this proverb accomplishes its meaning rhetorically is, of course, less general and relies on the ethics, logic, and emotion of the phrase.

            “Nothing ventured, nothing gained”, will change meaning depending on the ethics of the situation, or even just the intention and ethics of the person saying it.  For example, the difference between your mother expressing this statement to you vs. your drug dealer would change the meaning quite a bit.  Here, the ethics of the situation change as well as the ethics of the proverb-giver and your trust in them.  Who you trust, your ethics, and the ethics of the situation all come into play when interpreting this well known proverb.

            Logically, this phrase makes sense: “Nothing ventured, nothing gained”; how can one gain anything without doing something first?  In this sense, the phrase can be considered a type of enthymeme in that there lies an unstated assumption that to gain something, you must do something first.  Then you may lead to the broader, deductive, conclusion that if nothing is ventured, nothing will be gained.  In the case of most proverbs, they start inductively, crafted out of a series of similar circumstances, and become deductive, applied to all situations.  What is convenient about most rhetorical devices is their ability to change depending on the context, and still make sense. 

            If a public speaker were to enter the room with the phrase, “Nothing ventured, nothing gained”, it would most definitely mean something different to every person.  One person might feel regret for not taking a risk earlier in life – the “what if” guy.  Another person might apply it to a current situation and get excited – the “needed a push” guy.  Either way, you cannot hear this proverb without feeling a certain emotion tied to the words and the context to which you apply it.  For me, I feel both encouragement and apprehension for the potential risks I’m about to take, knowing that I will not gain anything without trying and yet scared of the outcome, of failure, and even success.  Even if we take the risk and make the gain, but that gain turns out to be something we don’t want in the future, how can we win?  It’s the level of uncertainty tied to the phrase that boils up so many emotions and gives it its meaning, its encouragement, its regret. 

            One doesn’t need to pull apart the rhetoric of this statement to understand its meaning.  We all take it differently depending on the context anyway.  However, it is interesting to appreciate the many meanings of this proverb that can only be realized if you incorporate rhetoric.  It is this ability to pull apart the many meanings of a sentence or statement that will broaden one’s writing, one’s thinking, and one’s emotion.  

Assignment #1

"It is better to be silent and thought a fool, than to speak up and remove all doubt."

I chose this saying because I feel it is a perfect one for me, and one I at least try to live.

The type of reasoning here is inductive because the saying is not using a preconceived notion, and is instead meant to be applied as a general rule to the public. The main ideas of the quote is not presented until the end of the argument, and although it does rely heavily on humor to get its point across, it does have an element of humor to it. There are no obvious structural techniques being used; however, there is definitely a rhythm to the phrase. The phrase is an older one, but is not as hackneyed as many other sayings.

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