Week 1 CBP: Confused and Enlightened

My group and I decided, in order to create a deeper understanding for the reader of our ethos and pathos trace, to break the questions up into a table. At first, this seemed like a very easy way to understand and present this information. However due to the break down of the questions we made, I noticed that the categories are very similar in scope, and it was hard to answer them without sounding repetitive. Some of the ideas in Aristotle and Quintilian have very subtle differences within each article, and categorizing and drawing harsher lines in my understanding of the texts complicated the thought process for me. I can only hope that my attempt at recognizing and harnessing those subtleties came through in the explanations.

It seemed as if sometimes it was hard to discern where one idea ended and another began, within my writing and in Aristotle's work. For example, it was difficult for me to explain and pick examples that demonstrated both the construction of ethos and pathos as art and various strategies of those arts. I suppose and hope that the subtle differences in diction allowed me to dig deeper and have a more nuanced understanding of how those two categories (developing art and its strategies) relate and how they differ.



On the other hand, having the opportunity to work with others and hear their thoughts and explanations helped me to understand the material better. I really latched onto Quintilian, and at first I was making essentialist arguments only rooted in what I remembered reading, mostly about him being moralistic almost to a fault. Jennifer, however, was able to remind me of a sentence-level contradiction where he basically argues that a small lie is okay as long as it is used to make an otherwise stubborn audience see the side of truth.

(Two days pass...)

Now that I've attended class and had an opportunity to listen to various groups/individuals, I'm very excited about discussing these "authors"/"Authors". As a quick aside, I'm feeling much more optimistic today than when I wrote the above laments, if the change in tone isn't apparent. Although I realize the goal of this post is to reflect on the process and how that process or concept changed meaning or context (as I did above but now I believe that's changed for me a little), I want to take this opportunity to talk a little about Barthes, given our challenge in class.

As always, I'm very impressed and inspired by my peers' ways of thinking and questioning. The discussion on Barthes was no different. Now that I'm out of the heat and electricity of our classroom discussion, I don't know what to talk specifically to about  Barthes, only knowing that I wanted to address it. I guess I'll try to take a stance and see who will argue with me for the sake of argument. I (for the sake for argument) will buy into the scriptor.

Here's why:

Any message that we impart is only a compilation, transformation, or evolved form of something we already know. Even our word choices or phrases we use to describe something comes from a place of common knowledge, I suppose.

The reader will bring different knowledges, experiences, or biases to a given text, thereby shaping either the text itself or the frame in which it was read. This changes the meaning of the text, and it could potentially change from person to person.

Deconstructionism, perhaps.