Ethics

Discussing ethics in other classes as well I have pondered the question of how we adopt ethical behavior. Is this something that we are raised with or is it something that we take hold of only when needed? Is it part of our personalities or it is it used only in situations that we need to use it in? Are we ethical by nature and deterred from that, or are we unethical and deterred from that? I think that we have choices in everything we do that is related in some way to ethics. Whether or not I get dressed in the morning is an ethical choice that I make (mostly benefiting those around me, and on cold day, myself as well). I chose whether or not I will contribute in class and whether or not I will make it a positive learning environment for those around me. I have an effect on the daily results all around me. Perhaps these choices are simply ethical standards that I choose to follow, but nevertheless they are important for me as an individual by way of making an effective as well as ethical choice.

Cultures

You wake up. Was it all a nightmare or is this reality? The people you see to your left do not look like you and do not act like you. You turn to your right and those people don’t have the same clothing as you and apparently do not speak the same language as you. You say hello, but this is obviously not the correct thing to do in this culture because if you didn’t have everyone’s attention before, you sure do now. Glares and stares come your way but after a few minutes you are “old news”. They begin conversing in a most unusual way. Hands are held high when one is speaking. Those who are listening must bend at the knees and fold their hands. What kind of rhetoric rules are these? Each person has different colored shoe laces and soon you understand that this is a kind of identification. You, wearing your slip on shoes with no laces are definitely an outcast. This culture looks so complicated in the rules and ways in which they communicate with one another. Is it really that different though from our own communication and rhetoric? Why isn’t our rhetoric unusual? Why are we so quick to accept our own cultures rhetoric? We don’t think twice about hugging our friends when we meet them, or giving a handshake when we are first introduced to someone else. These cultural rhetorical tools may seem common to us, but to someone else, they might feel like the alien above.

I have rights as a woman. I can write a speech and deliver it to my peers. I have the right to assemble and let others know my feelings about topics that are near and dear to me. These rights that I have were fought for by people who came before me who could not do these things freely. Who do I thank for my freedoms to express myself rhetorically? Do I thank those women who stood on the steps giving their speeches while being shouted at and threatened? Do I thank those women who were injured, spat on, and humiliated in the past for freedoms I enjoy today? Thinking about it I even question how often I even ponder who or why or when to thank anyone for what I take for granted today as my rights as a woman. Recently I mailed my ballot for the elections that ended last week. It did not cross my mind once however that without the fight from women in the late 1800’s I might not have been able to fill in those ovals and vote myself. In the third feminist movement today we are seeing an almost reversal of the movement in the 1970’s. Women aren’t as forward with their extreme independent feminist ways as they were 30 years ago. Is this just because women do not have respect for what women have done in the past, or have our societal norms and values changed? How will this recent feminist movement change the way women are respected and represented as a part of our society? It will be interesting as a woman to see how my own viewpoints change of my gender and how the ideas of society come to change as well.

We do it everyday. Whether we’re aware of it or not, we have to prove to others that what we’re telling them is not a bunch of “BS” that’s coming out of our mouthes but is actually legitimate. We back our arguments up by using aspects of argumentation as we examined in class last week. We can consciously construct an argument that has data, warrant, and a claim depending on what the persuader is trying to convince the audience of and also depending on what the audience already accepts as true (the level of dispute). I think it is naturally our way of constructing our arguments in this way also although sometimes there is a grey area when trying to pick out the warrant and the claim (data is usually fairly easy to identify).
Campbell’s ideas of extending the definition of rhetoric to apply to more issues than simply speech and persuasion have really unlocked my ideas of rhetoric.
Next time I’m aware that argumentation is a part of my rhetoric or is someone else’s I will attempt to apply the “D”, “W”, and “C” and see how it has an effect on the persuasion element of the argument.