Hello, fellow bloggers.  Today I will be writing about rhetoric and composition, as well as a brief history on how the subjects have evolved over the years. 

As one might expect, composition and rhetoric are closely related and usually are used in conjunction with one another.  Composition, be it in writing, speaking or visual element, relates to the placement and the arrangement of the elements within the work.  Composition is the structure of the work, in other words.  It could be the way words are arranged in a sentence or the order of sentences and paragraphs.  In art it could be the use of colors or the use of perspective to create a point of focus.  Rhetoric, however, is how these pieces come together in order to persuade the audience of its argument.  The three most crucial elements of rhetoric are pathos, ethos and logos.  Pathos is where a piece tries to get an emotional response from the audience.  Ethos is the attempt of the author, speaker or artist to establish credibility.  Logos, finally, is the use of logic through proof of their ideas or arguments.   Even my choice of font in this blog could be a rhetorical choice; it could appeal to ethos.  My choice of a font could be elegant and give an impression of credibility as a writer or appear that this was written by a child or uninformed individual if I chose “Comic Sans MS.”     

So, how do these relate?  Well, as I see it the use of composition is essentially a rhetorical choice.  The choice of a verb in a sentence could dramatically affect the power it would hold for the audience and appeal to pathos.  The citing of a source in a paper could establish ethos, and a graph or set of statistics could appeal to logos. 

 Ancient Greece is often credited as the birthplace of rhetoric and the philosophers (Aristotle, Plato, others) of that time provided the still standing basis for the study.  It was primarily studied for its use in speech at the time.  Rhetoric in the middle shifted from a political focus to that of a religious focus.  Instead of rhetoric being a tool to lead the state, it became a means of saving souls.  Universities adopted rhetoric as a field of study alongside grammar and logic.  By the 18^th and 19^th centuries, universities had devoted entire departments to the study of rhetoric.  By this time rhetoric was once again a political tool; spreading democratic ideals through American and European colonies.  By the 20^th century the study of rhetoric had expanded to include the study of visual arts as well in large part due to the influence of television and other visual mediums.