Now that university classes have once again commenced, it’s time to bring out the notebooks and pens and fervently write down every. single. thing. the professor says. Writing lecture notes is a fundamental part of attending university. Running yourself into the ground isn’t going to help anyone, though, so it’s useful to do a little …

Since I have decided to eat a vegan diet for the month of September (the reasons for which can be found at Living Healthy in the Real World), I have received a lot of congratulations. Good for you. That’s really impressive. I could never do that. A friend of mine—who is supportive of my vegan …

The rant is one of my favourite rhetorical genres. Rant genre is characterized by a unique set of qualities that instantly capture attention and can really mesmerize an audience. Often the response that the rhetorician receives after embarking on a rant is either exasperated or amused, but people tend to really listen to a rant. …

Cell phones and social networking sites have been on the rise for the past few years now, but suddenly they are really taking off. With a large scale Twitter following and the development of newer, better cell phones and the iPhone, it sometimes seems as though we can’t go a day without relying on these …

I am out of the country for the week, so a fellow blogger has kindly lent me two of her blog posts (the first of which was published here at Living Rhetorically on Tuesday). Hanlie blogs at Fertile Healthy; this post was originally published at her blog on August 18th. There are a lot of …

I am out of the country this week, so a fellow blogger has kindly lent me two of her excellent blog posts—the second of which will be published here at Living Rhetorically this Thursday—regarding the labels we give ourselves and others. Hanlie blogs at Fertile Healthy. This post was originally published at her website on …

Up until the past few years, I wrote fiction religiously. Electronic copies of novels, short stories, and poems fill ancient floppy disks; the hard copies are stacked in boxes, binders, and folders. I’ve gone through piles of paper, weeks and months of work, and have subjected friends and family to read my work for their …

The best way to explain the Jeremiad form of rhetoric is to think of it in terms of the origins of the name. Jeremiah was a Biblical prophet of doom and, as one of my professors so astutely put it, a performance artist. The Jeremiad, then, is really a political sermon, and is applied by …

How we act and the way we view the world is strongly determined by our definitions. These definitions change and develop as we go through new experiences, thus causing us to broaden our minds and grow as people. When I was out riding my bike earlier this week, I rode past someone who was running …

Kenneth Burke’s Dramatistic Pentad goes hand in hand with the Narrative Paradigm because of the focus on human motivation and theatrics. The kind of language that we use and the way we express ourselves are strategies to convince others of our viewpoints. If the speaker has the ability to identify with the audience, they can …