By Jennifer Fletcher For a while now, I’ve found myself struggling to say anything new or insightful about the Aristotelian rhetorical triangle. When I get to the slide with this diagram during a presentation or workshop I’m giving on rhetorical literacy skills, I say something about how all these components–text (logos), audience (pathos), and rhetorContinue reading “From Rhetorical Triangle to Communication Pyramid”
Category Archives: Empathic Listening
Making Someone Wrong
By Jennifer Fletcher Pick a side and prove the other side wrong. In a nutshell, this is what many argument prompts tell students to do. But “making someone wrong”—that is, accusing, shaming, or blaming someone else instead of seeking a win-win solution—rarely serves our best interests in personal relationships or in academic and professional settings. Continue reading “Making Someone Wrong”
Writing in the Presence of Others
By Jennifer Fletcher As a graduate student, I remember one of my advisors telling me that we’re all just adding our bricks to the wall. At the time, I couldn’t help hearing echoes of Pink Floyd, and I perhaps didn’t fully appreciate my advisor’s point about the collaborative nature of intellectual labor. After a coupleContinue reading “Writing in the Presence of Others”
The Bias Against Bias
By Jennifer Fletcher Students sometimes feel like they can pull a mic drop on other writers by calling them out for their bias. Labeling a writer “biased” is an ethos slam. One Oxford English Dictionary definition describes bias as “prejudice.” Another mentions “slanting” or “distortion.” It’s hard to read for understanding once you’ve decided a text is prejudiced orContinue reading “The Bias Against Bias”
Rhetorical Thinking 