3.7 In Summary
Erin Kelly; Sara Humphreys; Nancy Ami; and Natalie Boldt
After reading this chapter, you now have some idea of the importance of rhetoric to your academic career and life. You are also now equipped with a set of terms (logos, pathos, ethos, as well as audience, purpose, and context) that you can add to your writer’s toolbox. What you shouldn’t have is anxiety about your ability to use the terms and concepts covered here. Many of the strategies for effective communication discussed in this chapter are ones that you already use in everyday conversation and have no doubt learned to appreciate in the media that you consume (including books, speeches, essays, Twitter threads, etc). Our hope is that having names for these strategies will make it possible for you to do a couple of things: (1) to recognize them in the writing and communications of others and (2) to mobilize them in order to contribute your own arguments effectively and with integrity in a range of rhetorical situations and communities of thought.