The success of rhetoric comes from the ability to reach out to people. John Locke speaks of how language ultimately is used to communicate with people. An interesting thing I found was how it is important for the people listening to be “excited” by the same words being spoken. This is because what a person is saying needs to be understood and attract the attention of the audience. More complex ideas make the use of language more complicated because more words have to be used which means more opportunities for misinterpretation and confusion. I believe this because even reading this I’ve gotten confused and twisted around a bit. Misinterpretation is the cause of many problems. A significant one I can think of immediately is the Bible. Complex ideas have been interpreted in many ways and everyone believes the other is incorrect. With one text many ideas are being receives. This is because language is not perfect and cannot fully encompass the ideas behind the insignificant words. The words are nothing without an idea behind them, but sometimes the words do not fully explain the original meaning. This why language is not perfect. If language is meant to share an idea and yet cannot, then language is not perfect. The end goal is to be able to communicate with others and that end goal is achieved making words and language critical to our culture.

Conversation had such an importance placed on it during Madeline Scudery’s time. It was an art that got her into a different society where she was able to be successful. The idea of a conversation was to better everyone in the conversation. It was to be agreeable but also provocative enough to be interesting to the group. The beginning of her work is just about having to listen to other women speak of trivial things. It is complaints of listening to and trying to participate in conversations where nothing of any significance is spoken. This was interesting to me because whenever I spend time with my mom and her friends they endlessly talk about something their children did and what activities they’re participating in and just continuous amounts of dull thoughtless comments on each other’s lives.  This is what Scudery is speaking about in the beginning of her writing. Because of this it would make sense that a conversation, a conversation of worth, should be provocative and should bring new understandings of topics to all involved in the conversation. If conversation is an art it should teach people something and should force them to think and carefully articulate their opinion on a topic not simply blurt out a random fact about their day. A conversation doesn’t have such high standards today, but it is still one of the most important parts of our days and conversations lead to better understandings of each other and shows what we have to learn from another.

Extrinsic proofs add value and detail to an argument but extrinsic proofs cannot form an argument on their own. Rhetoric as we have seen is about invention which is why it makes sense that in order to utilize extrinsic proofs you must invent ways to incorporate them into the argument so that they are useful. The process or set up that is provided on page 201 is how I think most of us were taught to incorporate our supporting data for writings. When incorporating proof we have to explain how it is related to the subject of our writing, explain why it is important to the topic, and then use it to support our writings.  Without explain the relevance of the proof it isn’t useful and doesn’t provide the support we need for successful and persuasive writings. I think trusting a witness testimony is somewhat risky especially when they may be benefitting from the result that their testimony may bring. However finding a witness that is completely unbiased isn’t truly possible when they use witnesses to build up the character of someone because anyone trying to build up the character will be trying to help give a positive view and not provide any details on anything that could create a negative view, therefore the testimony is not fully revealing of the actual truth. Using this testimony as extrinsic proof is difficult. Part of extrinsic proof are common authorities and I thought it was interesting how Katy Perry is a common authority for things such a skin care products. I never really thought about how her testimony to its use was considered an extrinsic proof or that she would be a common authority. There is a difference in community authorities however, though the basic requirement to be a community authority is to be well known and respected in the community. Because Katy Perry is well known and is a part of the certain type of community that would consider using the product her testimony is valuable. It makes sense now that I’ve learned more about the use of testimony, and I understand why they also use the testimony of real people who used something like a weight loss program. But I think using their testimony is another example of untrustworthy and unbiased testimony. They are being paid to be on television and say that the product works well and they are trying to create a positive view of the product. The main thing I thought was interesting to hear and further backed up the idea of rhetoric was that extrinsic proof does not work without invention.