Emboldened Rhetoric

Although I'll admit that The Daily Show's politics skew liberal, I always admire the way their writers are not afraid to call anyone--of any political stripe--on sloppy uses of language...dare I say, of sloppy rhetorical choices.

A few days ago the show did a great riff on the use of the phrase "embolden the enemy"--something that we're told we do if we, for example, vote for Democrats, question the current running of the war, etc. The montage of clips showed that politicians on every side (even the guest that night, Democrat Joe Biden) had thrown the word around. It was a great mini-lesson in semantics. (I would link you directly to a YouTube page for the video, but Comedy Central's parent company, Viacom, has ordered YouTube to remove Viacom video from the site.)

Here, though, is the way "reporter" John Oliver summed up the way language has gotten tangled:

Well, this is an odd, unconventional war. This isn't like World War II where there were winners and losers. It' s a new kind of war where enemies can either be emboldened or beweakened. So we have to enscare them to the point where they rebecave themselves. We must disimagine the very figment of misunsuccessiveness. That is what we have to bedo.

Welcome, New Rhetors!

Welcome to those of you in the two sections of Rhetoric and Communication Theory and Practice who will be posting to this blog at least once a week. Feel free to read through old entries to get a sense of the range of things you might muse on here. Because the blog will soon be open to all tutors and mentors (and to some graduates who've expressed interest in keeping up with us), it seems the most interesting posts will be ones that touch on real life--tutoring experiences, frustrations at the rhetorical choices of others, things you hear or see in the media, etc. Add links and pictures whenever it seems appropriate, and make connections to interesting quotes from our readings when relevant.