Confession time: I went into studying rhetoric, thinking it had absolutely no relevance to my life. My boyfriend informed me that was what he intended to study for graduate school, and I said, "really? What do you expect to do with that?" ARCS gets into modern rhetoric, how it relates to our everyday lives in a more modern sense, and really breaks this down. If I weren't already a believer, I would be now.
It's easy to see how society views rhetoric as an archaic study: Textbooks and assigned readings in K-12 education dismiss it as a study of classical oration, briefly touching on the founding fathers, and maybe how Plato defined relationships and gave some speeches somewhere in history. Students graduate scratching their heads, not even realizing that their admissions essays and that speech the Valedictorian gave, that went largely ignored, were examples of how important rhetoric is in their every day lives.
Thankfully, new media is emerging as a popular field of study (possibly too late for me, as I'm looking at graduate programs and can only find two in the entire country) in academia, and is reinventing entirely how society perceives rhetoric, beyond the podiums of long-dead orators. This allows the public to see that rhetoric goes far beyond spoken and written word; it lies in every communication choice we make. If only students could understand that those choices they make when trying to convince their parents to give them money rely entirely on an understanding of effective arguments.
It's too bad I will probably always have this conversation:
Person: "What do you study?"
Me: "Visual Media and Rhetoric"
Person: "Oh...rhetoric. What is that again?"
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