Bruce Gronbeck has argued that part of a liberal education is the "installation of technical or in other ways precise language that enables its users to talk more accurately and usefully about the world. With the act of naming . . . come the abilities to assume perspectives on and to express attitudes toward the world" (185).  Since we, as increasingly sophisticated students of rhetorical theory, must talk about the world of experience we have chosen to focus on, it is important that we develop a sufficiently sophisticated vocabulary to provide insight to ourselves and our audiences.
 

The glossary assignment asks you to do five tasks in the development of a vocabulary about rhetorical theory:
 

1) Isolate words within the readings that you see as significant terms for a critic or theorist to know.

2) Define the term from the reading or other sources.

3) Write a sentence from your source using the term.

4) Write a sentence you have created.

5) Provide a full bibliographic reference for the term so you can locate its source and the surrounding ideas if needed in the future.

If you were using an index card, it would look like this
 .

 
1 Rhetoric 2 ". . . the faculty of discovering in the particular case what are the available
means of persuasion." (Cooper 7). .

3 "Now Rhetoric finds its end in judgement--for the audience judges the counsels
 that are given and the decision is a judgment; and hence the speaker must not
 merely see to it that his speech shall be convincing and persuasive, but he must
 give the right impression of himself . . . (Cooper 91). .

4 According to Aristotle, rhetoric is the ability to figure out what arguments will
  be most moving for any particular audience. .

5 Cooper, Lane, trans. The Rhetoric of Aristotle. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1960.
 

 NOTE: The numbers correspond to the tasks of the assignment  illustrated on the mock card above. Do not
include them in your entries.