Rhetorical Analysis By Surprise

When I meet someone for the first time I always look at his or her appearance and make an assumption about his or her character. After that I pay attention to mannerisms, facial expressions and speech. But then I talk to him or her and find out a lot more about them, which is fair because I wouldn’t want anyone to judge me based on my appearance. However, when I judge someone based on his or her appearance I am using rhetorical analysis because I am using my surroundings and the information I am given to make an assumption. My assumptions are usually pretty close to the truth however I would not know that unless I talk to them. In rhetorical analysis we may never find out whether are assumptions were correct or not for various reasons. The author of the piece of writing or art may be inaccessible or have been dead for many years.

            One instance in particular where this happened was with my roommate right now. We actually went to the same high school so I have known him for three years. But I graduated with just under 700 people so as you can imagine it was hard to be friends with everyone. I had a few classes with him but didn’t know much about him other than he was in band. I usually saw him with lots of people though so I assumed he was a very social person and that he had lots of friends. I have always been an introvert and usually only have a couple friends that I hang out with so when I heard he was coming to Iowa State I asked if he wanted to be roommates because he could help me meet people. I should also mention that I am a weird person and I like doing goofy things and being silly and he seemed more serious and into sports. Now that we have been roommates for 6 months I’ve come to realize that my assumptions were very wrong. He turned out to be a lot like me; a goofy introvert. He actually thinks of me as the more social person and it is because of me that we have most of the friends that we have now. It turned out really well for both of us because we have become really good friends since the start of the year. I would argue he is even goofier than I am but I guess it depends on the day. We do a lot of crazy stuff and have lots of prank wars too. My favorite prank so far was putting caution tape all over someone’s door. Unfortunately this resulted in a well-planned counter-attack. They switched out one of our room keys for a bathroom key, came into our room in the middle of the night and turned everything upside down. After that I never let me keys leave my sight again.