Thinking about rhetoric brings to my mind one time when I went abroad with my friend from Oxford. Majoring in linguistics and philology, his English sounded almost like an alien language. He could not speak normally, using simple words and sentences. Every phrase he would say caused brain anemia for me, and the people around him. (Honestly, I think he was just trying to show off. There is no need to talk using every word from an Oxford dictionary!) However, this was his style…
One day we decided to go and visit The Botanical Garden in a neighboring town. We went to a train station, and while I was so busy trying to find a restroom I asked him to talk with the controller and find out at what stop do we get off.
After two hours on a train, and not even being close to our stop, I got worried and decided to ask the controller myself. It turns out that my friend was so rhetoric and difficult in his phrasing that the controller(a poor woman…), didn’t even understand his question! Of course, we missed our stop and were moving in the opposite direction from the Botanical Garden…
This situation taught me that it is very important to know when is the right time to be rhetorical. Sometimes, people get very confused or mislead by rhetorical things.