That is only your opinion.

My knowledge of rhetoric previous to beginning LA101H consisted of very little.  In fact, it could be boiled down to my distaste for public speaking and formal debates.  I hadn’t considered anything beyond that to be a “rhetorical situation,” which is probably why I was so surprised to recognize rhetoric in use this morning amongst some friends.

Crammed together at a café table, I watched as two of my closest friends bickered about a popular movie called Pulp Fiction.  Is the film a classic or is Quentin Tarantino just an unoriginal director bent on supposed irony and clichés? 

The conversation was lively, if not a little hostile, until one of them proposed a new idea. “That is only your opinion.”  Suddenly, the conversation ceased to exist.  They were done with Quentin Tarantino and his pop culture references. 

That was when I remembered a section from our class reading about opinions.  A harsh comment about someone’s opinion implies that opinions are not very important.  Opinions aren’t facts, and therefore they don’t matter.  Another reason why my friends were so upset about their contradicting thoughts was because opinions are often tied to identities and beliefs.  To critique a person’s opinion is to attack their individual beliefs and values. 

So, this instantly became a far more interesting situation than simply the pros and cons of Pulp Fiction.  Why did my friends not want to continue their conversation?  Was it because they didn’t want to slander each other’s character, which opinions seem to be so carefully entwined with?  Or was it because they thought their opinions were unimportant?

The truly fascinating part about the whole debacle was the fact that the “that is only your opinion” line terminated the debate entirely.  Clearly, they both automatically assumed that opinions cannot be changed and they would not try to do so.  

This made me wonder—isn’t the whole point of rhetoric to persuade and create open discussion? 

If so, why is it that we are so intent on being correct, and why are we so terrified that our thoughts and ideas will hurt everyone we talk to?

Maybe rhetoric is more complex that I originally gave it credit for . . .