What Does Rhetoric Mean

After reading the course handout, the key term “Rhetoric” has a really different meaning to me. The term “Rhetoric (修辭)” in Chinese is really different, it means some methods for improving sentence or word choices. Simile is a commonly used rhetorical method in Chinese. There is a Chinese idiom that describes friendship: “Friend is like a bottle of wine, the longer it stays, the better it is (朋友像成年老酒，越陳越香).” So, when I read the key term “Rhetoric”, I was confused because it has nothing to do with my prior knowledge of rhetoric. This cultural difference makes me think “Rhetoric” is the most interesting key term.

Old vs. New

I define the term “Information” as a representation of data, facts, ideas, or anything that describes something else (This sentence is the information for the term information. Isn’t it funny?). My definition of old information is the information before it was changed or updated by another information, in this case, new information. So, when I something I learned is presented to me again, it is still new information since it does not change.

iPhone is an example, it is a smartphone created by Apple Inc. I learned this information 8 years ago, and it is still the same, thus it is still new information. On the other hand, the term Rhetoric that I know in Chinese is an old information, because it is not referring to the new information we are learning in this class. (Maybe I should blame the dictionary?)
But old and new information sometimes exist together.

My understanding of the term God (神). Lord Guan, for example, was a general who was best known for his moral quality in Chinese history. Taoism and Buddhism worship him because his true loyalty and courage. Many Gods I know my life are actual people with special quality or achievement in the history. But all this is old information for the term God. The Lord Jesus really has nothing to do with how we define God. Jesus was the son of God who taught many people the story of God and died for everyone's sin. Jesus and Lord Guan are fundamentally different, thus Jesus is new information that describes God, while Lord Guan is the old information that describes God. In terms of the term “information”, old information and new information of term God coexist, because people who have different religions are going to provide different information about

God.
Question about reading
I really don’t understand the word “Genre”. Why does English gives this word such complicated and vague definition in writing (and weird pronunciation)? From our required reading by Richard Johnson, it states that genres is often defined by something’s structure, which it says is misleading, but “Ways of writing and speaking that help people interact and work together”(Johnson 2). The other required reading by College Composition and Communication states that genre is often defined by “textual forms… a sonnet or a review.” but say that genre in writing is “response to a situation”. I think that language and word are tools to communicate thoughts, why do we want to use the term “Genre” when people normally do not use them in the ways this two text is defining? Why don’t we call it “Reader Interface” like we define “User Interface” as a user to interact and work with an electric device? Why don’t we call it “Conditional writing” like we define “Conditional statement” for a computer to respond and execute command under certain situation?