Prompt: What rhetoric do you remember being employed during and in the aftermath of 9/11? Perhaps make connections to rhetors we've been reading. Also, which of the introductions to rhetoric did you find the most useful, and why?
Although I know there was (and still is) a lot of rhetoric around 9/11, my mind always returns to the visual rhetoric. I see myself in the office where I worked being forced to watch the footage over and over again while newscasters repeated the same facts and speculations. We all wanted to know more than we did. We wanted to understand, to make sense of this tragedy; but all we had were a few snippets of footage and fear. I had this in mind as I read through this week's introductions, and I'll be honest; I had a really hard time seeing my memory of 9/11 visual rhetoric through these lenses. But here are my best efforts.
The Sophists are critiques for teaching how to prevail in an argument and, in a sense, that was what dominated our airwaves in those weeks and for months and years afterward. It wasn't really an attempt to win an argument; it was an attempt to win over a nation that we could endure and catch Bin Laden. There was a clear amplification of pathos involved, which is true of Sophists. However, Gorgias, Isocrates, and Plato all emphasized kairos, "the immediate social situation in which solutions to philosophical problems must be proposed" (Bizzell & Hertzberg, 2001, p. 81). Although I can't say that what we heard surrounding these terrorist attacks was logic, those producing the rhetoric were certainly addressing the audience and situation, which I'm understanding as kairos. The newscasters, the president, and anyone else who was in a position to gain air time wanted us to feel like they were in control and that we (America) would prevail. Winning + kairos = 9/11 rhetoric.
As I am reviewing this week's reading, I am also seeing connections to Gorgias' belief that "human encounters with the world and the exchange of knowledge about it are necessarily limited, provisional, and shared experiences that rely upon a shared deception effected by language" (Bizzell & Hertzberg, 2001, p. 43). It seems that the media (and thus the visual rhetoric I recall) was all about creating a shared experience. We knew parts of it were true, but we now know other parts were biased at the least and deception at the worst. Although, at the time, we were made to believe all of what we were told was true and that decisions were logic-based. Aristotle would have been proud. I recall feeling (and even now feel) unqualified and uniformed enough to know what to believe and who to trust. So, if I try to filter this through Aristotle's belief, where does that lead me? According to Bizzell and Hertzbert (2001), Artistotle believes "Rhetoric functions in situations in which such rigorous analysis is not possible (because the audience is not qualified) or desirable (due to the exigency of the questions at hand). Instead of examining everything, rhetorical argument builds whenever possible on assumptions the audience already holds" (p. 170). Does this mean that the audience is, in a sense, pandered to if they are unqualified? Shouldn't that make us question what we are told even more? And if that is the case, and I believe time revealed that it was in some instances, then it seems like we (the undereducated audience) should be skeptical of rhetoric, whether coming from "trusted" sources or those with only their own (Sophist-like) interests in mind.
In terms of what I introductions I found most useful, I'd honestly have to say all of them. Since I know so little of the history of rhetoric, each introduction helped me to better understand these steps. I'd say that Plato and Aristotle felt the most applicable, but that's probably just because they are closest to what we now think of as rhetoric. I do appreciate that each introduction recaps and connects the new content to the previous introductions we have read. That is very helpful for me.
Friday, September 12, 2014
Friday, September 5, 2014
Freewriting on my Expert Discussion Lead
Context: This assignment really had me stumped. I so want each of my classes and all of my classwork to help me towards my dissertation, but I had two problems with this: 1) my specific dissertation focus has been so terribly nebulous and broad throughout my year of coursework and 2) I just couldn't get anything to fit with this goal. Nothing. I was stumped. I sent a long, rambling email to Dr. Rice expressing this and then thought of something I might be able to use: a rhetorical analysis of Humans of New York, a Facebook page I follow and love. So, off I went typing up another email to poor Prof. Rice. This one he responded to and elicited a short email dialogue as I attempted to nail down my idea. Then, through a strange set of events I will not describe, I happened upon a book called The technology of nonviolence: Social media and violence prevention by Joseph B. Bock. I mentioned this to my husband and we had a conversation that lead me to this idea. So, this post is me thinking on paper/screen about this idea because 1) I'm hoping to use it for my Expert Discussion Lead, 2) I'd LOVE to build a publishable paper out of it and 3) I think this may actually be a brand new direction for me to go with my dissertation, which I am SUPER excited about! So, feel free to read, comment, make suggestions, leave encouragements, or simply stop reading here. :)
The little I have read and seen about social media and disaster or violence has argued that social media can help or even prevent these difficult situations. While I don't necessarily believe that is not the case, a recent event in my city has lead me to see the negative influence of social media as well. In the last three weeks, two churches (one Mormon and one Catholic) have been vandalized by someone(s) calling him/her/themselve(s) "The Merry Men." They have graffitied the doors with non-establishment rhetoric. However, a few days ago they hit my old high school. But there was something different about this. The message was the same, but in the morning the school received a bomb thread via email. The police are linking the two acts together, but it is unclear whether or not they are directly related. However, that is not the interesting part: it is what happened the night before that interests me. Before the email was sent or received, there was chatter on Twitter about planned violence on the campus the next day, which sparked panic. A combination of fear (from students, but mainly parents) and extreme distraction lead to over 800 students being dismissed despite the school being deemed safe for the students on the day of the actual bomb threat - the morning after the Twitter chatter.
In this case, the chatter did not prevent or even help the threat; it actually made things worse. A lot worse. Although there is potential in the graffitied rhetoric (which might come to play as I work these things out) I am more interested in the way that this online dialogue emerged and shaped the response to this threat. It was to the point that kids were being kept home or being called back home, and police were so bombarded with calls that they were unable to respond appropriately. The police are uncertain if the two men they arrested who are suspected to be "the Merry Men" are also the ones who made the threat, and there were copy cats that emerged around the time of the social media explosion. I want to further explore the hashtag #merrymen that circulated the threats of violence to better understand the reactions. I want to understand how this new form of rhetoric moves, develops, and grows. I also have some developing long-term ideas of what to do with this, but I am a bit reluctant to put them in a fully-accessible venue like this one. However, I'm hoping that an analysis of the chatter itself might reveal something about power, control, and fear mongering.
The little I have read and seen about social media and disaster or violence has argued that social media can help or even prevent these difficult situations. While I don't necessarily believe that is not the case, a recent event in my city has lead me to see the negative influence of social media as well. In the last three weeks, two churches (one Mormon and one Catholic) have been vandalized by someone(s) calling him/her/themselve(s) "The Merry Men." They have graffitied the doors with non-establishment rhetoric. However, a few days ago they hit my old high school. But there was something different about this. The message was the same, but in the morning the school received a bomb thread via email. The police are linking the two acts together, but it is unclear whether or not they are directly related. However, that is not the interesting part: it is what happened the night before that interests me. Before the email was sent or received, there was chatter on Twitter about planned violence on the campus the next day, which sparked panic. A combination of fear (from students, but mainly parents) and extreme distraction lead to over 800 students being dismissed despite the school being deemed safe for the students on the day of the actual bomb threat - the morning after the Twitter chatter.
In this case, the chatter did not prevent or even help the threat; it actually made things worse. A lot worse. Although there is potential in the graffitied rhetoric (which might come to play as I work these things out) I am more interested in the way that this online dialogue emerged and shaped the response to this threat. It was to the point that kids were being kept home or being called back home, and police were so bombarded with calls that they were unable to respond appropriately. The police are uncertain if the two men they arrested who are suspected to be "the Merry Men" are also the ones who made the threat, and there were copy cats that emerged around the time of the social media explosion. I want to further explore the hashtag #merrymen that circulated the threats of violence to better understand the reactions. I want to understand how this new form of rhetoric moves, develops, and grows. I also have some developing long-term ideas of what to do with this, but I am a bit reluctant to put them in a fully-accessible venue like this one. However, I'm hoping that an analysis of the chatter itself might reveal something about power, control, and fear mongering.
W2: My Evolving Rhetorical Understanding
Prompt: What are the most important characteristics of rhetoric, and what have you learned about non-Western rhetoric which is new to you?
What struck me the most in this week's reading is how variable rhetoric is - not just in its creation, but in its interpretation. I knew there was some debate over what comprised rhetoric here in the western world because my fabulous comp instructors at CSUF would tell us that all writing is persuasive. I had never thought about that until Rick Hansen said it the first time. Then, as I came to believe it, I would restate it to others. Sometimes, someone's head would cock to one side or she would get a look in her eye and ask, really? What about X? And I'd explain how X actually required the rhetor to take a stand, even if it was to convince us that her interpretation of something was accurate. It's all rhetoric. It's all persuasive.
This hit me the most through reading about the evolution of rhetoric in Chapter 1. I knew from my first TTU course, Public Rhetorics, that Habermas saw interlocutors as qualified individuals who engaged and spoke to find and share truth. This seems far more aligned with Aristotle's definition of rhetoric: "intentional, strategic, and oral in nature. Rhetorical theorists of ancient times were interested in how speakers used rhetoric to achieve purposive ends, such as passing laws or making judicial decisions" (Borchers, 2006, p. 6). However, I didn't realize how variable the definition of rhetoric had been over the years. My own understanding of rhetoric seems to begin with Francis Bacon because he turned his focus to the audience whereas others had looked more at the speaker. When I teach my students about rhetoric, I often emphasize a bit of both, but the audience interpretation and experience are really the heart of everything. Apparently, I owe Bacon for this. And come on, who doesn't love b(B)acon? ;)
Although Burke's inclusion of symbols was only briefly mentioned, this made a lot of sense to me because I used to spend a good amount of time helping my students to unpack some of their connotations in things we read together. Symbols seem to work in a similar way, and their inclusion, I believe, paves the way for our current inclusion of film, music, TV, advertisements, clothing, and so many other indirect forms of rhetoric.
I was not at all familiar with Thomas Farrell, but I now love him for his inclusion of discourse. Ever since I read James Gee in my early comp classes, I have been in love with discourse. And I believe discourse leads us so nicely into thinking about non-Western rhetoric because discourse is all about understanding the expectations of a particular group in a particular setting/time/location. You cannot appreciate global rhetoric without appreciating Gee's discourse and discourse communities. And we wouldn't even care about global rhetoric without paying some mind to audience, so I suppose that's how they all tie together. So... on to the second part of this question!
I have not finished reading Chapter 9 yet, but there was one sentence that really represented the entire subject for me, and it wasn't even Borchers who wrote it. Molefi Asante, the father of Afrocentricity, is cited as saying, "It is important... that 'any interpretation of African culture must begin at once to dispense with the notion that, in all things, Europe is teacher and Africa is pupil" (Borchers, 2006, p. 229). As obvious as this should be and as egotistic as it is for this to come as a surprise, it really struck me. I had just written a note in response to Borcher's claim that we could not rely on "Western-centered rhetorical theory, such as Aristotle's ethos, pathos, and logos or Burke's pentad" because it "may lead to skewed and unreliable results" (p. 228). My note reads: "This totally makes sense, but what tools do we then have to analyze?" So when I read Asante's words on the very next page, I was embarrassed and saddened by my previous, albeit innocent, response. Of course our tools are not necessarily appropriate in other contexts. How could they be? And yet, I believe my response was valid. It's not like we are taught in school about ethos, pathos, logos, styling, and indirection. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't be, but we aren't. That is why it is so important that we expose our own biases and become vulnerable to ask, what do other culture use to evaluate their speakers/rhetors/writers?
The more I thought about this idea, the more I began to see myself as arrogant and Eurocentric. I had learned about this concept in other classes - the need to be aware of a particular community's discourse to create effective disaster prevention materials or directions for use labels for medications. I had even written about how different cultures utilize different web design elements and colors. However, I had always used my own Western-based language, definitions, and understandings to frame these discussions. It is one of those things - almost a self-fulfilling prophecy or perhaps a feedback loop of sorts. We want to understand, so we use what we have to try to understand; however, this limits our ability and taints the way the "others" see us and our attempts to understand them. All of this is to say that I'm glad we are learning not just that culture X does things differently, but that culture X values A, B and C so that we can learn to value their rhetoric the way they do instead of just through our own Western-baised lenses.
Wednesday, August 27, 2014
W1 Post: Influence of Rhetoric
Question: In what ways do you use principles of rhetoric in your teaching, research, service, and/or grant writing today? Where might some of those principles come from, historically?
This is a difficult question for me to answer because I have so little formal instruction on rhetoric; however, I will do my best.
At the start of class, Dr. Rice wrote that we should think about these five things, which I will focus on in my personal reflection:
1. audience awareness (core to rhetoric)
2. critical thinking (also core)
3. diversity/multiculturalism (including non-Western approaches)
4. grammar/style
5. communication as a part of grammar/style
Audience awareness and critical thinking are the most important to me in my job. These are things I utilize on a daily basis both for myself and for my students. Our new curriculum for both our Composition and Advanced Composition classes are really founded on the idea of writing to a particular audience, so I emphasize that a lot. For me, this involves addressing ethos, pathos, and logos, along with logical fallacies (in the Advanced Comp classes only). I try to get students to think about who they are writing for so that they can then think about what that audience already knows, what they need to know, and what they will be resistant to in the student's argument. This is something we work on in various stages throughout each eight week class. (It's definitely not long enough, though - not by a long-shot.)
Thinking about audience also necessitates critical thinking. Thinking about what their audience needs is intrinsically linked to their thinking about what they want (and need) to say, how they will say it, and how they will respond to what others have to say. I always try to push my students to think beyond their current positions, and they do the same for me.
I used to more explicitly discuss diversity and multiculturalism in my classrooms, but now that I teach at DeVry my curriculum is mainly prescribed, so I can't bring in my own interests. However, as a professor I experience this facet constantly. We have a very large population of Hispanic and Hmong students in Fresno, which is reflected in our classrooms. Many of these students grew up in California, but some did not. Regardless, most come from first generation homes and, therefore, are straddling two worlds. Even if a student is fluent in English, she has varying expectations between her home life, her academics, her work life, and her friends. I have seen this cause much tension as students try to fit into one community, but fail because they are using the discourse of another. Or I see students who have been told their own language/discourse doesn't matter or that because they are back with Standard Academic (White) English, then their ideas are poor, too. The unspoken rhetoric of many higher education institutions is definitely that our (White privileged Standard Academic) ways are best, so you'd better figure out how to master those. Since my campus is very business-focused, I hear this subtext a lot. This is why I want to focus on making the online classroom environment more equable for those who do not embody this privileged stance (that we often assume is not privileged, but expected). But I digress.
Aside from my work with my students, I clearly use audience and critical thinking to do, well, everything! I know when to keep my mouth shut, what language to use, and when to be passionate about certain issues by understanding my audience. I view with a critical eye just about everything I read and see, scanning for logical fallacies and mentally tallying all of the holes in the arguments I see presented. I have a gut desire to rage against those who set up double standards for anyone they see as "other," and see out others who are writing/speaking against discrimination.
Now for where this stuff comes from, right? The only rhetoric course I took was my first one back in the summer '13 semester with Kristen Moore. I didn't really think of it as a rhetoric course because we focused more on learning what publics are and are not, but after going back through some of my notes I see that it actually was Public Rhetorics, but we never really talked about rhetoric. It was all about defining publics and understanding how they can be used to understand other things. I know that the idea of rhetoric goes back to Aristotle, and that he identified ethos, pathos, and logos, but that's pretty much it. Habermas writes about interlocutors - who is qualified to be one and in what context one becomes one - but that seems to have more to do with authority than the actual rhetoric. Honestly, this is why I'm taking this course. I thought it was more of an intro to rhetoric class, but most people seem to know a lot more about this than I do. I know I'll leave this class being able to write the heck out of this second question though!
This is a difficult question for me to answer because I have so little formal instruction on rhetoric; however, I will do my best.
At the start of class, Dr. Rice wrote that we should think about these five things, which I will focus on in my personal reflection:
1. audience awareness (core to rhetoric)
2. critical thinking (also core)
3. diversity/multiculturalism (including non-Western approaches)
4. grammar/style
5. communication as a part of grammar/style
Audience awareness and critical thinking are the most important to me in my job. These are things I utilize on a daily basis both for myself and for my students. Our new curriculum for both our Composition and Advanced Composition classes are really founded on the idea of writing to a particular audience, so I emphasize that a lot. For me, this involves addressing ethos, pathos, and logos, along with logical fallacies (in the Advanced Comp classes only). I try to get students to think about who they are writing for so that they can then think about what that audience already knows, what they need to know, and what they will be resistant to in the student's argument. This is something we work on in various stages throughout each eight week class. (It's definitely not long enough, though - not by a long-shot.)
Thinking about audience also necessitates critical thinking. Thinking about what their audience needs is intrinsically linked to their thinking about what they want (and need) to say, how they will say it, and how they will respond to what others have to say. I always try to push my students to think beyond their current positions, and they do the same for me.
I used to more explicitly discuss diversity and multiculturalism in my classrooms, but now that I teach at DeVry my curriculum is mainly prescribed, so I can't bring in my own interests. However, as a professor I experience this facet constantly. We have a very large population of Hispanic and Hmong students in Fresno, which is reflected in our classrooms. Many of these students grew up in California, but some did not. Regardless, most come from first generation homes and, therefore, are straddling two worlds. Even if a student is fluent in English, she has varying expectations between her home life, her academics, her work life, and her friends. I have seen this cause much tension as students try to fit into one community, but fail because they are using the discourse of another. Or I see students who have been told their own language/discourse doesn't matter or that because they are back with Standard Academic (White) English, then their ideas are poor, too. The unspoken rhetoric of many higher education institutions is definitely that our (White privileged Standard Academic) ways are best, so you'd better figure out how to master those. Since my campus is very business-focused, I hear this subtext a lot. This is why I want to focus on making the online classroom environment more equable for those who do not embody this privileged stance (that we often assume is not privileged, but expected). But I digress.
Aside from my work with my students, I clearly use audience and critical thinking to do, well, everything! I know when to keep my mouth shut, what language to use, and when to be passionate about certain issues by understanding my audience. I view with a critical eye just about everything I read and see, scanning for logical fallacies and mentally tallying all of the holes in the arguments I see presented. I have a gut desire to rage against those who set up double standards for anyone they see as "other," and see out others who are writing/speaking against discrimination.
Now for where this stuff comes from, right? The only rhetoric course I took was my first one back in the summer '13 semester with Kristen Moore. I didn't really think of it as a rhetoric course because we focused more on learning what publics are and are not, but after going back through some of my notes I see that it actually was Public Rhetorics, but we never really talked about rhetoric. It was all about defining publics and understanding how they can be used to understand other things. I know that the idea of rhetoric goes back to Aristotle, and that he identified ethos, pathos, and logos, but that's pretty much it. Habermas writes about interlocutors - who is qualified to be one and in what context one becomes one - but that seems to have more to do with authority than the actual rhetoric. Honestly, this is why I'm taking this course. I thought it was more of an intro to rhetoric class, but most people seem to know a lot more about this than I do. I know I'll leave this class being able to write the heck out of this second question though!
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