rhetoric

An outstanding review and analysis of major thinkers! Thorough in scope and highly accessible, this volume introduces readers to the thinkers who have exerted a profound influence on contemporary rhetorical theory. The brief biographical sketches locate the theorists in time and place, showing how life experiences influenced perspectives on rhetorical thought. The concise explanations of complex concepts are clear and provide readers with a solid foundation for reading the major works of these scholars. The critical commentary is carefully chosen to place the theories within a broader rhetorical context. Each chapter ends with a complete bibliography of works by the theorists. Previous editions have been praised as indispensable; the Third Edition is equally essential.

Titles of related interest also available from Waveland Press: Foss et al., Readings in Contemporary Rhetoric (ISBN 9781577662068); Hauser, Introduction to Rhetorical Theory, Second Edition (ISBN 9781577662211); and Smith, Rhetoric and Human Consciousness: A History, Third Edition (ISBN 9781577665878).

This essay argues that the sensing activities of smart objects and infrastructures for device-to-device communication need to be understood as a fundamental aspect of the rhetorical situation, even in the absence of human agents. Using the concept of exigence, most famously developed by Lloyd Bitzer, this essay analyzes the asymmetrical rhetorical dynamics of human-computer interaction and suggests new rhetorical roles for reading machines. It asserts that rhetorical studies has yet to catch up with electronic literature and other digital art forms when it comes to matters of the interface and the sensorium of the machine. It also claims that the work of Carolyn Miller epitomizes the conservative tendencies of rhetorical study when it comes to ubiquitous computing, even as she acknowledges a desire among some parties to grant smart objects rhetorical agency. Furthermore, when traditionally trained rhetoricians undertake the analysis of new media objects of study, far too much attention is devoted to the screen. In the logic of rhetorical theory, cameras are privileged over scanners, optics are privileged over sensors, and representation is privileged over registration. However, new forms of rhetorical performance by computational components may be going on independent of human-centered display. By interpreting works of electronic literature by Amaranth Borsuk, Caitlin Fisher, and Judd Morrissey, it posits a possible framework of sensing exigence.

In this presentation, we will see how the authoring tool impacts on the thinking of electronic literature. If we consider that electronic literature cannot exist without digital tools, and digital writing requires tool, software and technologies, we can easily imagine how huge the role of the authoring tool is for the authors and how their imaginary can be challenged. Tools propose and impose choices and directions that ask the creative act in electronic literature.

Then, in our research, we define the concept of the “rhetoric for creative authoring” that will be focusing on power relations between the authoring tool and the author. And what does it mean in electronic literature to use such a tool? Is electronic literature producing works depending on the software the author uses? It means that the software tool, as the edge of the electronic work itself, could be considered as part of the electronic work. In other hands, this approach could help to define electronic literature.

Also, the notion of “cultural software” by Lev Manovich that we develop in this paper could be followed by another concept as a “societal theory of tool” which could be the challenge of the future of electronic literature. If we consider software tool as a support of ideological way of thinking, the consequences on electronic literature need to be analyzed.

Where and when does electronic literature start and stop? At the border of literature, art and computing, electronic literature is characterized by three basic forms that are animation, interactivity and multimedia, and sometimes mobilizes programming skills. Regarding this last point, the question would be to evaluate whether the creator should be a programmer to practice electronic literature? In our research work, we interviewed authors of electronic literature who have expressed different visions regarding this crucial question.

Software formats are, more than ever before, at the center of creation. Does the creative act ask for the intent of the author, when starting from prefabricated element? With the examples of the three softwares, frequently used in electronic literature, we will talk about the concept of remediation, and will show how structure influences the imaginary work of the authors and how they live the tension between the tool and the creation in their electronic literary works. May we still define electronic literature as a confidential and experimental literature thought for and through the digital? Will the power of the tool define electronic literature, such as authoring tool literature? When we define electronic literature we also say something about the authors and their imaginary work. Writing experimental digital works of literature involves various figures of an author, usually producing his work by his/her own. The author often combines multiple functions (academic, researcher, programmer and artist) that require the production of an electronic work, from critical posture to computer skills. In our paper, we will question this approach and, at the end, will be proposing a classification of postures of authors, based on the interviews we have had with a panel of sixteen authors, which can help define the boundaries of electronic literature.

(source: ELO 2015 Conference Catalog)

This paper discusses a semester-long classroom project in which senior seminar students were required to take Shakespeare’s Sonnet 14 and convert it into various media objects and texts. The assignments made use of Ian Bogost’s “procedural rhetoric” (“a type of rhetoric tied to the core affordances of computers: running processes and executing rule-based symbolic manipulation”), assigning tasks based on the core concepts of “encoding” and “algorithm.” Some objects were electronic (music, twitter feeds) while the majority were physical objects, but they all made use of a procedural rhetoric sketched out by the original shape of the sonnet itself and the long tradition of scanning poems. In doing so, the objects produced force us to ask: where, exactly, do we “hold the light”? Is it e-lit if there’s no “e”?

(Source: Author's Abstract)

This presentation considers the rhetoric and poetics of meme culture and social media
platforms.

Internet memes, in their essence, are methods of expression born from the attention
economy of networked culture. At times they can be epistolary, aphoristic, polemic,
satirical, or parodic; and they may take the form of performative actions and photo fads
such as planking, teapotting and batmanning or iterative processes such as image macros
and advice animals including lolcats, Bad Luck Brian and Condescending Wonka. In either
case they are conditioned by rhetorical formulas with strict grammars and styles.
In the case of image macros, the rhetoric is sustained through correlations between the
image and its caption. If we line-up the thousands of Condescending Wonka memes side
by side, we will find very little difference between them aesthetically – the same image is
repeated, along with captions at the top and bottom of the image. In the captions we find
a specific tone that is also repeated one image to the next.

For the Condescending Wonka meme this tone is sarcastic and snarky, which is a reflection
upon Gene Wilder’s portrayal of the title character in the 1971 film Willy Wonka and the
Chocolate Factory. The top caption presents what might be a sincere question, and in the
bottom caption we get a snarky response. The completion of a truncated mock-dialogue
circuit… To understand the context of the Condescending Wonka meme, one must have
a generalized understanding of Wilder’s portrayal of the character to allow for the
attitude of the character to operate as a sublimated vehicle for humorously couched
insolence. In this regard, the meme is not simply an artifact, but a conduit through
which cultural references are conducted.

It could be said that memes are not artifacts at all. As Dawkins defined memes, they can
be "an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture."
Though we can see how these operate in the Condescending Wonka example – the idea,
style, and rhetorical behavior are clear, where we locate the meme as differentiated from
the artifact is not so plainly defined. If we disregard the meme as any given individual artifact and
start to examine their dialogistic function -- memes as sets of
social relations, they begin to take on the additional aspect of
social gesture, or what Brecht has dubbed the gestic. They
present a framework for attitudes that must be shared, expressed,
distributed, and put into circulation. For, as Brecht has stated,
“…it is what happens between people that provides them with
all the material that they can discuss, criticize, alter.”

Though we maybe tempted to think of meme culture as frivolous and disposable (and
certainly meme constructions can lead rather short lives); that its content is
fundamentally banal, puerile, or adolescent, it is important to consider their function as
frameworks for the communication of human ideas and attitudes, along with their
methods of persuasion.

(Source: Author's introduction)

This dissertation addresses the need for a strategy that will help readers new to new media texts interpret such texts. While scholars in multimodal and new media theory posit rubrics that offer ways to understand how designers use the materialities and media found in overtly designed, new media texts (see, e.g,, Wysocki, 2004a), these strategies do not account for how readers have to make meaning from those texts. In this dissertation, I discuss how these theories, such as Lev Manovich’s (2001) five principles for determining the new media potential of texts and Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen’s (2001) four strata of designing multimodal texts, are inadequate to the job of helping readers understand new media from a rhetorical perspective. I also explore how literary theory, specifically Wolfgang Iser’s (1978) description of acts of interpretation, can help audiences understand why readers are often unable to interpret the multiple, unexpected modes of communication used in new media texts. Rhetorical theory, explored in a discussion of Sonja Foss’s (2004) units of analysis, is helpful in bringing the reader into a situated context with a new media text, although these units of analysis, like Iser’s process, suggests that a reader has some prior experience interpreting a text-as-artifact. Because of this assumption of knowledge put forth by all of the theories explored within, I argue that none alone is useful to help readers engage with and interpret new media texts. However, I argue that a heuristic which combines elements from each of these theories, as well as additional ones, is more useful for readers who are new to interpreting the multiple modes of communication that are often used in unconventional ways in new media texts. I describe that heuristic in the final chapter and discuss how it can be useful to a range of texts besides those labelled new media.

Proposes rhetorical terms for different kinds of linking.

Landow examines the rhetoric of linking in hypertext documents based on his experience with the Context32: A Web of English Literature system and argues for principles of relational logic in linking.