Archive | November 2014

Week 12: Classical Rhetoric Up in Smoke by Pepper

Week 12 – Classical Rhetoric Up In Smoke: Cool Persuasion,

Digital Ethos, and Online Advocacy

by Mark D. Pepper | Utah Valley University

 

http://kairos.technorhetoric.net/18.2/topoi/pepper/index.html

Pepper brings up some interesting concepts as he critiques this web site. The most interesting discussion to me involved how thetruth doesn’t quite meet the ethical standards that we expect to find from an organization that is trying to get young people to stop smoking. The fact that this approach tries to break all the rules seems contradictory but intriguing at the same time. Cigarettes in the hands of youngsters are seen as rebellious, and to combat that ideology, the web site uses in effect “reverse psychology.” But I’m not sure that it works, especially when the data linked to viewers of this site is provided (they just click cursorily – not many relevant comments are made). If it does work, then have we encouraged or succeeded in getting youngsters to stop smoking or have we succeeded in teaching them to disregard authority completely? Perhaps one can argue that this group is already disregarding authority and the site is trying to use this mentality to reach the specific audience. Regardless of which causes which, the problem of lack of authority still exists and is encouraged, which could be problematic if these youngsters don’t “outgrow” this ideology. Somehow “stooping to their level” just doesn’t seem like the best way to reach the audience.

Posted by werner22brigitte on Pixabay - no attribution required

Posted by werner22brigitte on Pixabay – no attribution required

I have to play Devil’s advocate against myself, however. The fact that this web site tries to use “cool” as a means of reaching its audience is novel and worth mentioning. After all, knowing your audience is one requirement for effectively reaching them, and this site seems to cover this aspect of rhetoric better than most other web pages. “Sticking it to the man,” on some levels, should work in reaching this audience.

<I’m shifting gears again – I kind of like arguing with myself!> But there is another aspect of this audience that has not been considered: many people in this group will not have access to the internet and if they do, they probably aren’t the type of people who sit down to read text. So perhaps the medium is hindering the effectiveness of this message in spite of its disrespectful tone.

 

Effective or not, this web site provided an excellent springboard for Pepper to demonstrate to me (someone who really needs these types of examples) how to link theory with practice. Because his “object lesson” shows me what I need to know instead of just telling me what I should know, I think I’ll read his article again.


I responded to Dan’s wonderful blog pulling information from this book. My response focused on some side issues that keep catching my eye right now. Dan’s reference to fear reminded me of the movie After Earth which encourages us to overcome our fear. Such thinking is not wrong because fear can paralyze us and we need to fight against it. But I’m afraid of jumping too far to the other side and not respecting fear as a natural emotion which we have been given as a protective mechanism. If we learn to acknowledge our fears and where they come from, we can learn not only more about our environment but also more about ourselves. And by reflecting on those two things, we can (hopefully) better our lives.

I also responded to Sherie’s post (I always love hearing her perspective). She was honest in her assessment of the work and how it made her feel, but she gave him a fair response. I asked questions about Pepper’s focus on interface given the fact that (at least in my opinion) most of the people who make up the target audience for thetruth are either not going to see the web site or read the website or comprehend the website. Without the ability to communicate in such manner, this message (regardless of how novel and rebellious) will not reach its intended audience.

The connecting point for me regarding this article is that we should be striving to find balance in our lives. I’m not quite sure where that line is on most specific topics, but I do know that I don’t want to be accused of jumping to the end without considering the other side.

Week 11 – 2nd Half Technologies of Wonder

Delagrange uses a feminist approach to her proposal to include the visual in the rhetoric classroom because she views the situation in binaries where one side usurps the other:

  • Male                            female
  • Mind                           body
  • Text                             image (94)
  • Organizational          inventional
  • Abstract                      material (107)
  • Logos                          pathos (155).

Her claim is that the male-dominated mindset of current rhetoric classrooms focuses on the mental over the physical and therefore accepts the use of text but rejects the use of images for conveying meaning. She wants us “to move beyond the historical privileging of the Word” (2); she encourages us to “reject discourses of immateriality that ask us to erase our embodied selves from our work, and we should take on all the roles necessary to develop convincing, principled, pedagogical performances in digitally mediated environments” (104). According to her, the concept of turning in a paper that is devoid of images and follows the required “white paper, 12-point black type, regular spacing, and otherwise defined formatting of the academic essay” (102) is repulsive. She wants “to subvert the widely-held mistrust of the visual in academic discourse by insisting that the material world cannot be reduced to language, that visual representations, including the visual components of words on a page or bars in a graph, contain meaning beyond mere text” (105). The fact that images do convey a different layer of meaning is well-explained and justly noted, but she seems to tip the scales too far to one side. If we are to teach students to evaluate what they are seeing and to explain what those layers of meaning are, we must teach them to verbalize what they see; visual literacy must include both the visual and words.

How text and images (don't) work together

How text and images (don’t) work together

Let me explain the importance of both sides using an example from a party game from a few years ago. The concept of this game is similar to the game called “Telephone” where a message is whispered into the ear of one person who then repeats it to the next person around the circle; when the final person says the message aloud, it has usually deviated drastically from the original message. For this particular game, a group of ten people sat in a circle; we were all given ten squares of paper. The leader instructed us to write a description of any object on the first square of paper. We were to provide detail but not go overboard. We then passed our stack of papers to the left, so we were holding the description in our hands that someone else had written. We had to take the written description from the first square of paper and draw it onto the second square of paper. When we finished drawing that image, we passed to the left again. This time, we had to look at the image before us and try to describe on the third square the image we were looking at from the second square (we were not allowed to reference the original description).  Once our descriptions were completed, we passed again and the process repeated itself. The interpretations between the written and the visual were usually humorous, but they showcased the need for discussion regarding both levels of meaning.

Delagrange devotes a few pages of text directly to refuting Robin Williams’s book The Non-Designer’s Design Book (2008), but her initial response defies Williams’ purpose. Delagrange complains that the four focal points of the book “oversimplify the design process, reducing it to a set of do’s and don’ts that entirely disregard rhetorical concerns of audience, purpose, and context” (102). She also complains that Williams encourages the production of advertisements which embody a “lack of ambiguity, and a (false) sense of unity and completeness and containment” (103), yet this is exactly what Williams is striving for. The illustrations which Williams uses are focused mostly on advertising, whether the example is a business card, a menu, or a flier trying to get an audience to come to an event or purchase a product. Williams wants to remove ambiguity so that the audience is inclined to respond to the advertisement. Since Delagrange is writing this book to an audience whose purpose is to explore rhetoric in the classroom, she is misguided in using Williams’ book as an example; they are simply trying to reach different audiences.

Delagrange also argues that “the rhetorical canon or arrangement should be . . . constructed today as a material, embodied techne’ which, through hypermediated linking of visual and verbal evidence, enables a process of wonder and discovery that promotes thoughtful inquiry and insight” (107). In my world, this is part of the pre-writing process for our students, but we expect them to take this “discovery” and “insight” and turn it into an essay.

  • Delagrange, Susan H. Technologies of Wonder: Rhetorical Practice in a Digital World. Logan, UT: Computers and Composition Digital P, 2011. org/wonder/ Web. 12 Oct. 2014.

 


 

 

This week I responded to Dan’s interpretation of the second half of Robin William’s The Non-Designer’s Design Book. He has an affinity for fonts that is fascinating, yet practical. Form does add an additional layer of meaning to content, and I like the fact that he focused on that concept using fonts specifically. Dan is just one of those people who is able to say a lot without saying a lot. Perhaps it’s just the male/female communication style difference that I am focusing on (as a female, I tend to ramble). Regardless of the “why,” I appreciate hearing from him and I consider his ideas worth paying attention to.

 

I also responded to Summer’s Part I of Lev Manovich’s Software Takes Command. Again, Summer has taken a tough concept, chewed it up, and spit it out in a manner that allows me to understand it. Summer is also very detailed, so that I can definitely use her information if I ever need to prepare for PhD comps! Manovich’s conversation regarding how much we rely on software is definitely warranted. Unfortunately, especially for the younger generation, we may be stifled by our over-dependence on these software programs. Then again, maybe I’m just being leery for no reason. Software is just another set of tools that we use, and we’ve been using tools as humans since we came into being. I do appreciate the ability to Google something whenever I have a question! But the fact that I can use the word Google as a verb speaks to the very conversation Manovich is having. I think I’ll add his books to my resource list.