Public Rhetoric and Practical Communication
Why Should Students Care?
Lecture 1: CAT 125
Elizabeth Losh
http://losh.ucsd.edu
Who Will You Be in Two Years?
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
A graduate student?
A corporate intern?
A school teacher?
A medical school student?
A fledgling engineer?
A nursing school student?
A media producer?
An artist or musician?
A human rights activist?
You Might Already Have Had Multiple Careers
“As a graduate student, I've had to compile, compose, and organize
content for a web design project (one of which was focused on web
typography, but we were expected to write and present our content
for our intended audiences as well as part of the assignment), class or
project blogs, project wikis, and other collaborative platforms (usually
writing with other students). I'm also expected to be able to
communicate with students and professors through e-mail and
instant messaging.
When I was interning at a game company, though, I communicated
both within the office and with the home office in Europe through email and instant messaging on official (and less official) matters.
There were other internal web-based resources, but since I was an
intern, I only read them.”
You Might Already Need Multiple Literacies
by Then
“Multi-modal literacy is increasingly valued in the workplace, and as a
teacher, my students are encouraged to create meaning away from
the traditional paper-and-pen methods.
Technical instruction in the shooting and editing of video would be
helpful”
Less is More:
Learning about Design
“I think some basic training about
professionalism in e-mails would be useful.
Many people I've worked with, especially
much older people, treat e-mails like a game,
with tons of colored fonts, fancy signatures,
colloquial writing in formal situations, etc.”
What to Do and What Not to Do
Preparation is Essential:
Learning about Staging Projects
“I've seen enough atrocious Powerpoint
presentations in my life to consider this, and
the ability to present effectively with slides, to
be an extremely useful skill; if people can't or
don't pay attention to what you're saying, you
might as well not being saying it at all for all of
the repeating you'll have to do after when
people ask for clarification.”
Organizing Authorship
Decorum Matters:
Learning about Rhetoric
“Nowadays it is common practice for
employers to check social network pages. I'd
advise students to keep their craziness to a
minimum if they want to keep their job. One
of my coworkers checked her Myspace page
all the time, and once she forgot to close the
browser and left it open. Her supervisor
walked by and saw her personal photo gallery
of all her tattoos. It was not a happy
experience for her.”
Rhetoric, That’s Bad, Right?
“political games and ‘who’s up’, ‘who’s down’ rhetoric”
“the rhetoric emanating from Tehran”
“underscored the need for actions that match the
rhetoric”
Negative Attitudes about Rhetoric and
New Media: The Platonic Legacy
Plato vs. Aristotle
on Rhetoric and New Media
Plato in the Phaedrus:
How can authorship be verified?
‘
Plato in the Phaedrus:
An aid to forgetting
‘
Plato in the Gorgias:
Rhetoric vs. Philosophy
‘
cosmetics vs. gymnastics
Plato in the Gorgias:
Rhetoric vs. Philosophy
‘
pastries vs. medicine
Plato in the Republic:
The Allegory of the Cave
Plato in the Republic:
The Theory of Mimesis
Plato in the Republic:
Theatre and Imitation
The argument for banishing poets
Aristotle in the Poetics:
Theatre and Catharsis
The argument for an education that includes being
exposed to the arts and new media
He also thought a good education should include
rhetorical training.
Aristotle’s Means of Persuasion
• Ethos – a speaker’s authority, credibility, and
perceived expertise
• Logos – a speaker’s logic, organization, and
mastery of language
• Pathos – a speaker’s ability to move an
audience emotionally
Kenneth Burke’s Pentad
•
•
•
•
•
Act – What
Agent – Who
Agency – How
Purpose – Why
Scene – Where and When
Jauss’s Horizon of Expectations
Thinking about audiences
What if your audience
was a group of investment
bankers who were considering
hiring you for a starting position?
Alexsay Vayner
Impossible is Nothing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPGoS1D3Sb0&f
Michael Cera
Impossible is the Opposite of Possible
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAV0sxwx9rY
Vayner’s Digital Rhetoric
• Presents the wrong genre
• Addresses his audience inappropriately
• Invites challenges to his credibility from
Internet spoilers because of his video editing
techniques
• Demonstrates obliviousness to the fact that
his social networks have been compromised
James Kotecki
http://losh.ucsd.edu/courses/kotecki.html
Kotecki’s Digital Rhetoric
• Demonstrates an awareness of the
conventions of specific genres in computermediated communication
• Addresses multiple audiences expertly and
simultaneously
• Enhances his credibility by using the rhetorical
scene to his advantage
• Capitalizes on social network sites and on
online video response structures
Which One Do You Want to Be?
James Kotecki or Alexsay Vayner?
The University as a Rhetorical Space
Trying out new identities and creating theater
The UNC Pit Break-Up
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=colIeH2snmI
Your Role in This Class
You are not to be passive spectators
But our “interaction” won’t be done with
clickers
Michael Wesch
A Vision of Students Today (2007)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGCJ46vyR9o
I will read 8 books this year 2300 web pages &
1281 FaceBook Profiles
I WILL WRITE 42 PAGES FOR CLASS THIS
SEMESTER AND OVER 500 PAGES OF E-MAIL
I FACEBOOK THROUGH MOST OF MY CLASSES
I bring my laptop to class, but I’m not working
on class stuff
What Argument is Wesch Making?
His Students’ Google Doc
Mark Marino
(Re)Visions of Students Today (2008)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ln6WUy29fAA
&
Improvisation
and the Cutting Room Floor
Ethnographies of YouTube
Cutting as Subject Matter:
More Work from Wesch’s Students
Final Project:
Your YouTube Video Essay
Demonstrating organizational and editing strategies more vividly
Generating highly engaged – and even embodied – forms of rhetoric
Making manifest the dialogic and networked character of the writing
situation
Fostering practices aimed at public writing and thus encouraging
sensitivity to new questions about authorship and audience
Addressing campus objectives in incorporating visual, multi-modal, or
digital rhetorics and literacies and preparing students for public
speaking or presentation situations
Connecting everyday vernacular discourse to formalized academic
scholarship and the culture of knowledge to the culture of
information
Next Time
We’ll think about professors on the Internet rather
than students and greet Provost Naomi Oreskes
What advice would you give Professor Oreskes,
based on watching her YouTube lecture, about
how to reach audiences on the Internet?
What do you think of the comments that her video
received?