In this section I've showcased concepts of rhetorical theory that have helped me build this website. Ideas surrounding reciprocity, constraints, the effect of emotion on rhetoric, etc. have impacted the language I've used here. This section may seem a little, well, convoluted, but it's a good "behind the scenes" look into the creation of this project.
Asymmetrical Reciprocity
In her article “Asymmetrical Reciprocity: on Moral Respect, Wonder, and Enlarged Thought,” Iris Marion Young argues that we can only truly understand another’s worldview if we maintain a sense of openness and wonder and respect the idea that all perspectives are shaped by differences in social positions and backgrounds.
Young claims, essentially, that it isn’t effective to put yourself in another’s shoes to understand their position. That person has likely built their position based on experiences, social positions, and attributes that are different from your own, and trying to place yourself into their circumstances is truly impossible without having lived them yourself. Instead, Young argues, you must maintain a sense of openness that allows you to gain new insights about the other person, and remain an active and respectful listener who recognizes the differences between the two of you. Within the context of this blog I'd like to apply this idea by recognizing that my audience is built from different histories and social positions and will all view my content with different perspectives, and may raise varied questions about what I’ve written.
Young also says, “A respectful stance of wonder toward other people is one of openness across, awaiting new insight about their needs, interests, perceptions, or values. Wonder also means being able to see one's own position, assumptions, perspective as strange, because it has been put in relation to others.” Wonder, then, can exist as a sense of curiosity that allows you to separate your interests from others and examine both with openness. In this blog I hope to develop my own sense of wonder in order to understand and synthesize the knowledge I’ve gained from my internship. I’d also like to uncover my audience’s sense of wonder to examine the world of publishing from perspectives they may not have considered before. I'm hoping to invoke this sense of wonder through an approachable tone and specific stories from my time as an intern.
Young claims, essentially, that it isn’t effective to put yourself in another’s shoes to understand their position. That person has likely built their position based on experiences, social positions, and attributes that are different from your own, and trying to place yourself into their circumstances is truly impossible without having lived them yourself. Instead, Young argues, you must maintain a sense of openness that allows you to gain new insights about the other person, and remain an active and respectful listener who recognizes the differences between the two of you. Within the context of this blog I'd like to apply this idea by recognizing that my audience is built from different histories and social positions and will all view my content with different perspectives, and may raise varied questions about what I’ve written.
Young also says, “A respectful stance of wonder toward other people is one of openness across, awaiting new insight about their needs, interests, perceptions, or values. Wonder also means being able to see one's own position, assumptions, perspective as strange, because it has been put in relation to others.” Wonder, then, can exist as a sense of curiosity that allows you to separate your interests from others and examine both with openness. In this blog I hope to develop my own sense of wonder in order to understand and synthesize the knowledge I’ve gained from my internship. I’d also like to uncover my audience’s sense of wonder to examine the world of publishing from perspectives they may not have considered before. I'm hoping to invoke this sense of wonder through an approachable tone and specific stories from my time as an intern.
The Rhetorical Situation
In his article “The Rhetorical Situation,” Lloyd F. Bitzer says that rhetorical discourse typically exists to create change or alter reality in some way. This discourse, he believes, is founded from the rhetorical situation, or “some specific condition or situation which invites utterance.” The rhetorical situation contains the exigence—the primary obstacle or need for change that invokes the discourse, such as a lack of clean drinking water in a community—as well as the audience and the constraints, which include anything with the power to block the desired change.
While an exigence can take the form of a clear problem—like the lack of clean drinking water—it can also exist in other forms. Perhaps you and a friend are hiking, and come to a river that you need to cross safely. If you use speech as a way to motivate each other across, that serves as an exigence—the need for change, in this instance, is the need to get across the river safely. An exigence also can be a problem that you perceive but others don’t, or, as Craig R. Smith states, it can be a problem that is not accurate or even real.
Within the context of my blog my exigence is fairly simple: The “change” I’d like to accomplish is to teach more English majors and other bookworms about the world of publishing, so they can determine if they’d like to join this world someday. The exigence I’ve recognized is that too many English majors enter the workforce without truly knowing what they want to do and what options are open to them. I can use my experience to shed light on one option that’s available—small press publishing.
Another exigence that exists, on my end, relates back to asymmetrical reciprocity. Without having lived the same experiences as my audience, it’s hard for me to know how y’all view publishing and what questions you have about it. In this case my exigence is my own lack of knowledge on the efficacy of my blog. This is where feedback comes in! I would love to hear from anyone reading this blog, no matter whether you have questions, criticisms, or just lots and lots of compliments (Actually, compliments are the only feedback I’ll be accepting. That and cookies… Just kidding). If you have any feedback to give me, please use my contact page, where I've provided a contact form and my social media sites. Tweet at me, DM me, I don't mind.
While an exigence can take the form of a clear problem—like the lack of clean drinking water—it can also exist in other forms. Perhaps you and a friend are hiking, and come to a river that you need to cross safely. If you use speech as a way to motivate each other across, that serves as an exigence—the need for change, in this instance, is the need to get across the river safely. An exigence also can be a problem that you perceive but others don’t, or, as Craig R. Smith states, it can be a problem that is not accurate or even real.
Within the context of my blog my exigence is fairly simple: The “change” I’d like to accomplish is to teach more English majors and other bookworms about the world of publishing, so they can determine if they’d like to join this world someday. The exigence I’ve recognized is that too many English majors enter the workforce without truly knowing what they want to do and what options are open to them. I can use my experience to shed light on one option that’s available—small press publishing.
Another exigence that exists, on my end, relates back to asymmetrical reciprocity. Without having lived the same experiences as my audience, it’s hard for me to know how y’all view publishing and what questions you have about it. In this case my exigence is my own lack of knowledge on the efficacy of my blog. This is where feedback comes in! I would love to hear from anyone reading this blog, no matter whether you have questions, criticisms, or just lots and lots of compliments (Actually, compliments are the only feedback I’ll be accepting. That and cookies… Just kidding). If you have any feedback to give me, please use my contact page, where I've provided a contact form and my social media sites. Tweet at me, DM me, I don't mind.
As mentioned above, constraints are also an important part of the rhetorical situation because they consist of anything with the power to block the desired change. These constraints could arise from the orator, such as with his personal character or style of delivery, or outside constraints like time restriction or a too-small audience. In the case of my blog, a major constraint would be the difficulty in reaching and engaging with a large audience. Right now, I believe, the only people likely reading this website are my teacher and, if I’m lucky, my mom. I haven’t yet done much in the way of promoting my blog and gaining readers, so that’s one thing I’ll need to work on in the future. To promote it I can tell peers in my classes about this website, give presentations at my university, and advertise it on my social media accounts.
Rhetoric and the Human Consciousness (Chp. 1)
In the first chapter of Craig R. Smith’s text Rhetoric and the Human Consciousness, he presents rhetoric as a definable art form that touches on how we learn things and how we live. He argues that rhetoric, especially throughout the course of history, was and still is essential to making sense of a chaotic world, and is much more effective when human emotion is taken into account as part of its argument.
Smith makes a point of saying that rhetoric is best able to reach and inspire its audience when it makes use of human emotion. For example, after 9/11, President George Bush gave a series of speeches to calm the public and address the issue of terrorism. He used powerful imagery such as “[The extremists who instigated the attacks] will follow that path all the way to where it ends: in history’s unmarked grave of discarded lies.” This powerful statement alienated the audience from the enemy and allied them with the president.
While this blog is not meant to be nearly as powerful or far-reaching as a presidential speech, I’m still able to use human emotion to advance the effectiveness of my rhetorical discourse. I’ve attempted to create a connection with you, my audience, through humor, relatability, and by showing snippets of my personality. In this way I hope to create a more engaging website.
Smith claims that the way we persuade ourselves is the way we persuade others. He exemplifies this point by saying that, if you hated the movie Harry Potter because you couldn’t follow the plot, then you would persuade your friends not to see it by saying the plot was too hard to understand. (Also, who hates the Harry Potter movies? No one, especially not English majors.)
Smith makes a point of saying that rhetoric is best able to reach and inspire its audience when it makes use of human emotion. For example, after 9/11, President George Bush gave a series of speeches to calm the public and address the issue of terrorism. He used powerful imagery such as “[The extremists who instigated the attacks] will follow that path all the way to where it ends: in history’s unmarked grave of discarded lies.” This powerful statement alienated the audience from the enemy and allied them with the president.
While this blog is not meant to be nearly as powerful or far-reaching as a presidential speech, I’m still able to use human emotion to advance the effectiveness of my rhetorical discourse. I’ve attempted to create a connection with you, my audience, through humor, relatability, and by showing snippets of my personality. In this way I hope to create a more engaging website.
Smith claims that the way we persuade ourselves is the way we persuade others. He exemplifies this point by saying that, if you hated the movie Harry Potter because you couldn’t follow the plot, then you would persuade your friends not to see it by saying the plot was too hard to understand. (Also, who hates the Harry Potter movies? No one, especially not English majors.)
I found this idea of persuasion to be an interesting point. If I want to persuade my audience to find an internship in publishing, or otherwise explore the publishing realm, then I can persuade you using the same ideas that persuaded me to explore it initially. However, this idea, to me, contradicts the idea of asymmetrical reciprocity, because it seems to say that I should treat my audience as myself rather than recognizing our differences.
Rhetoric and the Human Consciousness (Chp. 2)
In the second chapter of Rhetoric and the Human Consciousness, Smith examines the way in which rhetoric served to rationalize the environment in mythic terms during the preliterate world. And, even after writing was introduced, rhetoric did and still does exist to help us make sense of unpleasant events. In this sense speakers can use narratives, whether they be archetypal or personal, to reach their audience.
One point that Smith makes in this chapter is that, in order to engage your audience, you must use allusions and references that relate to their specific culture and time. This increases your audience’s ability to resonate with your words, a concept which Smith relates to fidelity, or the truth-value of your discourse. I quickly realized that I’d applied this to my blog without even noticing it. Statements like, “You may want Voldemort and Darth Vader dueling it out on the cover, but that may not be possible for, you know, copyright reasons,” are small but important details that help me connect to my audience through recognizable references. I don’t know about you, but anytime I’m reading something and it mentions Harry Potter, Taylor Swift, or Gilmore Girls, I’m apt to remember it better simply because it triggered the thought of something I love. (You may have noticed I’ve used several Gilmore Girls GIFs within this blog. This is not a coincidence.)
One point that Smith makes in this chapter is that, in order to engage your audience, you must use allusions and references that relate to their specific culture and time. This increases your audience’s ability to resonate with your words, a concept which Smith relates to fidelity, or the truth-value of your discourse. I quickly realized that I’d applied this to my blog without even noticing it. Statements like, “You may want Voldemort and Darth Vader dueling it out on the cover, but that may not be possible for, you know, copyright reasons,” are small but important details that help me connect to my audience through recognizable references. I don’t know about you, but anytime I’m reading something and it mentions Harry Potter, Taylor Swift, or Gilmore Girls, I’m apt to remember it better simply because it triggered the thought of something I love. (You may have noticed I’ve used several Gilmore Girls GIFs within this blog. This is not a coincidence.)
Smith also points out another way to create a more successful discourse: advancing a moral and allowing your text to remain open to interpretation by an audience. While the moral in this blog is not as obvious or quintessential as Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, I’d like to think that it highlights the importance of hard work and perseverance in getting what you want (And also good ol’ fashioned luck. Luck was very important in getting my internship). I hope it shows other English majors or bookworms that there are more job possibilities than you may think. Finally, this blog will always remain open to interpretation, because, as Young says, everyone sees things differently. Want to tell me your own interpretation? Please leave a comment or email me.