Thoughts on Rhetoric

Week 9--Favorite Canon and Project

What is your favorite canon? That is, which canon do you find yourself most interested in and why? This week you're presenting on a common topic with a specific application. You might work out your ideas here in this blog, or create a space of stasis for your peers as they work to see or argue your point of contemporary contextualization. You might also share your notes on others' video projects either in others' blog posts.

I would say that my favorite canon is invention. I have to admit that I have never used any of the invention devices which C/H detail, at least not systematically the way they present it. I like invention because I love coming up with ideas and I think I am arrogant enough to think that other people might find them interesting too. But the invention stage can also be very painful. I find that I am one of those writers who needs to have ideas percolate before I can articulate what I am thinking. Perhaps that is one of the reasons why I spend so much time on invention with my students. Usually I have them start with general brainstorming on the topic, what they know, and then we read and discuss, and brainstorm, and brainstorm some more. After some preliminary ideas are down on paper, even if they don't look or sound pretty, it is much easier to deal with arrangement, the actual drafting of the paper and the style. I find that students are much more willing to write a paper when they have something they can work with. Sometimes they end up with something that is different from where they started but having some ideas down gives them the courage to tackle a task that seems overwhelming.

Well, this week I'm presenting on audience. I ended up having to cut out 2/3 of my presentation and concentrated on the user/learner frameworks that are important in online courses and one video lesson designed for the students.

Throughout the entire process, I kept thinking how my definition of audience seems to (or does) become a part of each canon. I kept wondering if that was wrong and if my definition of audience is too broad. But the more I research into brain research, cognitive theory, constructivism, web design, and composition pedagogy it seems audience is integral to all of the canons and that I was not just imagining a connection. I think audience informs almost all our choices. It is almost impossible to write without thinking about audience. The style concepts of high, medium and low are a response to audience; the concepts of pace, tone, pitch in delivery are a response to audience; the concept of enthymeme and purpose in invention is a response to audience; and in arrangement the concept of beginning, middle and end is also, I think, a response to what the audience needs.

In contrast to Plato who believed one shouldn't consider the mindless masses, I believe we should especially when the "we" refers to educators. When we create meaning, we want to communicate. "Look mommy I made this." And communication cannot exist without audience. Even those of us who keep personal blogs or journals as a quest for that elusive "truth", we can think we are writing for ouselves, but the audience is a future "I" with whom we want to communicate. The "I" will be part of the mindless masses who can create meaning based on what was written.

I found it very interesting that we are returning to Artistotle's concept of cultural knowledge (which is part of the audience) present in the enthymeme and how that can help or hinder communication. The current issue of College English concentrates on language differences and how they problematize the field of composition studies. Language as cultural knowledge
influences the rhetoric as well as the rhetorical choices a writer makes. A special issue of Journal of Computer Mediated Communication in 2005 also concentrated on how culture affects communication. This interest in language and culture, I think, is rooted in the concept of audience. As the audience becomes more diverse (or the diversity is acknowledged) and the "myth of homogeneity" is dispeled, academia becomes more interested in audience and how we must shift our understanding and our approach in order to be more effective.

posted by Prof Santoy @ 5:19 PM