Hi there, Digital Rhetorics students! Thank you for submitting your questions. Several of them are answered in the syllabus, so I won’t answer them here, but here are some answers to thoughtful questions that you and your classmates asked.

In small rhetorical scenarios, is it necessary to provide things such as statements of purpose and design plans?

Interesting question. I’m not sure what a “small rhetorical scenario” might be. I can assume that perhaps the writer means impromptu or unexpected rhetorical situations, but this may not be the case.

Because we’re working in a professional and academic setting, we will have the privilege of time to plan our projects. The writer, here, is apt when she suggests that we don’t always have the time to plan ahead significantly. However, rhetoric scholar and author of A History and Theory of Rhetoric James Herrick would argue that planning doesn’t have to take weeks, days, hours, or even minutes. Sometimes, a rhetor (someone who constructs rhetoric, whether in writing, orally, etc.) has mere seconds to plan a response. So the simple answer here is you will always plan, but you may not always have the time to write statements of purpose and design plans.

At what point do you terminate the idea that something is a rhetorical ploy?

The answer here depends on your definition and scope of rhetoric. As a rhetorician (a scholar of rhetoric), I believe that everything is rhetorical. Carole Blair, a rhetorician at UNC-Chapel Hill, believes that rhetoric includes a vast array of texts, from traditional texts such as essays or laws to material texts such as quilts, but she limits rhetorical texts to civic discourse. In other words, Blair asserts that texts such as commercial billboards, for example, are not rhetorical.

During this semester, you will determine your own position, but to simplify things, I limited our work to the civic sphere.

Are there situations where it is permissible not to engage in an argument?

Absolutely! In fact, rhetoricians with interests in social justice movements and theories argue that sometimes engaging in argument with certain rhetors simply justifies damaging or harmful rhetoric. Sometimes, you’ll find that you cannot compromise with an opponent because it may hurt your ethos. If you’re interested in the rhetoric of silence, then you should check out Cheryl Glenn’s book Unspoken.

Does digital rhetoric impair traditional rhetoric?

I suppose, tbh, it depends on whom you ask, but I would say, “No.” I’m a scholar of cultural and material rhetorics, which can include digital rhetorics. From my scholarship, my own rhetorical activities online, and my experiences teaching undergraduate students, I would assert that digital rhetorics expand upon the rhetorical tradition. Just like we would in traditional, print or oral arguments, we have to adapt our strategies for our audience, medium, and context.

How is digital in ranking to traditional rhetoric? Is one more effective?

I’m not sure what the writer means here by “traditional rhetoric,” but I assume the writer may mean written or oral texts. As a scholar, I don’t see any benefit from ranking or prioritizing one medium and genre over another. Instead, when I analyze or compose rhetorics, I consider how the text’s message, genre, medium, style, etc., best address the rhetorical situation.

What about people’s perceived bias about us when we’re trying to communicate?

If I understand this question correctly, the writer is asking what we–rhetors–should do when we know our audience may have preconceived ideas about our credibility and character. Great question–and complicated.

So let’s get one myth out of the way: There is no such thing as objectivity or neutrality in research or communication. Kenneth Burke, one of the most influential rhetoricians of the twentieth century whose work has informed the current direction of rhetorical studies, develops this theory against objectivity in his concept of “terministic screens.” He says that when we select certain topics to study, then these selections reflect our biases and deflect from other studies. So everything is always biased. It’s the only absolute in this world

That said, you will be writing, both in this course and in life, to what we in rhetoric call “hostile audiences.” Okay, so the use of the phrase “hostile audience” here doesn’t mean that the audience member’s are like the people in Belle’s town from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, ready with pitchforks, torches, and other weapons to attack you. It just means that the audience isn’t open to your message.

We’re going to write to hostile audiences because we’re going to encounter them throughout our lives, whether we’re calling a senator to ask them not to do something they’re committed to doing or telling our future children not to stick something in the power outlet or touch the hot stove top. It’s a good skill to learn.

You may not be able to persuade people who are already biased against you, but I ask you to remember that rhetoric’s aim toward persuasion works on a sliding scale. You may not get a gun control advocate to vote for open-carry on college campus laws, but maybe you can educate them a little bit about gun culture so that when they next encounter a similar argument, they may be a little more open to pro-2nd amendment arguments. In the same way, you may not be able to persuade a pro-life activist to vote to fund Planned Parenthood with federal capital, but you may help them realize that Planned Parenthood offers more necessary women’s health care than only abortions.

Your job as a rhetorician is to try to determine how to shape your message and deliver it with the most persuasive strategies for your audience. In some cases, that may mean you need to make a compromise. But, as I said in an answer above, sometimes you won’t be ethically or morally open to compromise. That’s for you to decide, but realize that all decisions–including whether or not to compromise on our positions–affect what rhetorical strategies we should or shouldn’t use and how successful we may be.

Some people don’t think logically, so how do we communicate and argue logically [to these people]?

“Tale as old time, truth as old as song,” sings Mrs. Potts. (Yeah, I’m thinking about Beauty and the Beast a lot.)

The Western rhetorical tradition developed in Athens nearly 2500 years ago, and we rhetoricians have yet to solve this problem. Plato argued that ethical rhetoric must draw only from formal logic (the syllogism) and dialectic practices in order to discover truth and improve citizens’ souls. His student Aristotle, however, recognized that logic was often the least effective rhetorical strategy. People are simply not moved by logic. That’s why rhetoric draws from what we call “informal” logic as well, or cultural knowledge. Aristotle asserts that audiences are more likely to accept rhetoric when all three pisteis–or rehtorical appeals–are used: ethos (appeals to character, credibility, authority, and trustworthiness), pathos (the audience’s emotions and senses), and, finally, logos (reason, arrangement, word choice, and evidence).

So yeah, not all audiences will be moved by logic. Heck, we know this because Galileo was literally tried and excommunicated for arguing that the sun and other planets revolve around the sun–a now widely-accepted fact! He used evidence to no affect!

We also have to be careful with logic. Remember how I said that’s no such thing as objectivity? Formal logic tries to hide the pervasiveness of subjectivity. But not all logical arguments are correct.

When we argue, we must consider what our audiences know and believe to be true. Then we have to work from there. Sometimes, we have to move them emotionally first before they will listen to logic. Moreover, we must be ethical rhetors and ensure that our logos is as grounded in cultural and empirical truth as possible.

Our text discusses cultural knowledge. Does this concept differ between cultures, or are there perceptions of a medium (i.e., color, expression, text) the same across cultures?

Great question!

So cultural knowledge changes among cultures and even subcultures. I’m not a sociologist or anthropologist, so I don’t want to make sweeping claims about subjects of which I’m not an expert, but we can observe differences and similarities in cultural knowledge. Cultural rhetorics, the specialization of rhetoric that I call my professional and scholarly home, makes sure that rhetoricians account for each culture’s knowledge as they analyze and study those cultures’ texts.

Great questions! And if I didn’t answer your question, dear reader, then this meme is for you: