Page 335 - Gabrijela Kišiček and Igor Ž. Žagar (eds.), What do we know about the world? Rhetorical and argumentative perspectives, Digital Library, Educational Research Institute, Ljubljana 2013
P. 335
challenges of rhetoric in the era of “bytes and likes” 335
desire to find on the consumer’s side. The register has become blended,
and communication is more repetitive and redundant. Now, the inten-
tion, to persuade specific audiences, is less important than the ability to
reach many audiences. In connection with the changes, the tradition-
al one-to-many configuration was modified into many-to-many rela-
tionships to enable users to have a democratic reach. Multiple identities,
formed by the possibilities and spaces of the digital environment, de/re-
formed the digital speaker’s ethos. Anonymity evokes not only tenden-
cies like masking, flaming, and contingency but, also, altruism in com-
munication. The logic (and arrangement), of texts, is different, also, from
that of the traditional canon and of the culture of print. In hypermedia,
the cause-effect logic was replaced by an associational one. In parallel,
processing substitutes were serial processing, linear-indexical thinking,
and changes to network-associational. In electrical rhetoric, the process
replaces the product, consequently, the speaker creates an information
environment in which the user chooses the line or path.
Digital rhetoric testifies that, with the advent of new media, new
modes of rhetorical operations have to be implemented. Nevertheless, it
draws attention mainly to the changes with which rhetoric has to cope
and does not focus on the very rhetorical nature of new media. With the
rediscovery of the spatial, visual, procedural and aural nature of rhetoric,
an original connection can be detected between rhetoric and new me-
dia and, therefore, the “challenges of bytes and likes” are answered. Al-
though they provide rhetoric with a (new) media perspective, the spatial,
visual, procedural and aural dimensions, of the rhetorical discipline, have
been shadowed for a long time. The following sections cast light on these
domains in order to introduce an integrative redefinition of rhetoric.
5. Visual Rhetoric
Until the 1970’s, rhetoric was conceived almost solely as the study of
verbal discourse. The spirited inquiry, into the rhetorical study of im-
ages, started with scholars such as Kenneth Burke (1950) or Douglas
Ehninger (1972) whose definitions, of rhetoric, did not privilege verbal
symbols and which were sufficiently broad to include the visual. They
considered rhetoric to be the use and study of symbols and addressed
symbolically not as exclusively verbal. Through these approaches, a deep-
er understanding, of the influences and operations of the rhetorical ob-
ject (product), could be developed. Had the natural affinity, between the
visual image and rhetoric, not been discovered, the process of the expan-
sion of rhetoric to encompass the visual, could have been disrupted eas-
desire to find on the consumer’s side. The register has become blended,
and communication is more repetitive and redundant. Now, the inten-
tion, to persuade specific audiences, is less important than the ability to
reach many audiences. In connection with the changes, the tradition-
al one-to-many configuration was modified into many-to-many rela-
tionships to enable users to have a democratic reach. Multiple identities,
formed by the possibilities and spaces of the digital environment, de/re-
formed the digital speaker’s ethos. Anonymity evokes not only tenden-
cies like masking, flaming, and contingency but, also, altruism in com-
munication. The logic (and arrangement), of texts, is different, also, from
that of the traditional canon and of the culture of print. In hypermedia,
the cause-effect logic was replaced by an associational one. In parallel,
processing substitutes were serial processing, linear-indexical thinking,
and changes to network-associational. In electrical rhetoric, the process
replaces the product, consequently, the speaker creates an information
environment in which the user chooses the line or path.
Digital rhetoric testifies that, with the advent of new media, new
modes of rhetorical operations have to be implemented. Nevertheless, it
draws attention mainly to the changes with which rhetoric has to cope
and does not focus on the very rhetorical nature of new media. With the
rediscovery of the spatial, visual, procedural and aural nature of rhetoric,
an original connection can be detected between rhetoric and new me-
dia and, therefore, the “challenges of bytes and likes” are answered. Al-
though they provide rhetoric with a (new) media perspective, the spatial,
visual, procedural and aural dimensions, of the rhetorical discipline, have
been shadowed for a long time. The following sections cast light on these
domains in order to introduce an integrative redefinition of rhetoric.
5. Visual Rhetoric
Until the 1970’s, rhetoric was conceived almost solely as the study of
verbal discourse. The spirited inquiry, into the rhetorical study of im-
ages, started with scholars such as Kenneth Burke (1950) or Douglas
Ehninger (1972) whose definitions, of rhetoric, did not privilege verbal
symbols and which were sufficiently broad to include the visual. They
considered rhetoric to be the use and study of symbols and addressed
symbolically not as exclusively verbal. Through these approaches, a deep-
er understanding, of the influences and operations of the rhetorical ob-
ject (product), could be developed. Had the natural affinity, between the
visual image and rhetoric, not been discovered, the process of the expan-
sion of rhetoric to encompass the visual, could have been disrupted eas-
