A Theory of Contemporary Rhetoric (32 page)

In fact, “critical literacy,” or “critical discourse analysis,” or “critical thinking,” or “critical media studies” all indicate what rhetoric provides: the political dimension to communication and clarity of thought/purpose/ intention. As terms, they are fusions, compounds that bring together two elements in a dynamic relationship. Once that relationship is understood and embedded in consciousness, the term becomes redundant and actually begins to blur the meanings that can be generated or associated with it. Rhetoric, on the other hand, provides a high-level umbrella term under which mode-specific, or multimodal, or media-specific, or multimedia devices can position themselves; under which framing as a critical and creative act by the rhetor or receiver of the message can operate; and under which “textual practices” can provide a more accurate, representative, and powerful way of making sense of communication.

Another good reason for using terms such as
framing, textual practices
, and
rhetoric
is that, despite the association of text with tangible forms of communication (written texts, images, bricolages, etc.), the less obviously tangible forms of communication such as speaking and listening, or the less explicit forms of communication such as “body language” (and more explicit versions like gesture) can be embraced within the notion of framing, text, and rhetoric.

Textual practices cover a wide range of social communication. The emphasis on “practices” suggests that the text created is inextricably woven into its social context. The power relations that obtain or are challenged, the linguistic nuances that are represented, and the agency of the actors
that take part in the communication—all these are part of the relationship between text and social practice. Because the actors in the communication have agency, they are involved in an act of framing. As suggested elsewhere in this book (
chapter 7
), the framing may use or adapt existing frames (“genres”) but need not be bound by them: the act may require hybrid genres, new genres, or the subversion of existing genres.

The emphasis on “text” is the one that has been explored for some time in the work of Kress and van Leeuwen (2001), and others: the notion of text as always being multimodal, even if it appears to be mono-modal; examples of bricolage; and the bringing together of speaking, listening, image-making, writing, reading, and other modes of communication into a framework that is aware of the affordances of each, and of the particular dynamics that occur when they are brought together.

In order to explore the relevance of rhetoric in the digital age, let us approach the problem via the notion of framing and textual practices: two of the means and lenses via which rhetoric operates. First, however, we need to define briefly what is meant by “digital.” Digitization functions via the arrangement of binary signs that encapsulate “information.” Its principal affordance is that it allows the transfer of such information from one device to another, and sometimes from one mode to another. So, for example, a conversation or interview can be recorded digitally on a small voice recorder. The data can then be transferred to a computer where it can be transcribed. From there it can be translated into another language via digital recognition of the letters/characters. What is going on is at least three key operations: the move from one medium (device) to another, the move from one mode (speech to writing) to another, and the move from one language to another. Such fluent transition from one medium, one mode, and one language to another would have been unimaginable in the pre-digital world.

One could generate a simple formula from the affordances of the digital and suggest that “the digital is social.” It is also political. The connection with rhetoric begins to become clearer: digitization, which is the coding of information into binary format so that it can be transferred and transformed from one mode, medium, and language to another, involves communication. It does not necessarily infer the
arts
of communication and discourse, nor does it necessarily suggest that
learning
takes place in such transfers and transformations. The simple formula—the digital is social— therefore needs some explication.

It would be more accurate to say that digital processes have been adopted by the social (and political) to develop further social engagement and action. One only needs to walk along a street in the developed world to see (currently, in 2013) people communicating with each other and accessing
information digitally on their cell phones. The widened accessibility to each other, the increased communicative action, and the (near) ubiquity of such communication is now taken for granted (see Andrews, Fransman, and Haythornthwaite, forthcoming, for an update on the affordances and inequities of digital access and use worldwide). Communication is generally
briefer
—texts, twitter messages, cell phone calls—and not only ubiquitous but undertaken
on the move
. The communities within which people operate are extended so that not only are families, clubs, schools, universities, and workplaces the learning communities (cf. Rogoff 1992) in which people operate, but also electronic/digital communities, such as distribution lists and networks, social networks, interest groups, “crowds,” and subscription networks. The digital and non-digital communities overlap, and it is in the engagement at the interfaces of these different communities that learning also takes place, as suggested elsewhere in the present book. In general, we could say that the digital has both increased the opportunities for individualization (and indeed personalization—see discussion on information networks later in this chapter), but also, at the same time, increased the range and interplay of social communities within which individuals operate. Because the social is an effect of the economic and political, and shaped by the distribution of resource globally and within nation states, the wider picture that informs the simple acts of communication between people needs to be borne in mind—and brings us back to the fact that such increased (not necessarily enhanced) communication is rhetorical.

Now let us explore the notion of social digitization in more detail, via the notions of framing and textual practices.

Framing allows us to see that the initial conversation takes place between two people, and there is a degree of formality about it. It is an interview. There are roles to play: those of interviewer and interviewee. There are power relations in that the interviewer sets the questions and frames the overall social encounter of the interview genre: when it begins and ends, how many questions there are, and whether there are probes and prompts. Even if the interviewee is a more powerful person (e.g., the head of an organization) and will help to frame the occasion by, perhaps, making available a slot in his or her diary for the meeting, introducing and welcoming the interviewer to his/her office, and ending the meeting because of a further appointment, the interviewer still has control over the core part of the encounter: the interview itself. The framing of the interview will depend on these contextual or situational influences, but the generic nature of the interview (whether it is formal, semi-structured, or unstructured) will determine the shape of the conversation. Recording such an interview adds another dimension: both parties are aware that what is said “may be used as evidence.” Such a presence adds a degree of formality and usually has the effect of making the interviewee consider what they are saying more carefully.

What sort of textual practice follows from this encounter? First, we have speech: the words that are uttered during the interview (typically the preliminaries and post-liminaries are not recorded). We must recognize that speech of this kind does not happen in a vacuum and that gesture, facial expression, reference to papers on the desk, or books and reports in the interview room are not represented in the digital recording. The words are recorded digitally and can be retrieved via a numbering system on the recorder (a different kind of digitization). They can then be transferred directly into a computer, or via a USB/memory stick, and stored for future use and reference. The digital recorded voice file now appears as a file on the computer alongside numerical, written, graphic, and other files. Like any oral text, it can be edited, rearranged, quoted from, and repurposed.

Via voice recognition technology, it can be transposed into written language. The written version of the text is itself editable and subject to rearrangement, quotation, and repurposing. It can also be translated into a number of different languages. The reasons that “textual practices” is a useful way of thinking about communication is that it recognizes the multimodal, is open to what digitization can do, and keeps a strong concentration on the text itself.

In rhetorical terms, framing and textual practice allow a multiplicity of perspectives and possibilities for communication. Existing patterns of framing (genres) and textual practice (the tendency to see texts as mono-modal, even though they are almost always multimodal) can be used, but a rhetorical framework allows for deployment of and creation of texts as appropriate to the social and communicative situation. Furthermore, the media via which messages are transmitted play a part by embodying the framing and textual practice within specific forms of hardware: from cell phones to computers, from physical bodies to sound, and from paper to voice (and indeed, these media provide further frames within and between which communication takes place). The aspect of physicality, and especially of the integration of the human into the technological, is explored by Gourlay (2011) under the compound term
cyborg literacies
.

Rhetoric, therefore, provides an overarching framework for thinking about digitization and textual practices, framing, and social communicative acts. Such a framework allows the social and political to be seen to inform such communication. But it also allows an exploration of mode and multimodality, of the media used to make the communication, and the relations between these various dimensions. Although that conception appears to be theoretically heavy, such a framework actually makes possible the lightweight creation and interpretation of messages based on the principle of choice. Digitization increases the choices available to a rhetor and audience; and the increase in choice, once the framing of the encounter is made clear to all concerned, ought to maximize the
communicative quality of the interaction. The reasons for this emphasis on quality is that rhetoric operates in the digital world and elsewhere alongside the idea of the economics of attention (Lanham 2006). Choices made are for the best form of communication in any given context, for maximum communicative potential and effect, and for concentration of the quality of attention. That is why rhetoric provides a powerful theory for interaction and communication: it enables the clear distinction of art from not-art; it is sensitive to context and nuance; it embraces the plethora of possibilities of transduction, transformation, and translation that is offered by digitization; and it is grounded in every social occasion and encounter in the real world.

We have so far suggested that rhetoric is informed (and informs) social and political dimensions of experience; that it provides a range of modes and media, which, in combination, can be selected to make successful communication between people; furthermore, that there is an “art” to this range of possible discourses. “Social media” fully reflect this range and function, and rhetoric therefore provides a sound theory for explaining what takes place via these media.

In 2013, social media are in a second generation state of development. They began in well-documented networks of students, using Web 2.0 technology to allow the exchange of user-generated messaging. They are now used for background checks for employment, by companies and institutions as an alternative to intranets, for marketing purposes, and by groups of individuals for social organizing and exchange. Kaplan and Haenlein (2010) created a classification scheme that covered blogs and microblogs, content communities, collaborative projects, social networking sites, virtual social worlds, and gaming worlds.

The dimensions of interest as far as rhetoric is concerned are several. First, the use of internet-based applications for communication is
social
. Like any form of social engagement, there is exchange of communication—sometimes more from one party than the other, but in the wake of Web 2.0 always with the possibility of dialogic exchange. Second, the
digital
dimension allows for anytime, anywhere, and asynchronous communication. Of these subdimensions, the “anywhere” factor is the most limiting, dependent on the degree and quality of wireless connectivity. Thirdly, the competence of the user is a dimension that is often not addressed in communication theory. It may be that access is possible to the internet, but the degree to which the user is capable of using the technology must be taken into account. Many people choose not to use social media; some who do use it are primitive, minimal users—largely receivers of messages rather than senders; some simply are not competent in digital media use. At the start of the present chapter, we
critiqued the use of the terms
literacy
and
literacies
to denote competence in communication in the twenty-first century. The advent of social media redefines what is means to be “literate.” No longer is basic literacy in being able to decode print for the simplest, functional purposes the benchmark for being classified as “literate”; rather, to be “literate” now means not only being able to
read digitally
, but being able to
compose digitally
in a range of genres, in a range of modes, and via a range of media.

Like any form of social networking,
trust
is a key ingredient in the exercise of communication via social media. As such, trust is linked to the ethical dimension of communication that the classical rhetoricians understood as necessary to the persuasion of an audience. Trust is generated by the moral standing of the message-sender, who “gatekeeps” their circle of friends and contacts with the help of the social network site. In academic and business fields, trust and reputation are essential to the credibility of the message.