Trackback Composition

        For my trackback compositions I'm leaning heavily towards discussing and tracking back symbols and meaning through the use of visuals. What I mean by that is, I want to trace back some ideas from different rhetors on what visuals can do or mean. Further, it is interesting to me how meaning from visuals get made in the mind of the person perceiving them. We use symbols and images every day when driving or on warning labels. Since there is an organization (International Standards Organization) that has standardized, to some extent, the images we use in these labels and they somewhat commute across different cultures, is there a common perception we are missing? For this assignment I want to include the use of sequential art as well to trace some more contemporary and less heady theory about visuals and the way they can clarify or disrupt meaning.

For this trackback I plan on using Richards, Baudrillard, McCloud, Arnheim and either Burke or Aristotle. I think I might use Aristotle to connect rhetoric to visual rhetoric and use it as a bridge to the application of visuals to persuasion. So far, Arnheim and Baudrillard have some of the most interesting and very forward arguments about visuals and their meanings/uses. Hopefully, this trackback will help set me forward on gathering ideas for my dissertation in the future.

Contemporary Dialogue project

Hi all,

I've made a short video dialogue for my project that I'll post here. Enjoy!

http://www.powtoon.com/show/fylrEEbOP9W/5361-dialogue/

Abundant Style

        I've noticed in talking about the abundant style a marked shift in the current readings from that era. I'm a bit late on posting this, mainly because I wanted to see if this abundance of style had any impact on what we read by Locke and Hume. Where I see Lock and Hume being very concerned with the scientific part of the process of writing and rhetoric, the abundant style still has a place, although it is very subdued. As a writer, I know that in order to keep my writing interesting and engaging multiple tactics have to be employed from a rhetorical standpoint. In the abundant style, I use a variety of subject matter and variety of sentence structures to keep my reader interested and actively engaged in texts.

       I think one of the biggest problems I have with modern/contemporary articles is the dryness and the staleness that comes with academic prose. Often I am drawn to the rhetoric that falls outside of the canons and that embrace multimodality or a difference in voice. I have figured out through the years the reason I'm drawn to these types of rhetoric is not only because they represent a rich culture that I am not actively part of usually, but also because they take the canon and mold it in a way that is interesting and refreshing. My contemporary dialogue will try and mold and shape a new way to interpret a socratic/platonic dialogue in that I plan on using a graphic novel type of setup to convey the ideas and notions that I think are readily available in using the visual and textual in conjunction with one another. While I'm no artist, there are programs that are used for pedagogical purposes that will help me fulfill my need and fill in my artistic gap. Hopefully, it turns out well.

Finally, looking ahead I am also planning on revising my teaching statement to include more about my visual and digital melding ideas that I've been developing for the past few weeks. I'm still burgeoning in this area, but it is the first time I've felt that pull towards a research that I can actually do as well as enjoy.

Contemporary Dialogue

For my project I've settled on a topic I've been fairly concerned with over the past 2 years or so doing my Master's. I want to make the claim that comics, and more broadly, visual rhetoric have a specific place in the ethics behind technical communication. It is hard for me to approach this topic without doing some more research, so I've taken it upon myself to read more in to how comics and sequential art tie in to the relaying of technical communication in today's world. In doing this, I want to specifically situate my argument in the role that ethics plays when considering using a mixture of visual and textual rhetoric to make a technical document.

To analyze this sort of argument or to make a dialogue out of it I think there are multiple different approaches I can use. I'm leaning more towards the Toulmin model of claim, warrant, data to make a logical and specific dialogue that will appeal to a wider audience. Having said that, I think Perelman's idea on the specific and universal audience also plays a large role in having a dialogue surrounding ethical implications of using a mix of visual and textual rhetoric in the form of sequential art. In the digital age how does sequential art change to accommodate this shift from paper to screen? How does this shift change the ethical implications of this delivery method? In thinking about this delivery shift, who is the audience? How do we develop sequential art in such a way that it delivers the messages we need to the audience intended accounting for this shift?

There are a multitude of questions that I could go on for here, but I'm focusing on these types of questions to develop my dialogue for this assignment.

The Art of the Letter

To ECU admissions committee, by divine grace resplendent in Aristotelian Charm:

Why don’t we use comics and visuals more distinctly in the field of technical communication concerning digital technologies and the ethics of those technologies? This is the question I aim to answer and I believe that ECU and its faculty is the way I will answer that question.

Currently, I am revising and editing an ethics case that I hope to get published in Intercom that covers the technical communicator’s role regarding Early Access and crowdfunding campaigns. As I’ve said above I have papers that have been presented in SIGDOC and will be presented in CCCC’s as well as a panel to be presented at the American Studies Association of Texas dealing specifically with ethics and technology through the lens of comic author Jonathan Hickman. I also have experience in working with Dr. Angela Eaton in developing online modules that convey basic medical information to those who need it and designing and managing a Learning Management system for use in her Technical Editing course.

As a scholar, I am interested in continuing my professional career in research and teaching. My goal in attaining a PhD is to continue to do research in the field of technical communication while also taking in to account the upward shift in recent years towards a more digital mediated world.I believe that my values as a scholar and the values of the program and the faculty who comprise the program align in such a way that this research will be possible. 

Committee, inferior to your devoted learning, always obedient honorable service,

Michael McCarthy

Youtube answers

        After viewing the questions that the students had I specifically found two to be very interesting. The first question I'd like to address is: How is identity tied to home? Or is it tied to a feeling of home? I think in the US the identity of a person is complexly tied to where they are from. Every once in a while you'll find a person who it is really difficult to tell which part of the States they came from, and usually it is because the person made it that way on purpose. There is a sense of shame attached to certain areas in the US and I'm particularly tied to one of them. Before I go in to that, let me first address some of the differences I have concerning what I attribute the tag "home" to. I consider my permanent residence at my parent's house currently as my home. However, I have a separate home which is my own for where I go to school. Eventually, I will make the separation and have my own home that is separate from my parent's house, but it hasn't happened quite yet. Secondly, I think the issue of identity is tied specifically to region as well. In the US, we identify a lot of the time by our regions. I am from the Deep South on the coast of Mississippi. This is an area I wear proudly because my state and that area of the US gets a bad rap for not producing anyone intelligent (even though many famous and creative talents came from there). That part of my identity allows me to connect with others who are from the same areas or know the culture almost instantly. Northerners think I'm weird, I think I grew up in the untamed wild that is the Deep South.

        The second question I'd like to address is the question of how chaos in the home is handled/does it get handled well. My home, coming from a family of six, is usually chaotic when everyone is in town and we are doing family functions. The house itself is always moving always vibrant. Growing up in that sort of chaos has shaped me as a person and how I handled high stress situations. It's also helped me to enjoy the solitude and quiet time I don't receive very much of when visiting home. However, I would never trade it for the world. There is a warmth and comfort that comes with the controlled chaos that is my family unit. I'm super grateful to have a home where everyone is involved with one another and where the people are always aware of others outside of themselves.

Philosophy Statement Thoughts

        For the upcoming assignment I must say I've thought heavily about using multimodality to complete it. Specifically speaking, I am a huge movie person and there are a lot movies that come to mind specifically to outline my rhetorical philosophy. However, I think the way I'd like to go about it might be to compare/contrast certain ideals with the ways in which certain scenes and dialogue are delivered. It seems to me that I fall specifically in Gorgias and Aristotle when thinking about the rhetoric that I, myself, like to employ. I like that Gorgias argued that one could use rhetoric to argue just about anything, but Aristotle valued virtue to justify why rhetoric is important. I think the combination of these two things, as well as my Ethics course, help me to situate myself in the rhetorical landscape a bit more solidly than in the previous years.

        Scenes that specifically come to my mind are the dialogic scenese between Hans Landa and every single character in Inglorious Basterds. The secondary reason this could work in my favor is the fact that Landa is a SS officer for Nazi run Germany in WWII. Instantly, we see that his virtues are out of whack, however, his level of articulation and rhetorical usage are so high that he can manipulate and control just about any situation with just his speech. This brings up a valid point in theory that just because rhetoric can be used for any situation, should it? In Tech Comm. we struggle with this point all of the time. Especially in the case of Katz's "Ethics of Expediency" where perfectly good rhetoric and tech comm. is used to basically hide the fact that mass killings were happening. These types of situations I think help me justify my rhetorical stance further and I want to use something that is heavy in dialogue as well to help me prepare for the Platonic dialogue we are to write later as well.

Rhetoric and its Purpose (to me) + 9/11 Rhetoric Thoughts

        What we've seen this week is a historical look in to some of the greater rhetors of the classical period and their works. In these works we see everything from the ideal (Plato) to the situational (Sophists). I would like to take this post to analyze or try to situate myself among these rhetors. It seems I share a lot of values and beliefs about what rhetoric is with Aristotle and the sophists simultaneously. Isocrates comes to mind when trying to place myself. It seems that as a great educator Isocrates was concerned with being pragmatic as well as adhering to some sort of "good" virtue. In his piece, Against the Sophists, he makes a point to say that merely teaching a man of no values how to use rhetoric does not qualify him as a rhetor (as many "bad" Sophists might have done). Instead, Isocrates pushes for an education in which those who have a natural affinity for rhetoric develop those skills and round themselves as people to most effectively use rhetoric. This view closely mirrors my own. I think that the Sophists were right in that rhetoric can be taught to just about anyone, but should it? And if it should, what separates a good rhetor from a bad rhetor? The values and principles that a person holds should be taken in to account when developing a personal rhetoric. The pragmatic side of me says anyone can learn it, but to apply it one needs some sort of ethical core that isn't corrupt or void of any affinity for the art.

In addition, the question of what types of rhetoric were involved in the 9/11 attacks is very broad. There are many classical rhetors that come to mind, specifically Gorgias. Gorgias' view of language closely parallels that of the language and rhetoric used in the 9/11 attacks. Particularly, the hate speech and slurs that came afterwards. The news and media at the time used vague, broad language to change the meaning of the situation and the people involved. Although 9/11 was very devastating, language was manipulated in such a way to apply the actions of a small radical sect of Islam to an entire nation's worth of people. This sort of distortion of language seems to be in alignment with Gorgias' views on how language and rhetoric can be picked up and used in such a way to distort and argue points just for the sake of argument.

Non-Traditional Rhetoric

        Okay. So you've got me. Non-traditional rhetorics are my bread, butter and jam. The Borcher's chapter on these rhetorics has illuminated many aspects to non-traditional rhetorics that I haven't been exposed to before. Borcher's does such a good job of being transparent and very thorough in his treatments of these rhetorics in the little amount of space he uses.

        I'd like to focus specifically on the African rhetorics for the purpose of this post seeing as I'd like to  possibly tackle Web 2.0 and African rhetorics for my dissertation work. The main thing that I encounter when I think of incorporating African rhetorics or any non-cannonical rhetorics that don't specifically relate to me is the terror of appropriating texts in such a way that is disrespectful to the people who've created it. That being said, Borchers handles these rhetorics with the utmost care and respect. The Afrocentric movement described by Borchers is one that really intrigues me. The inclusion of things such as style and rhythm (not in the classical sense) really give the African rhetoric such deeper emotional and spiritual meaning. His use of hip hop as the contemporary example for this type of rhetoric resonates with me personally.

        Growing up I had always had a great attraction to hip hop artists because of the intricacies of their lyrics and the interwoven beats that went with those lyrics. Clever wordplay (indirection by Asante) was always the center point focus of many of the hip hop artists I listened and still listen to today. Although many rappers have become more aggressive and straightforward in their delivery there is still a heavy emphasis on using language to "stalk" around the real issues or meanings meant to be conveyed in the music. It is in these spaces I feel most at home discussing rhetoric. The deep spiritual and emotional roots that are inherent in African rhetorics seems to strike a chord with me unlike any other rhetoric. The classics are classics in the Western tradition (Aristotle, Plato etc.). However, it seems that not a lot of consideration is given to the melding and fusing of the African tradition with that of the Western tradition. Not with one being lesser or more than the other, but a complete binding of the two on an equal plane to produce a string of rhetorics that are wholly unique the landscape of rhetorics.

        This melding has stirred me greatly in my formative years as a graduate student and I'm sure that I'll be moving in the direction of incorporating that in to not only my teaching philosophy, but my position as a scholar as well.

My Rhetoric

        As I ponder what rhetoric means to me and how I use it I always come back to the simplest terms in which I describe rhetoric to my friends, family, and students who have no idea what I do or what I research. The way I describe rhetoric simply as, "The art of persuasion" which is broad enough to send other rhetorical scholars in to a rage or deep debate with me, but just narrow enough for me to get across what I mean. Through writing, speaking, and communicating rhetoric encompasses the faculties in which we, as humans, push to persuade or convince each other in different situations. This leads me to how I use rhetoric in my every day life.

The main facet in my life (at this moment) in which I use rhetoric and its teachings is in my two sections of English 1301 here at Texas Tech. It is the only course required by every student no matter what major they are in and it is based specifically in rhetoric. I have to teach a class full of fresh faced freshman the complexities and nuances of something that I've been studying since my Junior year in college and which I am attempting to get my Master's in. This is a daunting task. I usually draw my principles and pedagogies from the classical era of rhetoric, mainly I enjoy Aristotle's definitions of rhetoric even though they are limited. There aren't any real hard and fast rules that rhetoric is or isn't. Rhetoric is constantly changing and evolving to fit the needs and demands of society and politics. The development of new technology in the last two decades has radically altered how rhetoric is constructed and consumed. I try my hardest to include some of these technologies in my classroom in teaching rhetoric to show the varied forms in which rhetoric is created and delivered to the general populace. It would seem that we, as a society, would be so far from the ancient Greeks in our approaches and definitions to rhetoric. However, I find a lot of the time we still use the same founding principles that made up rhetoric in the past here in the present. This interesting evolution of rhetoric, but at the same time its homeostasis in principle is intriguing and gives many angles to the approach of rhetoric that I plan to continue to study and develop in my own life and my classrooms.