Rhetorical circulation

Last updated December 30, 2023

Rhetorical circulation is a concept referring to the ways that texts and discourses move through time and space. The concept seems to have been applied to texts sometime in the mid-1800s,^[1] and it is considered, by most scholars, to be either subordinate to or synonymous with the canon of rhetorical delivery, or pronuntiatio. It is something like newspaper circulation and magazine circulation in that it can involve print media, but it is not limited to these. In fact, any kind of media can circulate. Books can be loaned; Internet memes can be shared; speeches can be overheard; YouTube videos can be embedded in web pages.

Creation of publics

Social theorist Michael Warner has suggested that rhetorical circulation creates audiences he calls 'publics'. According to Warner, a public is, in one sense, a "concrete audience". Any text that is created to address a public is intended for circulation, but not all texts are meant to circulate. Some, like love notes or bills, are meant to be private. At the same time, circulating texts are constitutive of a public, in which channels for circulation already exist. This view of communication complicates the traditional sender/receiver model, and makes way for new ecological metaphors for rhetoric.^[2]

As a new metaphor

Rhetorical circulation has recently been theorized as an alternative to the traditional Bitzerian notion of rhetorical situation. Jenny Edbauer suggests that rhetoric be seen as ecological rather than situational, where circulating texts constantly transform and condition composers, audiences, and each other. Like a biological ecology, a rhetorical ecology is not fixed or discrete, but fluid; it is constantly changing. It is therefore difficult to isolate audience, composer, text, and even exigence, because all are in constant flux, all are interacting with each other.^[3]

Marx's Grundrisse

Economics

Theorists have connected rhetorical circulation to the Marxist idea of circulation, as articulated in the Grundrisse . Marx critiques the theories of classical economics, where economists like David Ricardo and Jean-Baptiste Say proposed a model of production, distribution, exchange, and consumption. In reality, Marx claims, commodities circulate, but a commodity is more than simply an object. Instead, a commodity is something like an embodied social process, and it is always conditioned by two factors: its use value and its exchange value. The use value of something refers to its potential to satisfy human needs, independent of how it is produced. The exchange value, on the other hand, refers to how something stacks up against other commodities in terms of value: what it will exchange for. These two factors are always out of balance.^[4]

Distribution

When we apply economic theories such as this one to rhetoric, some changes are inevitable. Richard Lanham has postulated an economics of attention rather than monetary currency. When we consume and forward texts, we "pay" attention to them. But with the unbalanced nature of use and exchange values in texts, circulation can be difficult to predict. We cannot know, for instance, the exchange value of a text, when understood as its relative value as compared to others in the marketplace of attention. Because of this, some theorists consider circulation to be separate from distribution, because it involves an element of unpredictability.^[5] For instance, a publisher of newspapers can distribute them to an intended audience, like residents of metropolitan Chicago. However, a photo might be snapped of a typo on the front page, and posted to Facebook: this is circulation. There is disagreement, however, about the degree to which a researcher can productively distinguish between the two.^[6]

Transformation

Scholars have also shown that rhetorical circulation, understood through a Marxist lens, involves transformation. First, ideas transform into texts, or products. After this transformation, texts can also transform into other texts. For example, a scientist might have an idea for an experiment, and that idea might transform into a research proposal. Later, the research proposal might transform into a journal article, and then a news release.^[7] Recently, scholars have demonstrated how the circulation of internet memes participates in the transformation of science and environmental communications for digital publics.^[8]

Related Research Articles

Rhetoric is the art of persuasion. It is one of the three ancient arts of discourse (trivium) along with grammar and logic/dialectic. As an academic discipline within the humanities, rhetoric aims to study the techniques that speakers or writers use to inform, persuade, and motivate their audiences. Rhetoric also provides heuristics for understanding, discovering, and developing arguments for particular situations.

Genre is any form or type of communication in any mode with socially-agreed-upon conventions developed over time. In popular usage, it normally describes a category of literature, music, or other forms of art or entertainment, based on some set of stylistic criteria Often, works fit into multiple genres by way of borrowing and recombining these conventions. Stand-alone texts, works, or pieces of communication may have individual styles, but genres are amalgams of these texts based on agreed-upon or socially inferred conventions. Some genres may have rigid, strictly adhered-to guidelines, while others may show great flexibility.

Kairos is an ancient Greek word meaning 'the right or critical moment'. In modern Greek, kairos also means 'weather' or 'time'.

Visual rhetoric is the art of effective communication through visual elements such as images, typography, and texts. Visual rhetoric encompasses the skill of visual literacy and the ability to analyze images for their form and meaning. Drawing on techniques from semiotics and rhetorical analysis, visual rhetoric expands on visual literacy as it examines the structure of an image with the focus on its persuasive effects on an audience.

Genre studies is an academic subject which studies genre theory as a branch of general critical theory in several different fields, including art, literature, linguistics, rhetoric and composition studies.

A discourse community is a group of people who share a set of discourses, understood as basic values and assumptions, and ways of communicating about those goals. Linguist John Swales defined discourse communities as "groups that have goals or purposes, and use communication to achieve these goals."

The term composition as it refers to writing, can describe authors' decisions about, processes for designing, and sometimes the final product of, a composed linguistic work. In original use, it tended to describe practices concerning the development of oratorical performances, and eventually essays, narratives, or genres of imaginative literature, but since the mid-20th century emergence of the field of composition studies, its use has broadened to apply to any composed work: print or digital, alphanumeric or multimodal. As such, the composition of linguistic works goes beyond the exclusivity of written and oral documents to visual and digital arenas.

Digital rhetoric can be generally defined as communication that exists in the digital sphere. As such, digital rhetoric can be expressed in many different forms, including text, images, videos, and software. Due to the increasingly mediated nature of our contemporary society, there are no longer clear distinctions between digital and non-digital environments. This has expanded the scope of digital rhetoric to account for the increased fluidity with which humans interact with technology.

Owing to its origin in ancient Greece and Rome, English rhetorical theory frequently employs Greek and Latin words as terms of art. This page explains commonly used rhetorical terms in alphabetical order. The brief definitions here are intended to serve as a quick reference rather than an in-depth discussion. For more information, click the terms.

A writing process describes a sequence of physical and mental actions that people take as they produce any kind of text. These actions nearly universally involve tools for physical or digital inscription: e.g., chisels, pencils, brushes, chalk, dyes, keyboards, touchscreens, etc.; these tools all have particular affordances that shape writers' processes. Writing processes are highly individuated and task-specific; they often involve other kinds of activities that are not usually thought of as writing per se.

Rhetoric of science is a body of scholarly literature exploring the notion that the practice of science is a rhetorical activity. It emerged after a number of similarly oriented topics of research and discussion during the late 20th century, including the sociology of scientific knowledge, history of science, and philosophy of science, but it is practiced most typically by rhetoricians in academic departments of English, speech, and communication.

The rhetorical situation is an event that consists of an issue, an audience, and a set of constraints. A rhetorical situation arises from a given context or exigence. An article by Lloyd Bitzer introduced the model of the rhetorical situation in 1968, which was later challenged and modified by Richard E. Vatz (1973) and Scott Consigny (1974). More recent scholarship has further redefined the model to include more expansive views of rhetorical operations and ecologies.

Rhetorical velocity is a term originating from the fields of Composition Studies and Rhetoric used to describe how rhetoricians may strategically theorize and anticipate the third party recomposition of their texts. In their 2009 article "Composing for Recomposition: Rhetorical Velocity and Delivery" in Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy, Professors Jim Ridolfo and Dànielle Nicole DeVoss provide the example of a writer delivering a press release, where the writer of the release rhetorically anticipates the positive and negative ways in which the text may be recomposed into other texts, including news articles, blog posts, and video content. It is similar to having something go viral. Author, Sean Morey, agrees in his book "The Digital Writer" that rhetorical velocity is the way in which a creator predicts how the audience will make use of their original work.

Theories of rhetoric and composition pedagogy encompass a wide range of interdisciplinary fields centered on the instruction of writing. Noteworthy to the discipline is the influence of classical Ancient Greece and its treatment of rhetoric as a persuasive tool. Derived from the Greek work for public speaking, rhetoric's original concern dealt primarily with the spoken word. In the treatise Rhetoric, Aristotle identifies five Canons of the field of rhetoric: invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery. Since its inception in the spoken word, theories of rhetoric and composition have focused primarily on writing

The study and practice of visual rhetoric took a more prominent role in the field of composition studies towards the end of the twentieth century and onward. Proponents of its inclusion in composition typically point to the increasingly visual nature of society, and the increasing presence of visual texts. Literacy, they argue, can no longer be limited only to written text and must also include an understanding of the visual.

Collaborative pedagogy stems from the process theory of rhetoric and composition. Collaborative pedagogy believes that students will better engage with writing, critical thinking, and revision if they engage with others. Collaborative pedagogy pushes back against the Current-Traditional model of writing, as well as other earlier theories explaining rhetoric and composition; earlier theories of writing, especially current-traditional, emphasizes writing as a final product. In contrast, collaborative pedagogy rejects the notion that students think, learn, and write in isolation. Collaborative pedagogy strives to maximize critical thinking, learning, and writing skills through interaction and interpersonal engagement. Collaborative pedagogy also connects to the broader theory of collaborative learning, which encompasses other disciplines including, but not limited to, education, psychology, and sociology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Multimodality</span> Phenomenon of human communication having different forms that combine

Multimodality is the application of multiple literacies within one medium. Multiple literacies or "modes" contribute to an audience's understanding of a composition. Everything from the placement of images to the organization of the content to the method of delivery creates meaning. This is the result of a shift from isolated text being relied on as the primary source of communication, to the image being utilized more frequently in the digital age. Multimodality describes communication practices in terms of the textual, aural, linguistic, spatial, and visual resources used to compose messages.

Public rhetoric refers to discourse both within a group of people and between groups, often centering on the process by which individual or group discourse seeks membership in the larger public discourse. Public rhetoric can also involve rhetoric being used within the general populace to foster social change and encourage agency on behalf of the participants of public rhetoric. The collective discourse between rhetoricians and the general populace is one representation of public rhetoric. A new discussion within the field of public rhetoric is digital space because the growing digital realm complicates the idea of private and public, as well as previously concrete definitions of discourse. Furthermore, scholars of public rhetoric often employ the language of tourism to examine how identity is negotiated between individuals and groups and how this negotiation impacts individuals and groups on a variety of levels, ranging from the local to the global.

Invitational rhetoric is a theory of rhetoric developed by Sonja K. Foss and Cindy L. Griffin in 1995.

Feminist rhetoric emphasizes the narratives of all demographics, including women and other marginalized groups, into the consideration or practice of rhetoric. Feminist rhetoric does not focus exclusively on the rhetoric of women or feminists, but instead prioritizes the feminist principles of inclusivity, community, and equality over the classic, patriarchal model of persuasion that ultimately separates people from their own experience. Seen as the act of producing or the study of feminist discourses, feminist rhetoric emphasizes and supports the lived experiences and histories of all human beings in all manner of experiences. It also redefines traditional delivery sites to include non-traditional locations such as demonstrations, letter writing, and digital processes, and alternative practices such as rhetorical listening and productive silence. According to author and rhetorical feminist Cheryl Glenn in her book Rhetorical Feminism and This Thing Called Hope (2018), "rhetorical feminism is a set of tactics that multiplies rhetorical opportunities in terms of who counts as a rhetor, who can inhabit an audience, and what those audiences can do." Rhetorical feminism is a strategy that counters traditional forms of rhetoric, favoring dialogue over monologue and seeking to redefine the way audiences view rhetorical appeals.

References

↑ The Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford University Press. 2013.
↑ Warner, Michael (Winter 2002). "Publics and Counterpublics". Public Culture. 14 (1): 49–90. doi:10.1215/08992363-14-1-49. S2CID 143058378.
↑ Edbauer, Jenny (Fall 2005). "Unframing Models of Public Distribution: From Rhetorical Situation to Rhetorical Ecologies". Rhetoric Society Quarterly. 35 (4): 5–24. doi:10.1080/02773940509391320. JSTOR 40232607. S2CID 142996700.
↑ Trimbur, John (December 2000). "Composition and the Circulation of Writing". College Composition and Communication. 52 (2): 188–219. doi:10.2307/358493. JSTOR 358493.
↑ Porter, James (December 2009). "Recovering Delivery for Digital Rhetoric". Computers and Composition. 26 (4): 207–224. doi:10.1016/j.compcom.2009.09.004.
↑ Ridolfo, Jim (March 2012). "Rhetorical Delivery as Strategy: Rebuilding the Fifth Canon from Practitioner Stories". Rhetoric Review. 31 (2): 117–129. doi:10.1080/07350198.2012.652034. S2CID 145485052.
↑ Trimbur 2000, p. 196
↑ Jones, Madison; Beveridge, Aaron; Garrison, Julian R.; Greene, Abbey; MacDonald, Hannah (2022). "Tracking Memes in the Wild: Visual Rhetoric and Image Circulation in Environmental Communication". Frontiers in Communication. 7. doi: 10.3389/fcomm.2022.883278 . ISSN 2297-900X.