Rhetoric & Technical Communication
Rhetoric & Technical Communication
Toscano, Aaron, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Dept. of English

Resources and Daily Activities

  • Conference Presentations
    • PCA/ACA Conference Presentation 2022
    • PCAS/ACAS Presentation 2021
    • SEACS 2021 Presentation
    • South Atlantic MLA Conference 2022
  • Dr. Toscano’s Homepage
  • ENGL 2116-014: Introduction to Technical Communication
    • January 11th: More Introduction to Class
    • January 18th: Audience & Purpose
    • January 23rd: Résumés and Cover Letters
      • Duty Format for Résumés
      • Peter Profit’s Cover Letter
    • January 25th: More on Résumés and Cover Letters
    • January 9th: Introduction to the Class
    • Major Assignments
  • ENGL 4182/5182: Information Design & Digital Publishing
    • August 21st: Introduction to the Course
      • Rhetorical Principles of Information Design
    • August 28th: Introduction to Information Design
      • Prejudice and Rhetoric
      • Robin Williams’s Principles of Design
    • Classmates Webpages (Fall 2017)
    • December 4th: Presentations
    • Major Assignments for ENGL 4182/5182 (Fall 2017)
    • November 13th: More on Color
      • Designing with Color
      • Important Images
    • November 20th: Extra-Textual Elements
    • November 27th: Presentation/Portfolio Workshop
    • November 6th: In Living Color
    • October 16th: Type Fever
      • Typography
    • October 23rd: More on Type
    • October 2nd: MIDTERM FUN!!!
    • October 30th: Working with Graphics
      • Beerknurd Calendar 2018
    • September 11th: Talking about Design without Using “Thingy”
      • Theory, theory, practice
    • September 18th: The Whole Document
    • September 25th: Page Design
  • ENGL 4183/5183: Editing with Digital Technologies
    • August 24th: Introduction to the Class
    • August 31st: Rhetoric, Words, and Composing
    • Major Assignments for ENGL 4183/5183 (Fall 2022)
      • Rhetoric of Fear
    • November 16th: Voice and Other Nebulous Writing Terms
      • Finding Dominant Rhetorical Appeals
    • November 2nd: Rhetorical Effects of Punctuation
    • November 30th: Words and Word Classes
    • November 9th: Cohesive Rhythm
    • October 12th: Choosing Adjectivals
    • October 19th: Choosing Nominals
    • October 26th: Stylistic Variations
    • October 5th: Midterm Exam
    • September 14th: Verb is the Word!
    • September 21st: Coordination and Subordination
    • September 28th: Form and Function
    • September 7th: Sentence Patterns
  • ENGL 4275: Rhetoric of Technology
    • April 13th: Authorities in Science and Technology
    • April 15th: Articles on Violence in Video Games
    • April 20th: Presentations
    • April 6th: Technology in the home
    • April 8th: Writing Discussion
    • Assignments for ENGL 4275
    • February 10th: Religion of Technology Part 3 of 3
    • February 12th: Is Love a Technology?
    • February 17th: Technology and Gender
    • February 19th: Technology and Expediency
    • February 24th: Semester Review
    • February 3rd: Religion of Technology Part 1 of 3
    • February 5th: Religion of Technology Part 2 of 3
    • January 13th: Technology and Meaning, a Humanist perspective
    • January 15th: Technology and Democracy
    • January 22nd: The Politics of Technology
    • January 27th: Discussion on Writing as Thinking
    • January 29th: Technology and Postmodernism
    • January 8th: Introduction to the Course
    • March 11th: Writing and Other Fun
    • March 16th: Neuromancer (1984) Day 1 of 2
    • March 18th: Neuromancer (1984) Day 2 of 2
    • March 23rd: Inception (2010)
    • March 25th: Writing and Reflecting Discussion
    • March 30th & April 1st: Count Zero
    • March 9th: William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984)
  • ENGL 6166: Rhetorical Theory
    • April 12th: Knoblauch. Ch. 4 and Ch. 5
    • April 19th: Jacques Derrida’s Positions
    • April 26th:  Feminisms and Rhetorics
    • April 5th: Knoblauch. Ch. 3 and More Constitutive Rhetoric
    • February 15th: Isocrates (Part 2)
    • February 1st: Aristotle’s On Rhetoric Books 2 & 3
      • Aristotle’s On Rhetoric, Book 2
      • Aristotle’s On Rhetoric, Book 3
    • February 22nd: St. Augustine’s On Christian Doctrine [Rhetoric]
    • February 8th: Isocrates (Part 1)-2nd Half of Class
    • January 11th: Introduction to Class
    • January 18th: Plato’s Phaedrus
    • January 25th: Aristotle’s On Rhetoric Book 1
    • March 15th: Descartes, Rene, Discourse on Method
    • March 1st: Knoblauch. Ch. 1 and 2
    • March 22nd: Mary Wollstonecraft
    • March 29th: Second Wave Feminist Rhetoric
    • May 3rd: Knoblauch. Ch. 6, 7, and “Afterword”
    • Rhetorical Theory Assignments
  • ENGL/COMM/WRDS: The Rhetoric of Fear
    • January 10th: Introduction to the Class
    • January 17th: Scapegoats & Conspiracies
    • January 24th: The Rhetoric of Fear and Fallacies Part 1
    • Major Assignments
  • LBST 2212-124, 125, 126, & 127
    • August 21st: Introduction to Class
    • August 23rd: Humanistic Approach to Science Fiction
    • August 26th: Robots and Zombies
    • August 28th: Futurism, an Introduction
    • August 30th: R. A. Lafferty “Slow Tuesday Night” (1965)
    • December 2nd: Technological Augmentation
    • December 4th: Posthumanism
    • November 11th: Salt Fish Girl (Week 2)
    • November 13th: Salt Fish Girl (Week 2 con’t)
    • November 18th: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Part 1)
      • More Questions than Answers
    • November 1st: Games Reality Plays (part II)
    • November 20th: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Part 2)
    • November 6th: Salt Fish Girl (Week 1)
    • October 14th: More Autonomous Fun
    • October 16th: Autonomous Conclusion
    • October 21st: Sci Fi in the Domestic Sphere
    • October 23rd: Social Aphasia
    • October 25th: Dust in the Wind
    • October 28th: Gender Liminality and Roles
    • October 2nd: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
    • October 30th: Games Reality Plays (part I)
    • October 9th: Approaching Autonomous
      • Analyzing Prose in Autonomous
    • September 11th: The Time Machine
    • September 16th: The Alien Other
    • September 18th: Post-apocalyptic Worlds
    • September 20th: Dystopian Visions
    • September 23rd: World’s Beyond
    • September 25th: Gender Studies and Science Fiction
    • September 30th: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
    • September 4th: Science Fiction and Social Breakdown
      • More on Ellison
      • More on Forster
    • September 9th: The Time Machine
  • LBST 2213-110: Science, Technology, and Society
    • August 22nd: Science and Technology from a Humanistic Perspective
    • August 24th: Science and Technology, a Humanistic Approach
    • August 29th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem (Science), Ch. 2
    • August 31st: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem (Science), Ch. 3 and 4
    • December 5th: Video Games and Violence, a more nuanced view
    • November 14th: Boulle, Pierre. Planet of the Apes. (1964) Ch. 27-end
    • November 16th: Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. 1818. Preface-Ch. 8
    • November 21st: Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. 1818. Ch. 9-Ch. 16
    • November 28th: Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. Ch. 17-Ch. 24
    • November 30th: Violence in Video Games
    • November 7th: Boulle, Pierre. Planet of the Apes Ch. 1-17
    • November 9th: Boulle, Pierre. Planet of the Apes, Ch. 18-26
    • October 12th: Lies Economics Tells
    • October 17th: Brief Histories of Medicine, Salerno, and Galen
    • October 19th: Politicizing Science and Medicine
    • October 24th: COVID-19 Facial Covering Rhetoric
    • October 26th: Wells, H. G. Time Machine. Ch. 1-5
    • October 31st: Wells, H. G. The Time Machine Ch. 6-The End
    • October 3rd: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem at Large (Technology), Ch. 7 and Conclusion
    • September 12th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem (Science), Ch. 7 and Conclusion
    • September 19th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem at Large (Technology), Prefaces and Ch. 1
    • September 26th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem at Large (Technology), Ch. 2
    • September 28th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem at Large (Technology), Ch. 5 and 6
    • September 7th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem (Science), Ch. 5 and 6
  • New Media: Gender, Culture, Technology (Spring 2021)
    • April 13th: Virtually ‘Real’ Environments
    • April 20th: Rhetoric/Composition Defines New Media
    • April 27th: Sub/Cultural Politics, Hegemony, and Agency
    • April 6th: Capitalist Realism
    • February 16: Misunderstanding the Internet
    • February 23rd: Our Public Sphere and the Media
    • February 2nd: Introduction to Cultural Studies
    • January 26th: Introduction to New Media
    • Major Assignments for New Media (Spring 2021)
    • March 16th: Identity Politics
    • March 23rd: Social Construction of Gender and Sexuality
    • March 2nd: Foundational Thinkers in Cultural Studies
    • March 30th: Hyperreality
    • March 9th: Globalization & Postmodernism
    • May 4th: Wrapping Up The Semester
      • Jodi Dean “The The Illusion of Democracy” & “Communicative Capitalism”
      • Social Construction of Sexuality
  • Science Fiction in American Culture (Summer I–2020)
    • Assignments for Science Fiction in American Culture
    • Cultural Studies and Science Fiction Films
    • June 10th: Interstellar and Exploration themes
    • June 11th: Bicentennial Man
    • June 15th: I’m Only Human…Or am I?
    • June 16th: Wall-E and Environment
    • June 17th: Wall-E (2008) and Technology
    • June 18th: Interactivity in Video Games
    • June 1st: Firefly (2002) and Myth
    • June 2nd: “Johnny Mnemonic”
    • June 3rd: “New Rose Hotel”
    • June 4th: “Burning Chrome”
    • June 8th: Conformity and Monotony
    • June 9th: Cultural Constructions of Beauty
    • May 18th: Introduction to Class
    • May 19th: American Culture, an Introduction
    • May 20th: The Matrix
    • May 21st: Gender and Science Fiction
    • May 25th: Goals for I, Robot
    • May 26th: Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot
    • May 27th: Hackers and Slackers
    • May 30th: Inception
  • Teaching Portfolio
  • Topics for Analysis
    • A Practical Editing Situation
    • American Culture, an Introduction
    • Efficiency in Writing Reviews
    • Feminism, An Introduction
    • Fordism/Taylorism
    • Frankenstein Part I
    • Frankenstein Part II
    • Futurism Introduction
    • Isaac Asimov’s “A Cult of Ignorance”
    • Langdon Winner Summary: The Politics of Technology
    • Marxist Theory (cultural analysis)
    • Oral Presentations
    • Oratory and Argument Analysis
    • Our Public Sphere
    • Postmodernism Introduction
    • Protesting Confederate Place
    • Punctuation Refresher
    • QT, the Existential Robot
    • Religion of Technology Discussion
    • Rhetoric, an Introduction
      • Analyzing the Culture of Technical Writer Ads
      • Rhetoric of Technology
      • Visual Culture
      • Visual Perception
      • Visual Perception, Culture, and Rhetoric
      • Visual Rhetoric
      • Visuals for Technical Communication
      • World War I Propaganda
    • The Great I, Robot Discussion
      • I, Robot Short Essay Topics
    • The Rhetoric of Video Games: A Cultural Perspective
      • Civilization, an Analysis
    • The Sopranos
    • Why Science Fiction?
    • Zombies and Consumption Satire
  • Video Games & American Culture
    • April 14th: Phallocentrism
    • April 21st: Video Games and Neoliberalism
    • April 7th: Video Games and Conquest
    • Assignments for Video Games & American Culture
    • February 10th: Aesthetics and Culture
    • February 17th: Narrative and Catharsis
    • February 24th: Serious Games
    • February 3rd: More History of Video Games
    • January 13th: Introduction to the course
    • January 20th: Introduction to Video Game Studies
    • January 27th: Games & Culture
      • Marxism for Video Game Analysis
      • Postmodernism for Video Game Analysis
    • March 24th: Realism, Interpretation(s), and Meaning Making
    • March 31st: Feminist Perspectives and Politics
    • March 3rd: Risky Business?

Contact Me

Office: Fretwell 255F
Email: atoscano@uncc.edu
ENGL 6166: Rhetorical Theory » March 1st: Knoblauch. Ch. 1 and 2

March 1st: Knoblauch. Ch. 1 and 2

Mardi Gras: laissez les bons temps rouler!!!

Plan for the Day

  • Mini-Rhetorical Analysis Due Thursday, 3/3, 11:00 pm on Canvas
  • Cy Knoblauch’s Discursive Ideologies
  • Spring Break next week
  • Mask Mandate Ends 3/7
    • You won’t be required to wear a mask when we return from Spring Break
    • I will continue to wear one through this semester

Overview

I have quotations below, but I’d like us to think about arguments and try to use examples outside of Knoblauch’s book to think broadly about commitments to truth. Rhetorical analysis, in my definition, means explaining how meaning is embedded in a text (I would also extend that to “discourse” very broadly). However, I privilege a critical lens that requires cultural awareness to understand motivations for believing something. How does Knoblauch help us consider not just the structure of arguments but one’s commitment to a conclusion?

Consider this passage (which is the same passage for your weekly reflection):

Reading different accounts of the nature and value of discourse doesn’t in itself make us better language users….But it can enlarge our knowledge of discursive ideologies–those political no less than intellectual commitments that motivate people, including ourselves, to use language in particular ways, react differently to the language uses of others, and draw different conclusions about the authority, value, or significance of language acts.

Knoblauch, Cy. Discursive Ideologies: Reading Western Rhetoric. Utah State University Press, 2014.

Ch. 1: The Meaning of Meaning

I have a feeling this was his “Introduction” and it got longer and longer with revision, so it became chapter 1. It sets up the book’s argument and previews the six (6) rhetorical stories we use for meaning making. On the first page, Knoblauch refers to Edward Sapir, so it might be helpful to revisit the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis: one’s language conditions one’s perception of reality.

On George and Louise (how might Thelma & Louise react to their experience of the world?)

  • p. 4: Metacognition—”…they probably find just thinking to be challenging enough without also consciously thinking about thinking.”
  • “…their practical experience in the world, an experience that has been preshaped…by their cultural background.”
  • “…language enables people to name, experience, organize, manage, and interact with realities that are different from and “outside” of language…”
  • p. 5: Relativity is assumptions—”Louise exploits the clever graphics in her desktop publishing program, but she believes that her PR language is substantial, not mere rhetoric, because it offers real information; it is user-friendly but not misleading or manipulative.”
    • Of course, this is important for technical communication, which often thinks language is a clean instrument for conveying truth.
    • “…what people say must always be evaluated by reference to what is ‘actually’ the case.”
    • Consider these statements:
      Expires 3/1/2022 (milk, pasta, can of beans, vehicle registration)
      “Of course I love you…I’m just not in love with you.”
      “Satisfaction guaranteed”
      “Make America Great Again”
      “Hope and Change”
  • p. 6: “Most of the time, words need to be interpreted, not just taken at face value, depending on how much we know about the speaker’s intentions and about the communicative context.”
  • p. 7: “…consequence of rationalized self-interest….Beliefs about language, whether Louise’s or George’s or our own, do not have to be philosophically consistent with each other, or consistently applied, and they are always modified by other complexities of human motive and behavior.”

On Naming

  • p. 10: “discursive ideologies—those political no less than intellectual commitments that motivate people, including ourselves, to use language in particular ways, react differently to the language uses of others, and draw different conclusions about the authority, value, or significance of language acts.”
  • p. 11: “Naming—or representation—is one of the most familiar and important acts that language enables us to perform, and it is usually routine since most names enjoy broad social agreement.”
    • “…words point to worlds outside of language, sometimes contending that words constitute worlds inside the mind.”
  • Let’s consider contested names
    • terrorist
    • freedom fighter
    • criminal
  • p. 16: On framers’ intent—”identifying original, and stable, meanings across time and space, presuming that the meanings are lodged in the text itself, accessible to careful scrutiny.”
    • Or…”meaning is always located in the interpretive transactions between readers and texts in specific cultural and historical circumstances.”
  • p. 17: “…one’s views about discourse….play a variety of influential roles within still larger states of belief, affect the ways in which beliefs lead to actions, and condition our judgments about the views and actions of others.”
  • p. 18: “The contention that meanings are infinitely variable is neither more nor less evidently reliable than the contention that meanings are stable across time.”
  • p. 19: “…texts do not so readily resolve to universal meanings.”
  • p. 21: “By the word rhetoric I mean the theory and practice of public discourse, the arts of communication, argument, narrative, and persuasion.”
    • “Discourse can refer either to language use in general or to a specific set of conventions, those governing legal discourse, for example, as opposed to medical or scientific discourse.”
  • p. 24: “Wherever there is language, there is culture, and wherever there is culture, there is rhetoric—practices of discourse.”

Perhaps we ought to consider “situational rhetoric” or “teleological rhetoric” as a necessary 7th story that captures the different ways one might use the variety of rhetorical meaning making examples to justify one’s conclusion.

Ch. 2: Magical Rhetoric

  • p. 26: “Magical rhetoric…refers to the discourse of the sacred, a theory and practice of language conditioned by the assumption that the world is” created by a divine being.
  • p. 28: “prophecy, for instance, which is a species of magical rhetoric, is not foretelling the future but rather witnessing an eternal present.”
  • p. 29: “In magical rhetoric the ground of meaningfulness is the intrinsic power of utterance…where words do not merely correspond to some independent reality but rather fuse with it so completely that the enunciation of names is equivalent to the control of things and the influencing of events.”
  • p. 30: “language does not merely name preexisting things but instead creates them through the divine act of naming.”
  • p. 32: “a magical theory of language: that things do not actually become things until they are named. The word constitutes the thing in the process of calling it forth.”
  • p. 33: The supposed divine blessing of words “suggest[s] that language not only names but also evaluates, stamping things with judgments.”
  • p. 34: “God gives language to human beings, not only as a means of controlling the world but also as a means of alleviating isolation, that is, creating kinship and social bonding.”
  • p. 37: Moses was articulate…but his brother was!
  • p. 39: Teresa of Avila–praying and comprehending divine presence.
  • p. 41: “Teresa reassures her confessors that the soul both recognizes and resists the devil’s tricks by appeal to the felt sense of the truths of sacred scripture, where conformity to or deviation from scripture makes evident the source of the speech.”
    • Might this be the enthymemes…
      Conforming speech: Truths that come to one’s soul from the divine conform to sacred scripture.
      Deviating interventions: Diabolical and self-deceptions deviate from the scripture.
    • Might this be the syllogisms…
      Major Premise: Divine interventions and speech conform to sacred scripture.
      Minor Premise: Your revelation conforms to sacred scripture.
      Conclusion: Therefore,* it was divinely inspired.
    • I wonder who decides what conforms to sacred scriptures…
  • p. 42: “The function of myth is not primarily to differentiate but to interanimate human experience.”
  • p. 44: “In word magic, the immediacy of the name merges with the immediacy of what is named…”
  • “it is not language that constitutes the domain of the sacred, but rather the sacred that conveys power to appropriately specialized uses of language.”

Distinguishing Rational vs Mythic Thought…and Poetry

  • p. 45: “The tendency of rational thought, Cassirer [1946] explains, is to create analytical distance between the mind and its objects of attention by a process of differentiating and classifying…”
  • “The tendency of mythic thought is precisely opposite…mind and object are unified through the mediation of symbol, while the immediacy of the ‘objective form’ captivates attention and resists logical placement within a system of conceptual differences.”
  • p. 46: “Literary language, like mythic language, evokes ‘the magic of analogy’ to transform experience into a responsive, humanized symbolic representation.”
    • “Poets, in other words, also create worlds when, metaphorically speaking, they borrow the divine power of the Word for human purposes.”
    • “Plato’s Ion, where the ability of the poet, the prophet, and the “pronouncer of oracles” is a gift from the gods, enabling them to conjure divine truths in pleasing artistic forms and move audiences with magical verbal powers.”
    • Let’s not forget what Aristotle tells us about oracles and generalities…
  • p. 47: “Plato appears to fear the power of an art that speaks with the voice of God while yet exalting uncontrolled emotion, the whirling Bacchic maidens, over logic.”
    • Speaking of Bacchus…
  • p. 48: “If there is a modern, secular legacy of magical rhetoric beyond the special conditions of religious experience, it may plausibly lie…with the aesthetic effects that theorists like Cassirer attribute to the metaphorical language of poetry.”
    • Via Cassirer (1946): “myth and word magic…now create psychological rather than supernatural realities…substituting aesthetic excitement for reverential awe.”

*”Therefore…over 119 times”: Vernon, Florida (Errol Morris 1981).

Then she opened up a book of poems / And handed it to me / Written by an Italian poet /

From the thirteenth century / And every one of them words rang true / And glowed like burning coal

Pouring off of every page / Like it was written in my soul from me to you / Tangled up in blue

Dylan, Bob. “Tangled Up in Blue.” Blood on the Tracks. 1975.

Richard Weaver

  • Richard Weaver claims that a god term is “that expression about which all other expressions are ranked as subordinate and serving dominations and powers” (212). 
  • By using god terms to describe a topic, the audience feels that the topic has all the (good) qualities commonly associated with a god term.  God terms can change from generation to generation, and several may exist at one time.  Weaver claims that the god term of his day was progress (212).  The term had the power to fill an audience with the feeling that someone or something was good and beneficial for society if it was labeled progressive.
  • Weaver believes that there is a collective stance particular to a time period, which constructs the god term.  Humans define themselves by “[revolving] around some concept of value” or else they “[suffer] an almost intolerable sense of being lost” (Weaver 213).  According to Weaver, it is human nature to want to figure out what beliefs one wants to live for or to know where one “exists in the ideological cosmos” (213).  Therefore, humans construct their reality around what they feel is valuable, which is an individual revelation but a socially constructed position.

Weaver, Richard M. The Ethics of Rhetoric. South Bend: Regnery, 1953

Next Class

Your Mini-Rhetorical Analyses are due this Thursday, 3/03, 11:00 pm. Remember, aim to be more thorough on a smaller piece (therefore, select a shorter passage or segment) than to gloss over a larger piece. When we return after spring break, we’ll leave the ancient world and get modern with Descartes’ Discourse on Method. Descartes was French, so je pense, donc je suis (I think; therefore, I am) is related to laissez les bons temps rouler…in that it’s also French.

Don’t forget to read the Les Miserables passages.

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