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

Resources and Daily Activities

  • Charlotte Debate
  • Conference Presentations
    • Critical Theory/MRG 2023 Presentation
    • PCA/ACA Conference Presentation 2022
    • PCAS/ACAS 2024 Presentation
    • PCAS/ACAS Presentation 2021
    • SAMLA 2024 Presentation
    • SEACS 2021 Presentation
    • SEACS 2022 Presentation
    • SEACS 2023 Presentation
    • SEACS 2024 Presentation
    • SEACS 2025 Presentation
    • SEWSA 2021 Presentation
    • South Atlantic MLA Conference 2022
  • Dr. Toscano’s Homepage
  • ENGL 2116-014: Introduction to Technical Communication
    • April 10th: Analyzing Ethics
      • Ethical Dilemmas for Homework
      • Ethical Dilemmas to Ponder
      • Mapping Our Personal Ethics
    • April 12th: Writing Ethically
    • April 17th: Ethics Continued
    • April 19th: More on Ethics in Writing and Professional Contexts
    • April 24th: Mastering Oral Presentations
    • April 3rd: Research Fun
    • April 5th: More Research Fun
      • Epistemology and Other Fun Research Ideas
      • Research
    • February 13th: Introduction to User Design
    • February 15th: Instructions for Users
      • Making Résumés and Cover Letters More Effective
    • February 1st: Reflection on Workplace Messages
    • February 20th: The Rhetoric of Technology
    • February 22nd: Social Constructions of Technology
    • February 6th: Plain Language
    • 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 30th: Achieving a Readable Style
      • Euphemisms
      • Prose Practice for Next Class
      • Prose Revision Assignment
      • Revising Prose: Efficiency, Accuracy, and Good
      • Sentence Clarity
    • January 9th: Introduction to the Class
    • Major Assignments
    • March 13th: Introduction to Information Design
    • March 15th: More on Information Design
    • March 20th: Reporting Technical Information
    • March 27th: The Great I, Robot Analysis
    • May 1st: Final Portfolio Requirements
  • 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 23rd: Introduction to the Class
    • August 30th: Rhetoric, Words, and Composing
    • December 6th: Words and Word Classes
    • Major Assignments for ENGL 4183/5183 (Fall 2023)
    • November 15th: Cohesive Rhythm
    • November 1st: Stylistic Variations
    • November 29th: Voice and Other Nebulous Writing Terms
      • Rhetoric of Fear (prose example)
    • November 8th: Rhetorical Effects of Punctuation
    • October 11th: Choosing Adjectivals
    • October 18th: Choosing Nominals
    • October 4th: Form and Function
    • September 13th: Verb is the Word!
    • September 27th: Coordination and Subordination
      • Parallelism
    • September 6th: Sentence Patterns
  • ENGL 4275/WRDS 4011: “Rhetoric of Technology”
    • April 23rd: Presentation Discussion
    • April 2nd: Artificial Intelligence Discussion, machine (super)learning
    • April 4th: Writing and Reflecting Discussion
    • April 9th: Tom Wheeler’s The History of Our Future (Part I)
    • February 13th: Religion of Technology Part 3 of 3
    • February 15th: Is Love a Technology?
    • February 1st: Technology and Postmodernism
    • February 20th: Technology and Gender
    • February 22nd: Technology, Expediency, Racism
    • February 27th: Writing Workshop, etc.
    • February 6th: The Religion of Technology (Part 1 of 3)
    • February 8th: Religion of Technology (Part 2 of 3)
    • January 11th: Introduction to the Course
    • January 16th: Isaac Asimov’s “Cult of Ignorance”
    • January 18th: Technology and Meaning, a Humanist perspective
    • January 23rd: Technology and Democracy
    • January 25th: The Politics of Technology
    • January 30th: Discussion on Writing as Thinking
    • Major Assignments for Rhetoric of Technology
    • March 12th: Neuromancer (1984) Day 1 of 3
    • March 14th: Neuromancer (1984) Day 2 of 3
    • March 19th: Neuromancer (1984) Day 3 of 3
    • March 21st: Writing and Reflecting: Research and Synthesizing
    • March 26th: Artificial Intelligence and Risk
    • March 28th: Artificial Intelligence Book Reviews
  • ENGL 6166: Rhetorical Theory
    • April 11th: Knoblauch. Ch. 4 and Ch. 5
    • April 18th: Feminisms, Rhetorics, Herstories
    • April 25th:  Knoblauch. Ch. 6, 7, and “Afterword”
    • April 4th: Jacques Derrida’s Positions
    • February 15th: St. Augustine’s On Christian Doctrine [Rhetoric]
    • February 1st: Aristotle’s On Rhetoric, Book 2 & 3
      • Aristotle’s On Rhetoric, Book 2
      • Aristotle’s On Rhetoric, Book 3
    • February 22nd: Knoblauch. Ch. 1 and 2
    • February 29th: Descartes, Rene, Discourse on Method
    • February 8th: Isocrates
    • January 11th: Introduction to Class
    • January 18th: Plato’s Phaedrus
    • January 25th: Aristotle’s On Rhetoric, Book 1
    • March 14th: Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Women
    • March 21st: Feminist Rhetoric(s)
    • March 28th: Knoblauch’s Ch. 3 and More Constitutive Rhetoric
    • Rhetorical Theory Assignments
  • ENGL/COMM/WRDS: The Rhetoric of Fear
    • April 11th: McCarthyism Part 1
    • April 18th: McCarthyism Part 2
    • April 25th: The Satanic Panic
    • April 4th: Suspense/Horror/Fear in Film
    • February 14th: Fascism and Other Valentine’s Day Atrocities
    • February 21st: Fascism Part 2
    • February 7th: Fallacies Part 3 and American Politics Part 2
    • January 10th: Introduction to the Class
    • January 17th: Scapegoats & Conspiracies
    • January 24th: The Rhetoric of Fear and Fallacies Part 1
    • January 31st: Fallacies Part 2 and American Politics Part 1
    • Major Assignments
    • March 28th: Nineteen Eighty-Four
    • March 7th: Fascism Part 3
    • May 2nd: The Satanic Panic Part II
      • Rhetoric of Fear and Job Losses
  • Intercultural Communication on the Amalfi Coast
    • Pedagogical Theory for Study Abroad
  • 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
    • August 19: Introduction to the Course
    • August 21: More Introduction
    • August 26th: Consider Media-ted Arguments
    • August 28th: Media & American Culture
    • November 13th: Hank Green’s An Absolutely Remarkable Thing, Part 3
    • November 18th: Feminism’s Non-Monolithic Nature
    • November 20th: Compulsory Heterosexuality
    • November 25th: Presentation Discussion
    • November 4: Hank Green’s An Absolutely Remarkable Thing, Part 1
    • November 6: Hank Green’s An Absolutely Remarkable Thing, Part 2
    • October 16th: No Class Meeting
    • October 21: Misunderstanding the Internet, Part 1
    • October 23: Misunderstanding the Internet, Part 2
    • October 28: The Internet, Part 3
    • October 2nd: Hauntology
    • October 30th: Social Construction of Sexuality
    • October 7:  Myth in American Culture
    • September 11: Critical Theory
    • September 16th: Social Construction of Gender and Sexuality
    • September 18th: Postmodernism, Part 1
    • September 23rd: Postmodernism, Part 2
    • September 25th: Postmodernism, Part 3
    • September 30th: Capitalist Realism
    • September 4th: The Medium is the Message!
    • September 9: The Public Sphere
  • Science Fiction and American Culture
    • April 10th: Octavia Butler’s Dawn (Parts III and IV)
    • April 15th: The Dispossessed (Part I)
    • April 17th: The Dispossessed (Part II)
    • April 1st: Interstellar (2014)
    • April 22nd: In/Human Beauty
    • April 24: Witch Hunt Politics (Part I)
    • April 29th: Witch Hunt Politics (Part II)
    • April 3rd: Catch Up and Start Octavia Butler
    • April 8th: Octavia Butler’s Dawn (Parts I and II)
    • February 11: William Gibson, Part II
    • February 18: Use Your Illusion I
    • February 20: Use Your Illusion II
    • February 25th: Firefly and Black Mirror
    • February 4th: Writing Discussion: Ideas & Arguments
    • February 6th: William Gibson, Part I
    • January 14th: Introduction to to “Science Fiction and American Culture”
    • January 16th: More Introduction
    • January 21st: Robots and Zombies
    • January 23rd: Gender Studies and Science Fiction
    • January 28th: American Studies Introduction
    • January 30th: World’s Beyond
    • March 11th: All Systems Red
    • March 13th: Zone One (Part 1)
      • Zone One “Friday”
    • March 18th: Zone One, “Saturday”
    • March 20th: Zone One, “Sunday”
    • March 25th: Synthesizing Sources; Writing Gooder
      • Writing Discussion–Outlines
    • March 27th: Inception (2010)
  • Teaching Portfolio
  • Topics for Analysis
    • A Practical Editing Situation
    • American Culture, an Introduction
    • Cultural Studies and Science Fiction Films
    • Efficiency in Writing Reviews
    • Feminism, An Introduction
    • Fordism/Taylorism
    • Frankenstein Part I
    • Frankenstein Part II
    • Futurism Introduction
    • How to Lie with Statistics
    • How to Make an Argument with Sources
    • Isaac Asimov’s “A Cult of Ignorance”
    • Judith Butler, an Introduction to Gender/Sexuality Studies
    • Langdon Winner Summary: The Politics of Technology
    • 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 » February 22nd: Knoblauch. Ch. 1 and 2

February 22nd: Knoblauch. Ch. 1 and 2

Plan for the Day

  • Mini-Rhetorical Analysis Due Tomorrow, 2/23, 11:00 pm on Canvas
  • Cy Knoblauch’s Discursive Ideologies

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
      • My SEACS conference presentation had something to do with this
    • 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 wasn’t 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 tomorrow, 2/23, 11:00 pm, on Canvas. Remember, aim to be more thorough on a smaller piece (therefore, select a shorter passage or segment) than to gloss over a larger piece. Next week, 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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