Public Rhetoric and Practical CommunicationWhy Should Students Care?

Lecture 1: CAT 125Elizabeth Losh

http://losh.ucsd.edu

Who Will You Be in Two Years?

• A graduate student? • A corporate intern?• A school teacher?• A medical school student?• A fledgling engineer?• A nursing school student?• A media producer?• An artist or musician?• A human rights activist?

You Might Already Have Had Multiple Careers

“As a graduate student, I've had to compile, compose, and organize content for a web design project (one of which was focused on web typography, but we were expected to write and present our content for our intended audiences as well as part of the assignment), class or project blogs, project wikis, and other collaborative platforms (usually writing with other students). I'm also expected to be able to communicate with students and professors through e-mail and instant messaging.

When I was interning at a game company, though, I communicated both within the office and with the home office in Europe through e-mail and instant messaging on official (and less official) matters. There were other internal web-based resources, but since I was an intern, I only read them.”

You Might Already Need Multiple Literaciesby Then

“Multi-modal literacy is increasingly valued in the workplace, and as a teacher, my students are encouraged to create meaning away from the traditional paper-and-pen methods.

Technical instruction in the shooting and editing of video would be helpful”

“I think some basic training about professionalism in e-mails would be useful.

Many people I've worked with, especially much older people, treat e-mails like a game, with tons of colored fonts, fancy signatures, colloquial writing in formal situations, etc.”

Less is More: Learning about Design

What to Do and What Not to Do

Preparation is Essential: Learning about Staging Projects

“I've seen enough atrocious Powerpoint presentations in my life to consider this, and the ability to present effectively with slides, to be an extremely useful skill; if people can't or don't pay attention to what you're saying, you might as well not being saying it at all for all of the repeating you'll have to do after when people ask for clarification.”

Organizing Authorship

Decorum Matters:Learning about Rhetoric

“Nowadays it is common practice for employers to check social network pages. I'd advise students to keep their craziness to a minimum if they want to keep their job. One of my coworkers checked her Myspace page all the time, and once she forgot to close the browser and left it open. Her supervisor walked by and saw her personal photo gallery of all her tattoos. It was not a happy experience for her.”

Rhetoric, That’s Bad, Right?

“political games and ‘who’s up’, ‘who’s down’ rhetoric”“the rhetoric emanating from Tehran”“underscored the need for actions that match the

rhetoric”

Negative Attitudes about Rhetoric and New Media: The Platonic Legacy

Plato vs. Aristotleon Rhetoric and New Media

Plato in the Phaedrus: How can authorship be verified?

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Plato in the Phaedrus: An aid to forgetting

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Plato in the Gorgias: Rhetoric vs. Philosophy

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cosmetics vs. gymnastics

Plato in the Gorgias: Rhetoric vs. Philosophy

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pastries vs. medicine

Plato in the Republic: The Allegory of the Cave

Plato in the Republic: The Theory of Mimesis

The argument for banishing poets

Plato in the Republic: Theatre and Imitation

The argument for an education that includes being exposed to the arts and new media

He also thought a good education should include rhetorical training.

Aristotle in the Poetics: Theatre and Catharsis

Aristotle’s Means of Persuasion

• Ethos – a speaker’s authority, credibility, and perceived expertise

• Logos – a speaker’s logic, organization, and mastery of language

• Pathos – a speaker’s ability to move an audience emotionally

Kenneth Burke’s Pentad

• Act – What • Agent – Who • Agency – How • Purpose – Why • Scene – Where and When

Jauss’s Horizon of Expectations

Thinking about audiences

What if your audiencewas a group of investmentbankers who were consideringhiring you for a starting position?

Alexsay Vayner Impossible is Nothing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPGoS1D3Sb0&f

Michael CeraImpossible is the Opposite of Possible

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAV0sxwx9rY

Vayner’s Digital Rhetoric

• Presents the wrong genre• Addresses his audience inappropriately• Invites challenges to his credibility from

Internet spoilers because of his video editing techniques

• Demonstrates obliviousness to the fact that his social networks have been compromised

James Kotecki

http://losh.ucsd.edu/courses/kotecki.html

Kotecki’s Digital Rhetoric

• Demonstrates an awareness of the conventions of specific genres in computer-mediated communication

• Addresses multiple audiences expertly and simultaneously

• Enhances his credibility by using the rhetorical scene to his advantage

• Capitalizes on social network sites and on online video response structures

Which One Do You Want to Be?

James Kotecki or Alexsay Vayner?

The University as a Rhetorical Space

Trying out new identities and creating theaterThe UNC Pit Break-Up

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=colIeH2snmI

Your Role in This Class

You are not to be passive spectatorsBut our “interaction” won’t be done with

clickers

Michael WeschA Vision of Students Today (2007)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGCJ46vyR9o

I will read 8 books this year 2300 web pages & 1281 FaceBook Profiles

I WILL WRITE 42 PAGES FOR CLASS THIS SEMESTER AND OVER 500 PAGES OF E-MAIL

I FACEBOOK THROUGH MOST OF MY CLASSESI bring my laptop to class, but I’m not working

on class stuff

What Argument is Wesch Making?

His Students’ Google Doc

Mark Marino(Re)Visions of Students Today (2008)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ln6WUy29fAA&

Improvisation and the Cutting Room Floor

Ethnographies of YouTube

Cutting as Subject Matter:More Work from Wesch’s Students

Final Project: Your YouTube Video Essay

Demonstrating organizational and editing strategies more vividly

Generating highly engaged – and even embodied – forms of rhetoric

Making manifest the dialogic and networked character of the writing situation

Fostering practices aimed at public writing and thus encouraging sensitivity to new questions about authorship and audience

Addressing campus objectives in incorporating visual, multi-modal, or digital rhetorics and literacies and preparing students for public speaking or presentation situations

Connecting everyday vernacular discourse to formalized academic scholarship and the culture of knowledge to the culture of information

Next Time

We’ll think about professors on the Internet rather than students and greet Provost Naomi Oreskes

What advice would you give Professor Oreskes, based on watching her YouTube lecture, about how to reach audiences on the Internet?

What do you think of the comments that her video received?