56 Matching Annotations
  1. Aug 2017
    1. This returns us to our earlier observation via Kittlerthat we tend to ascribe agency to people rather than to things. The concept of the fourfold asks us instead to reflect on the ways technological things gather and emplace, and on how rhetorical action is threaded through people and things to build a sense of home in places, even those that-being mobile, dynamic, and/or "virtual"-are seem-ingly the antithesis of what makes a place.

      place has a new found ambiguity with the emergence of new technology that forces the meaning of place to expand and encompass, places have a new found agency in this new age of modern technology

    2. Such deep-rooted transformations are also challenging, and a great deal of work in new media, and technology in general, treats its unsettling effects.

      transformations found in ambiguity!

      Burke: "it is in the areas of ambiguity that transformations take place; in fact, without such areas, transformation would be impossible" new media and technology, a huge source of present day ambiguity, create new opportunities of transformation

    1. “You have to play t h e g a m e t o f i n d o u t w h y y o u ’ r eplaying the game. It’s the future, Pikul.”

      vatz: rhetoric is a cause not an effect of meaning

      designer of game: playing is a cause not an effect of meaning

      the game has meaning because it was played

      rhetoric has meaning because it is used

    2. ograms—that is, of course, unless theprogram is figured as a “user’s manual” listing only one order: “Use!”

      have to use the users manual for it to be a users manual

    3. Alongthe way, Harold’s reading demonstrates how feminist notions of corpo-reality and abjection can effectively hack rhetorical studies. That is,Harold defers the typical moralizing move of judging the film or the issuesit portrays and instead uses the film to diagram what forces such as drugsand abjection do.

      what is rhetoric vs what can rhetoric do

    1. 6THERHETORICALSITUATIONamanyquestionsgounansweredandmanyproblemsremainunsolved

      this sentence and the one before point out the situation exists due to the discourse, an answer exists because of a question; there would be no answer without a question, no situation without the POTENTIAL for discourse

    2. Inordertoclarifyrhetoric-as-essentially-related-to-situation,weshouldacknowledgeaviewpointthatiscommonplacebutfundamental:aworkofrhetoricispragmatic;itcomesintoexistenceforthesakeofsomethingheyonditself;itfunctions

      the creation of context=rhetorical situation

    3. WhenIask,\Vhatisarhetoricalsituation?,Iwanttoknowthenatureofthosecontextsinwhichspeakersorwriterscreaterhetoricaldiscourse

      bitzer's definition of what rhetorical situation means to him and what he is seeking out by trying to determine the situation: nature of context and creation

    1. I take the converse position of each of Bitzer's major state-ments regarding this relationship. For example: I would not say"rhetoric is situational,"^* but situations are rhetorical

      main opposition (HUGE OPPOSITION) between Vatz vs Bitzer

    2. Thus rhetoricis a cause not an effect of meaning. It is antecedent, not subse-quent, to a situation's impact.

      rhetoric causes meaning, meaning is an effect of rhetoric, following vatz earlier analogy: reports of the president being killed (rhetoric) created meaning (situation) behind the president being killed

    3. No theory of therelationship between situations and rhetoric can neglect to takeaccount of the initial linguistic depiction of the situation.

      the depiction creates the situation; rhetoric creates a situation, a situation does not create rhetoric (Bitzer theorizes the opposite is true)

    4. Clearly the adjectives intowhich a "situation" are communicated cannot be the "real situ-ation"; they must be a translation.

      a rhetorical situation is the communication that is translated from the "real"

    1. It is against the background of a more general relation between the formulations, against the background of a whole verbal network, that the effect of context may be determined.

      context is undeterminable! context is "more"

    2. A task that consists of not-of no longer-treating discourses as groups of signs (signifying elements referring to contents or representations) but as practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak. Of course, discourses are composed of signs; but what they do is more than use these signs to designate things. It is this more that ren-ders them irreducible to the language (langue) and to speech. It is this "more" that we must re-veal and describe.

      does this "more" signify unknown ambiguities? by designating with signs, signs also do the opposite of designate and therefore in turn do designate the undesignated as undesignated, finding the more.

    3. Which means that one cannot speak of anything at any time; it is not easy to say something new; it is not enough for us to open our eyes, to pay at-tention, or to be aware, for new objects suddenly to light up and emerge out of the ground. But this difficulty is not only a negative one; it must not be attached to some obstacle whose power ap-pears to be, exclusively, to blind, to hinder, to prevent discovery, to conceal the purity of the evidence or the dumb obstinacy of the things themselves; the object does not await in limbo the order that will free it and enable it to become embodied in a visible and prolix objectivity; it does not preexist itself, held back by some ob-stacle at the first edges of light. It exists under the positive conditions of a complex group of rela-tions.

      relationships between words do not limit but instead inhibit, relationships make the meaning stronger not weaker

    1. If a committed doubter says to us that he will not accept the valued fact of man's rhetorical na-ture, we see now that he cannot avoid illustrating it as he tries to atgue against it: we discuss our doubt together, therefore we are.

      this overlap where we "are" and where the argument also can exist

    2. Let us forget, then, for a while, the strangely compelling, seemingly self-evident notion that we know with one part of our minds or souls or selves or bodies, and will or feel with some other part. We can then search for what we agree on, what we meet in, where we are together.

      asking to ignore the separation between the source of knowing (mind/soul/self/body) and willing/feeling (unknown/unnamed part) and instead lump the two parts and knowledge/feeling all into one whole. "are" meaning where we exist together, this common overlap being love

    3. But if there are good reasons for confi-dence in the values of discoursing together, then we can get about our business, whatever that may be:

      where does posthuman rhetoric fall here? is this the "grand new philosophical synthesis"

    1. Rhetoric is love, and it must speak a commodious language, creating a world full of space and time that will hold our diversities

      love creates and therefore so does rhetoric

    2. , I'll still insist that argument-that rhetoric itself-must begin, proceed, and end in love

      ashes to ashes, dust to dust rhetoric to rhetoric, love to love

    3. In argument, the arguer must, with no assurance, go out, inviting the other to enter a world that the arguer tries to make commodious, inviting the other to emerge as well, but with no assurance of kind or even thoughtful response. How does this happen? Better, how can it happen? It can happen if we learn to love before we disagree

      true argument is coming together, the meeting of minds #onelove

    4. If there is to be hope, we have to see each other, to know each other, to be present to each other, to embrace each other. What makes that possible? I don't know. We can start toward these capacities by changing the way we talk about argument and conceive of argument

      love is the "equal" playing field that all argument should take place

    5. When the therapist understands the feelings and thoughts that seem so horrible or weak or sentimenal or bizarre to the client, when the therapist understands and accepts the client, then the therapist frees the client to explore deep experience freely. As each understands and accepts the other, then they may move toward the truth

      "if you can't handle me at my worst, you don't deserve me at my best"; this is some definition of love

    1. For, being preoccupied with some particular type of evaluation, we may come to feel that one particu-lar set of criteria has a unique importance, and accordingly be tempted to pick on the criteria proper for the assessment of things of some one sort as the proper or unique standards of merit for all sorts of thing, so dismissing all other criteria either as misconceived or as unimportant.

      cannot ignore ambiguity, when ambiguity is ignored then all "meaning" is lost

    1. The argument from analogy is extremely im-portant in nonformal reasoning. Starting from a relation between two terms A and B, which we call the theme since it provides the proper subject matter of the discourse, we can by analogy pre-sent its structure or establish its value by relating it to the terms C and D, which constitute the phoros of the analogy, so that A is to B as C is to D.

      compare to Burke's theory that "the offspring both is and is not one with it's parentage"

    2. The example leads to the formulation of a rule through generalization from a particular case_ or through putting a new case on the same footmg as an older one.

      generalization leads to ambiguity

    3. The part played by the audience in rhetoric is tC"\,\.u crucially important, because all argumentation, ,H.......-ct in aiming to persuade, must be adapted to the au-s .. i,j,s dience and, hence based on beliefs accepted by oti-the audience with such conviction that the rest of ~ o..., the discourse can be securely based upon it

      in turn is the audience also another source of ambiguity? or a cause?

    4. Then, too, I agreed with the criticisms made by various types of existentialists against both positivist empiricism and rationalistic idealism, but I could find no satisfaction in their justifica-tion of action by purely subjective projects or commitments.

      leads to only being forced to accept the "reality" of ambiguity

    5. Lack of clarity concerning the idea of rhetoric is also apparent in the article on the subject in the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1969 ed.)

      rhetoric itself is ambiguous and the "definition" of rhetoric itself is therefore ambiguous so it can "only" be viewed as such

    1. Also, many of the "observations" afe but implications of the particular terminology in temzs of which the observations are made. In brief, much that we take as observations about "reality" 0.,.. may be but the spinning out of possibilities im-bn ... b "11,. plicit in our particular choice of terms.

      the way something is presented merits how ambiguous it may or may not be based upon the "realities" that we perceive from observing

    2. In this sense, there is nothing abstruse in the statement that the offspring both is and is not one with its parent-age.

      see also: jesus and god in the catholic sense

    3. Thus he is both joined and separate, at ,.....~t-c, once a distinct substance and consubstantial with ~~i1 .. ~41 another

      eerily similar to the holy spirit, jesus and god are the same while also separate, catholic mass even includes the phrase "consubstantial with the father"

    4. Yet it is so fertile a source of error, that only by learning to recognize its nature from within could we hope to detect its many disguises from with-out.

      productive error that can only first be understood looking out before looking in, realizing what could be to realize what couldn't be

    5. At the very best, we admit, each time you \I scrutinize a concept of substance, it dissolves into thin air. But conversely, the moment you relax your gaze a bit, it reforms again.

      only gentle scrutinizing allowed here!

    6. Hence, instead of considering it our task to "dispose of" any ambi-guity by merely disclosing the fact that it is an ambiguity, we rather consider it our task to study and clarify the resources of ambiguity.

      getting rid of the unknown (ambiguity) vs understanding the unknown (ambiguity)

    7. When they might become difficult, when we can hardly see them, through having stared at them too in-tensely, we can of a sudden relax, to look at them as we always have, lightly, glancingly. And hav-ing reassured ourselves, we can start out again, once more daring to let them look strange and difficult for a time.

      like an artist that paints on a large canvas and has to step back and take in the whole painting in order to continue on

  2. Apr 2017
    1. ~~~~!c:~Lsl!llation~~zili~!u~~s~~~~!9E,~~~~.~0~£~~.?rcO~I>1~~!:lI,J,SlillQr~Q!J!::§~..Qr~.nj~£4:.••

      the ambiguity of the sentence is mindblowing, so this structure could be anything and maybe but maybe not organized

    2. Normally,the1na\1gurationofaPresidentoftheUnited

      i googled the rhetoric of inauguration speeches of presidents of the United States and after sifting through all the trump speech rhetoric articles, i saw a bunch of articles about the rhetoric of JFK's inauguration speech. there were even curriculum's that came up that showed classes using Kennedy's speech to teach rhetoric because of how his speech was written and comprised

    3. e:Thusthe.seGondcharact;isticofrhetoricalsituationistnatitinvitesa~.fi;tt!!;f£p::~~ponse,are-sponsethatfitsthe·situation.

      a "fitting" response also sounds a lot similar to a timely response or at least a response that "fits" the time

    1. Words distorted by English are known as an-glicisms or pochismos.

      language ruins words

    2. . Standard English

      aka what gates synonymously calls "white english", would white english also be man's english?

    3. Anzaldua has said that from an early age, she felt at odds with her family, who did not approve of her love for reading, writing, and drawing and who were shocked by her emerging lesbian identity.

      yay queer representation! boo homophobia!

    1. Signifyin(g) in jazz performances and in the play of black language games is a mode of formal revision, it depends for its effects on troping, it is often characterized by pastiche, and, most crucially, it turns on repe-tition of formal structures and their differences.

      this makes me think of drag and ru paul, black jazz performers were essentially the ru paul of black rhetoric, using this black rhetoric in an artistic and fuck the man way, both inherently political as well

    2. privileged

      interesting word choice because when i think privilege i automatically think of a white person (more specifically man)

    3. NGSTON HUGHES

      black poet who killed that yo mama joke, great example of poetry as a kind of black rhetoric that gates mentions earlier

    4. consis-tent system with a coherent and regular grammar

      grammar does not necessarily have to be coherent to be regular, and grammar being coherent is relative to the one experiencing the grammar

    5. yo' mama (or "ask yo' mama" -stock responses)
    6. A trope is, literally, a turn. In traditional rhetoric, tropes turn words away from their "literal" meaning to a metaphorical one.

      would black rhetoric be a "turn" on white rhetoric? or like a fork in the road and taking a different "turn"?

    7. Standard (white) English (often used ironically)

      this reminds me of one of the first class periods when Nathaniel talked about how a bunch of old white dudes with beards basically just made up rules about language becasue they could, aka the standard

  3. Mar 2017
    1. the British public's tolerance for poor orator

      are the British any more tolerant to a poor orator than anyone else? the modern average american i would argue also has a very very high tolerance for poor oration

  4. Feb 2017
  5. Jan 2017
    1. The rhetorical occasion always inclu<lcs an audience. and the speaker must consider the motives that arc likely to influence audiences of the three types of speech.

      In a way, the audience determines the rhetoric a speaker uses.

    1. technê tou biou

      This means "the craft of life" and I read this in a way that the craft of life is not only perfecting your skill or trade, but by approaching life in a way that you are working to achieve a sort of potential that you have in terms of mind, body, soul.

    1. Not because there have been so many different incarnations of the word that it seems unjust to simply pick 1 or 2 to the exclusion of countless others.

      I wonder if the definition of rhetoric is an issue at times because as human beings there is often a sense of this vs that or cats vs dogs, when in reality you can like both or entertain more than one definition of something, an inclusive definition.

    2. The simple fact of its recurrence in so many different venues is something worth noting, since I doubt that, for instance, biologists are routinely asked "what is life?" at job interviews or anthropologists asked "what is man?" at a bar.

      This line put the question of "what is rhetoric" into perspective for me. Why do we feel a need to define rhetoric especially when members of other fields are not looking for answers to similar questions applicable in their fields. In short: is defining rhetoric rhetorical?