A definition

Rhetoric
The art and science of creating and analyzing "messages that rely on verbal and nonverbal symbols that more or less intentionally influence social attitudes, values, beliefs, and actions." (Stoner and Perkins, 6).

And so e-rhetoric (or digital rhetoric)
The art and science of creating and analyzing "messages that rely on verbal and nonverbal symbols that more or less intentionally influence social attitudes, values, beliefs, and actions" as those messages are created, delivered, and function in digital media.

The Elements of E-Rhetoric

Course Statement 5.6 | Fall 2017 - Hybrid w/o online students
ENGL 3179/5179: Elements of Electronic Rhetoric

M C Morgan
HS 314 | 755 2814
mmorgan@bemidjistate.edu
Office hours: TBA. Other times by appointment.

Course addresses


Prerequisite: Completion of ENGL 1151 and ENGL 2152, or permission of instructor.

Required Text


Course description

Elements of E-Rhetoric focuses on current and evolving rhetorical, linguistic, and stylistic practices and strategies in online and digital communications. The course explores online artifacts and pushes the edges of theory and practice. Rather than looking at the style books and The Rules, we'll investigate the rhetorical principles that digital composers and readers are using, and look at how those principles operate in their social, situated conditions.


Course goals

What do you stand to gain? This course gives you the opportunity to


Hopefully - and while this is your responsibility, I'll do my best to make it possible - you'll gain in insight into your self as a user and creator of media, digital and otherwise. I hope that you might come to a better understanding of how we adapt language to new situations and new media; and, even more, I hope you become more adept at adapting yourself.

Focus on the Rhetorical

In this class, we're taking a rhetorical perspective on digital media. Rhetorical study is not an introspective, intuitive, quiet study. It's methodical, self-conscious, and grounded in noisy practice. It involves observing, analyzing, and interpreting forces and phenomena and people and situations in the social world as they play out in practice. Rhetoric focuses our attention on the social, the situated, the contingent, the probable, the particular - and how rhetors (that's anyone when we write, speak, txt, point a camera, create a tag) make choices to address and change particular situations.

A rhetorical focus is a focus on how messages work. Not so much on what a message means because most of the time the meaning is pretty obvious once it's seen. That is, we're not looking at personal meanings ("What this message means to me is...") but public, shared meaning, meaning that both writer and reader invest in and employ rhetorical resources to create: the writer in creating the message and the reader in interpreting that message. A rhetorical focus addresses the larger rhetorical situation that the message operates in. A rhetorical focus demands that we take a step back from the text we're looking at, and work with the text from outside the rhetorical situation, rather than from a reader's impression or a gut reaction. And a rhetorical focus means we sideline intent, because messages typically mean and operate in ways rhetors don't necessarily intend.

The questions we're addressing are


Our work with these questions will be social, grounded, specific, particular. Our approach is exploratory, methodical, pragmatic, social. We're going to try things out - then see what they mean. We will not come to any final, absolute conclusions about them. But we can develop some insights, illuminate matters. And that's enough.

A Focus on Method as Practice

This class focuses on practice, and that practice is one of rhetorical analysis. Rhetorical analysis is something you do, not just read about; and, in our case, it's something you do in writing - writing notes, mainly, rather than jumping to papers and essays. Work with a critical method will be the first part of the course.

Notes and Note-taking

Analysis doesn't occur by pure introspection; it isn't all in the mind. Analysis proceeds by material means - not just thinking but by practices:


So, expect to take lots of notes online and perhaps on paper. Expect to make lists and diagrams. Expect discussion based on your notes, lists, and diagrams. Expect to work with others to develop approaches, methods, observations, analyses, ideas.

Terminology

Rhetorical study introduces a set of terms and concepts that might be new to you. Some of the terms might be familiar - audience, argument, organization, style - but will have precise technical definitions that might be unfamiliar. Other terms and their concepts will be new: kairos, rhetorical situation, epistes, enthymeme. Some concepts might look familiar but will be substantially redefined, such as the textualized rhetorical situation (Longaker, p 16). As in all disciplines, practitioners use technical terms (the neutral term for the derogatory jargon) to describe and analyze what they are looking at. Poetry uses terms such as scansion, stanza, genre, trochee. Literature uses terms such as narrative, diegesis, focalization, analepsis, paratext. Learn the terms. Use the terms. Come to understand the concepts the terms name. The text explains new terms and has a pretty good index.

The Wiki

Most of the writing we all do for this course will be done on this wiki. Notes, notes on notes, my comments, more notes, group notes and projects. As the course progresses, you'll find that we can begin to link up these nodes, developing them into topics, and further developing topics over the semester and across semesters. If you read this sentence in the statement, include the term chrome yellow somewhere on your wikiname page. The wiki becomes more valuable (to us, to the next group, and to whomever looks in) the more we develop topics over time.

Writing the wiki is an integral part of this course and your learning for this course. As your notes progress, you will begin, I hope, to cross link to the notes and observations of others. University students and professors are now in the business of making their course work in progress available to those interested; it's another new rhetorical practice of digital space.

Most of the writing you do for this course - notes, diagrams, notes, projects, notes - will be used as part of the class. That is, you're not writing as an end product but as a way of working with and through a problem. We're using a wiki, which you might want to think of as a malleable workspace or digital notebook rather than a word-processing space. Write, delete, update, revise.

The wiki is a FishBowl wiki: The world can see what we're posting, search engines can locate it, but only registered users can edit and post comments. Registered users include past and present students in the class and academics who request editing for good pedagogical reasons. AboutThisWiki

Hybrid Course

This is a hybrid course, so much of our work will take place online - and we'll use class meetings for further work with the material you post online. Keep that in mind as you plan your semester: You'll need to be posting to the wiki on days we do not meet. We will meet once a week to do the kind of things we need to do to study digital rhetoric: Compare notes, develop notes further, look at things as a group to discuss them, address day to day matters, ask questions, solve problems ....

Feedback on Notes

Most of the writing you do for this course - notes, diagrams, notes, projects, notes - will be used as part of the class. That is, you're not writing as an end product but as a way of working with and through a problem. Practice through note-taking (rather than quizzes and essay tests) is the primary way you will be learning about e-rhetoric in this course. This means that note-taking is important to your success - that is, your grade - in this class.

While I will be reading much of what you post on line, I won't be commenting on everything. My job in commenting on your notes is to help you practice and master the analytical methods of this class, analytical methods that undergird many classes and most disciplines. So for notes, I'll do three things:


I may ask you to structure your notes in particular ways. I might, for instance, ask you to use headings to organize your notes, placing your observations under Description and your notes on analysis under Analysis. This request isn't frivolous. It allows me to see not just that you understand the method but how you understand what you're doing. (It's better than using a quiz or exam.)

I'll also encourage you to look at how others are approaching the exercises and assignments by visiting their always-in-progress wiki pages, and I'll encourage you to ask them questions and make observations on how they are approaching the problem - just as you would in any good face to face workshop.

Project Presentation

Even though our day to day activity in this course is grounded in analytical practice, I won't be asking you to write academic essays that I read and evaluate. Instead, you'll be asked to share - make formally visible to all - what you have discovered about the rhetoric of the medium you're studying to the class. We can discuss options when the time for presenting comes along, but you will have choices. For instance, some are


Project presentations should be made available online, wherever is appropriate, but linked to your WikiName page. All are expected to visit every project and to respond to some: We'll work out who and how when the time arrives. I'll evaluate your work on your notes for a project when you submit your presentation.

Attendance

Be here. I can guarantee that you'll gain if you're here. You'll demonstrate an engaged and respectful ethos if you're here. You'll demonstrate a dis-engaged ethos if you're not. If you must miss, let me know. If you miss a class, ask others what happened, not me.

Work is due on time even if you're not present. But if you miss the class session, you miss feedback and probably credit. Miss too many class meetings and you could fail.

Grading

Notes, exercises, and presentations are due on time, please. When they are on time, I'll evaluate and comment on them, typically in conference in class. If something is late, I'll be arbitrary in grading: you could receive full points, you could receive nothing.

I'll post grades and brief comments on D2L as the semester progresses.

Final grading tries to balance mastering method (in note-taking and other assignments) with synthesis of knowledge (by means of presentations). Points come from your writing: there are no tests or quizzes. My rough cut is this:


As the course progresses, I may adjust the balance between notes and presentations if this plan doesn't reflect what's happening in class. Right now, I'm considering three projects of 300 points each, for a total of 900 points. The total number of points may increase.

Final grades will follow the usual scale.


Revisions of Notes and Presentations

Notes can always be revised during a project, and I would suggest you do so as you learn method. Once a project is finished, however, don't bother revising your notes. Move on.

We'll see how projects and presentations go. Sometimes they don't work as expected. If a revision is warranted (that is, if by revising a project, something can be learned, better articulated, better understood), you'll have the opportunity to revise.

Working in Other Digital Spaces

This wiki is set up for us to use as a center point for our individual and collective work. Each of you will have a WikiName page, on which you will add links to wiki pages you're working on for notes, exercises, projects. Everything on the wiki is visible to the world, although it's editable only by registered users. Over the years, the wiki has grown to include work of former students on past projects: This is now shared content for this course we can all draw on.

For projects, you may want to or have to work and store your content on other sites. In that case, you'll add a link to your work in the appropriate wiki page.

If you would rather work on your notes on your own wiki or blog, or supplement your work on this wiki elsewhere - by embedding your own images, for instance - you're welcome t0. In such a case, place a link to your work on your wiki page or embed the image using the appropriate tag. See FormattingRules: Images. The advantage of working with a wiki over a blog is that wiki pages are readily editable, blog pages less so. Where ever you work, expect to revise and edit notes over time.

Requirements for Grad Students

Overall, grad students are expected to go into more depth, more detail, and bring more insight to their work and ours. They should lead and guide and focus. There may be extra readings for grad students on some topics. Grad students should draw these readings into their notes and projects.

Early in the semester, I'll ask the grad students to discuss grad requirements. Here are two I've considered and we have used in the past.

Option 1: Class Project Reports
During project presentations, grad students will spend time getting an overview of the projects and will submit (on the wiki) a 1000 - 1500 word or so analysis and interpretation of the collection of projects, and their project's place in that collection. This can be informally written - you're addressing the class - but should move from analysis towards interpretation. As a grad student, it's your role to help us all see what the larger picture might mean.

Option 2: Class Takeover
Teach the class for a week. Starting with a rhetorical issue from the text, put together two class sessions (aka, two wiki pages). In the first, present and assign an exercise we engage. In the second, present a consideration of what we did, with our option to respond and develop things further. Topics might include: presentation of identity, reading, ethos, invention; or you may address and work with a mode or media: follksonomy, YouTube, rss news aggregators... Prepare a short report on what you did and how it went.

This statement is subject to change. You'll be informed if I do change it, and changes will be marked on the statement.

Accommodation Services

To request accommodations or other services for this class, contact Disability Services, Sanford Hall 201, 218-755-3883, email disabilityservices@bemidjistate.edu.
below the line

Catalogue Description
An introduction to the principles of applied rhetoric integrated with continued writing experience. Students investigate email, web page and site design, online discussion, wikis, and weblogs. Introduces fundamentals of hypertext. Students create and analyze online texts and exchanges. Computer-intensive. Prerequisite(s): Completion of ENGL 1101 and ENGL 1102. Credits: 3

This course is part of the minor in Electronic Writing, and part of the Undergraduate and Grad Certificate in Electronic Writing. Other courses in the series are





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