Theorizing Digital Rhetoric

Aaron Hess, Amber Davisson, Aaron Hess, Amber Davisson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351788632
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Rhetoric
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Theorizing Digital Rhetoric takes up the intersection of rhetorical theory and digital technology to explore the ways in which rhetoric is challenged by new technologies and how rhetorical theory can illuminate discursive expression in digital contexts. The volume combines complex rhetorical theory with personal anecdotes about the use of technologies to create a larger philosophical and rhetorical account of how theorists approach the examinations of new and future digital technologies. This collection of essays emphasizes the ways that digital technology intrudes upon rhetorical theory and how readers can be everyday rhetorical critics within an era of ever-increasing use of digital technology.

Each chapter effectively blends theorizing between rhetoric and digital technology, informing readers of the potentiality between the two ideas. The theoretical perspectives informed by digital media studies, rhetorical theory, and personal/professional use provide a robust accounting of digital rhetoric that is timely, personable, and useful.

1
Introduction

Theorizing Digital Rhetoric

Aaron Hess

In a recent classroom discussion, I told my students about how I can recall a time when the world wasn’t networked. A time when our phones didn’t accompany us everywhere, when the news was on paper, and when the family set of encyclopedias was considered valuable. Yet, even as I tell that story, I still consider myself somewhat of a digital native. The internet “came out” when I was in high school, and I had the fortune of growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area and living in the Silicon Valley in the late ’90s. Technology was all around me in my adolescence as stories of the new superfast 56K modem circulated among my social groups.

Like many around my age, I can specifically recall the first time I went online to “surf the web.” My friends and I had picked up one of those ten-hours-free America Online (AOL) discs that seemed to endlessly appear on my doorstep. I had heard about the internet through TV shows and other kids at school, but had not had a chance to try it out. That first night with two of my best friends would be a first step in a strange relationship with technology. As console gamers, we were pretty equipped to handle the digital world, or so we thought. We put in all the requisite credit card information and logged on. Chat rooms, the World Wide Web, and all kinds of “cybersurfing” were just waiting for us across the ether. As we heard what would become that ever familiar sound of a ’90s modem connecting to the internet, we waited to see what all the fuss was about.

Not really knowing what to do, we ventured on into this new arena, looking for interesting chat rooms or people. A message popped up from “AOLadmin9617.” It said, “Greetings AOL user! Your credit card information is in need of verification. Please provide your number and expiration date or your session will be terminated.” As we scrambled to find the credit card and frantically enter in the numbers, it dawned on me that this may not be real. “Wait a second, why would it ask us for the info again? How do we know that this is a real AOL rep?” I inquired openly. We paused to deliberate and then closed the window.

* * *

This volume explores the intersection between rhetoric and digital technology. Much like my earliest experiences with AOL, the discipline of rhetoric has approached technology and the internet with curiosity, trepidation, and awe. For scholars interested in rhetoric, the growing relationship between discourse and technology is one that is nearly impossible to ignore. As many of the authors in this volume will attest, digital technology impacts nearly every element of contemporary society, from wearable technology that tracks footsteps and heartbeats to the influence of social media upon politics and presidential elections. Similarly, the idea of rhetoric is one that also pervades most every element of our daily interactions, from trying to convince our bosses for a raise to deliberating over the political future of the country. Together, the concept of digital rhetoric is both old and young; old insofar as the study of rhetoric dates back as far as recorded history and young in terms of recent revolutions in technological growth that have occurred or are still occurring. Both theory and method have been significantly challenged by the advent and progression of technology in the past few decades, and I would expect that these challenges will only continue as digital technology continues to grow.

In this opening chapter, I chart some of the recent thinking about digital rhetoric. Although young, the concept has received a considerable amount of attention in the past twenty years. Prominent scholars in the field—many of whom are in this volume—began the conversation about the digital rhetoric in the early ’90s. Looking back, even the most profound theory of the time will undoubtedly look quaint by contemporary standards; much like how this very volume might look dated in few short years. So it goes with technology. Yet, the need remains for scholars of rhetoric to be well-versed in the rapid changes of technology and the myriad ways that users adapt and create within digital contexts. Indeed, the field of rhetoric has frequently recognized the need for integrating media studies theory and technology into its theoretical canon (Benson 1996; Kennedy 1999; McKerrow 2010; Miller 2003; Silvestri 2013; Warnick and Heineman 2012). As many authors in this volume will explain, digital rhetoric is not merely the addition of technology to rhetoric—or vice versa—and “stir.” The concept of digital rhetoric requires sustained attention to the ways that rhetoric changes in a technological era and how technology is shaped by human expression both about and through the technology itself. Because of this, each of the authors in this volume takes up key challenges in rhetorical theory brought about by the advances in technology as well as the ways in which rhetorical theory can inform our understanding of how language shapes our understanding of technology.

Digital Rhetoric: A Brief Definitional Chronology

As with many scholarly enterprises, this volume steps into a longer and larger conversation about digital rhetoric. The influence of technology on speech dates back at least to Plato, who questioned the role of writing as a technology in the Phaedrus (Ong 1982). His fears of writing—ironically expressed in the written dialogue—resonate in contemporary circles as well. Those who express concerns about a generation of social media users as unable to take up face-to-face conversations may find comfort in Socrates, who during the dialogue decries the lack of human interaction found in the written word. This point of origin for the conversation about speech and technology sets the stage for millennia, but as communication technology rapidly advanced in the twentieth century, rhetorical scholars reacted with new ideas about the relationship between technology, language, and identity. In this section, I briefly outline some of the major milestones in theorizing digital rhetoric.

Before getting to what is commonly understood as “digital” technology, it is worth noting that many elements of digital rhetoric and digital media studies are indebted to previous works regarding traditional or “old” media, such as Marshall McLuhan’s (1964) discussions of mass media, Stuart Hall’s (2006) offerings in cultural studies, or Kathleen Hall Jamieson’s (1988) thorough investigation into the role of mass media in presidential politicking. Much of the theorizing of digital media studies and digital rhetoric can be traced back into larger discussions of media writ large (Herbig, Herrmann, and Tyma 2015). Yet, simultaneously, digital rhetoric is marked with a departure from the models of centralized “old” media, especially when accented with a tailored, individualized experience and participatory sensibility. For example, Lev Manovich’s highly influential work The Language of New Media explores the cultural logics of new media through both a historical understanding of cinema—as an “old” medium—and by examining new features of digital media at this time. The relationship between traditional media theorizing and digital rhetoric is beyond the scope of this volume, but should be recognized as a fundamental starting point for understanding digital technology. As with many elements of scholarship, the belief that technological novelty can fully surpass theory is a mistaken assumption. Instead, as Manovich (2001: 8) encourages us, the history of media can be seen as “a succession of distinct and equally expressive languages, each with its own aesthetic variables, and each closing off some of the possibilities of its predecessor.” As such, in what follows, I trace the development of key elements of digital rhetoric through innovations in technology, not to say that one replaces the previous, but to recognize that coming to a definition or understanding of digital technology is an iterative process dependent on changes in technology, usage, history, and theory.

Since the advent of personal computing, many scholars have questioned the ways in which these new, everyday technologies would change the way we speak and write. Early on, with the growing popularity of bulletin board systems, internet relay chat or other chat rooms, and email, many theorists offered fresh perspectives on the study of rhetoric (Benson 1996). Over time, the practice and study of digital rhetoric has adapted along with the new technologies, such as Web 2.0, social media practices, and locative media. These technologies often embrace new forms of embodiment, physicality, and mobility, drawing new attention to cyborgian claims (Haraway 1991). As will be discussed below, the nature of “digital” rhetoric is troubled by a false bifurcation between digital and analog, as if the analog body shuts off when it embraces a keyboard and screen. More often, the body and machine work in tandem with physical spaces, much more so than with mere static screens located in particular rooms of the home office. Looking back toward that early theorizing, however, provides a vital starting point for considering the evolution of the term to this contemporary moment.

The term “digital rhetoric” can be traced back to Richard Lanham’s (1992) influential essay with the same name. There, Lanham maps out movements in art and aesthetic theory to contend that both the “digital computer” and “electronic text” are works of art motivated by “play and purpose” (ibid.: 241). Writing in the larger context of online literacy, Lanham traces the aesthetic of the computer display as an outgrowth of postmodern trends in visual arts. While an important moment in offering a foundation for connecting digital computation with rhetoric, his early formulation does not fully elaborate on the conditions for speaking and writing within this playful environment. Later, Lanham (1993) furthered his claims about the aesthetic value in computational and hypertext discourse, connecting it to larger concerns in the university system. Others at the time, such as George Landow (1994), Jay David Bolter (2001), and Stuart Moulthrop (1994), explored the potential of hypertext for creating new compositional environments, forms of literacy, and a rhizomatic epistemology. Literacy remained a persistent concern as these new technologies took hold. Kathleen Welch (1999) termed this new intersection of rhetoric, literacy, and technology as “electric rhetoric,” which was understood as “the new merger of the written and the oral, both now newly empowered and reconstructed by electricity and both dependent on print literacy” (ibid.: 104). Again, the understanding of rhetoric within these newly networked spaces reflected upon previous technologies (print) and how they can be comprehended on the “electric” screen. How students and citizens engaged these technologies required rhetorical theory to be reconsidered with due attention to changes in reading, writing, and speaking.

Thus, scholars quickly recognized that rhetorical theories, classical or modern, “left unmodified, are inadequate” (Welch 1999: 104). Case studies and other observations of the changing dynamics of online communication led the retheorizing of rhetoric in this regard. For example, Laura Gurak (1997) offered a groundbreaking discussion of online protest during the infancy of internet communication. Here, she recognizes how key functions of rhetoric, in particular ethos and delivery, are altered when analyzed online. Prefacing Welch’s (1999) concerns about rhetorical theory, Gurak’s (1997) systematic analysis of the Lotus and Clipper Chip controversies provides a vital justification for recognizing that rhetorical theory, when considered in digital contexts, requires adaptation in order to consider the ways that online protests and argument are fundamentally altered. Similarly, Barbara Warnick (1998: 73) recognized the need to examine “electronic environments” and reposition theory in relation to changing dynamics of technology and later implored rhetorical scholars to “look under the hood” of digital texts to grasp not only the manifest meanings of digital texts, but also of their latent, fundamental ordering as code (Warnick 2005: 332). Her call signals a key shift in understanding digital rhetoric as scholarship moved into the new millennium.

The early 2000s heralded key moments in digital rhetoric. A number of highly influential works were published that established a strong justification for and robust accounting of digital rhetoric. It is during this time that the most thorough definitional work is offered. Laura Gurak (2001) continued theorizing about literacy in Cyberliteracy: Navigating the Internet with Awareness, offering four key components—speed, reach, anonymity, and interactivity—that constitute much of online communication. Later, along with Smiljana Antonijevic, she mixes ethos, kairos, community/collaboration, and delivery into her understanding of digital rhetoric (Gurak and Antonijevic 2009). James Zappen (2005) picked up on Gurak and others—including Lev Manovich—by integrating the previous components into a theoretical position that attempts “to explain how traditional rhetorical strategies of persuasion function and how they are being reconfigured in digital spaces” (Zappen 2005: 319). In this way, the persistent definitional focus of digital rhetoric has been about the reconfiguration of rhetorical theory within digitality.

Finally, and most recently, scholars have paid close attention to the ways that networking technologies have created fresh challenges to the theorizing of digital rhetoric. Combined with previous calls for understanding its computational or mathematical underpinnings, these theorists rightfully blend the expression of digital rhetoric on the screen with its massively networked quality. For example, Elizabeth Losh (2009: 47–48) outlines four positions to consider digital rhetoric that move from the everyday experience of technology, to public discourse from governmental institutions, to the scholarly understanding of computer-generated media as objects of study, to information sciences that quantify human expression online. This work recognizes that the vastness of networked technologies spans from everyday experience to the top-most elements of government. Damien Pfister (2014), offering an alternative to digital rhetoric with “networked rhetorics,” underscores the social and communicative elements of technology. This shift recognizes both the ubiquity of digital technologies and that the forms of expression found within such technologies have become increasingly social in nature. Accenting the ubiquity, Douglas Eyman (2015) has taken up a thorough exploration of digital rhetoric and its various definitions, believing that digital rhetoric is most simply the application of rhetorical theory to digital texts and performances. Each of these definitional moments recognizes that digital rhetoric evolves as technology does and as technological tools become increasingly widespread.

Digital Rhetoric: Our Current Moment

Digital rhetoric will be defined in a number of ways throughout this volume. Much like its root concept of “rhetoric,” the definition largely depends on particular theorists and their approach to its study. Yet, I offer the following as a steppi...