Introduction and Digital Rhetoricity

Hello classmates!  I'm Emily Brehob, a second-year English major.  I enjoy reading, writing, knitting, snowboarding, using computers, watching way too many movies and TV shows, and skydiving (I've only done it the once, but it was really fun).  This semester I want to learn more about how the online context affects how people perceive and understand what they're reading.  That's pretty broad, I know, but I don't want to narrow it down just yet.  And I'd say there are two major things that attract me to the digital:  fun websites like reddit where I can waste time, and websites that help me be productive, like google docs and University resources.  There's a feeling of untapped potential when you use today's technology--as much as we are doing with it, there's so much more that we aren't quite yet, and that's really exciting to me.

I think that the internet has an interesting relationship to rhetoric.  When people talk about online discourse, they frequently disparage it, talking about poor grammar and spelling and insufficiently thought-out ideas.  That's just a symptom, I'd argue, of how anyone can talk online.  Intelligent people will still talk online and find a way for their ideas to be distinguished.

More significant to rhetoric is that so much information is available.  As the video says, it's very easy to link to other information in an online document.  This is very significant because it allows a rhetorician to easily include important background information.  A blogger such as myself could use hyperlinks to establish ethos by linking to a list of scholarly publications (if I, you know, had written any).  I could establish pathos by linking to a sad blog post about my childhood pet;  I could link to pictures as evidence.  You get the picture.

So it's very easy to give contextual information in online communication.  The one thing, I think, that isn't so easy, is to choose kairos.  People go online and find their own information;  the person who puts that information there has very little control over when people read or otherwise engage with it.  An author online can control when they post the information, where they post it, and if they take it down, but other than that people are going to come across it when they want to.  The best an online other can do is give the audience the context it needs to understand what's being said--the extra capabilities of online communication can help to overcome its limitations.

Just some thoughts.  Looking forward to seeing what everyone else thinks.