the rhetorical situation room

The Rhetoric of Dreaming

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Swift) — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 20:16:00 +0000

I recently blogged about the how my conservative friends tend to think everyone is born with "bootstraps"--that is, that everyone has the opportunity to succeed. Another way to phrase this is around the idea of social mobility that is central to the American Dream. Social mobility is incredibly complicated, with many issues involved: education, family, heritage, laws, gender, location, etc.

The Huffington Post reports that research has come out suggesting the American Dream really isn't as attainable as it once was:

A new report from the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) finds that social mobility between generations is dramatically lower in the U.S. than in many other developed countries.

The center-right Economist magazine agrees:

The American dream is simple: work hard and move up. As the country emerges from recession, the reality looks ever more complicated.

A new book out on the topic, written by a bipartisan set of economic experts, finds that upward social mobility is certainly possible, but not necessarily attainable for everyone:

Young people who begin with the most advantages are considerably more likely than the less well-off to add the advantage of advanced education. Sawhill and Haskins report that children of parents in the top fifth of income are now more than twice as likely to attend college, and nearly five times as likely to graduate, as are children of parents in the bottom fifth. Separate research from Thomas Mortenson of the nonpartisan Pell Institute shows that this income gap in college completion has widened substantially since the 1970s. Children whose parents obtained college degrees are now nearly five times more likely to complete college themselves than are children whose parents did not.

And possibly most interesting, politically, there are more and more on the right of the political spectrum who agree that the American Dream is becoming inaccessible to large segments of the population:

“It’s becoming conventional wisdom that the U.S. does not have as much mobility as most other advanced countries,” said Isabel V. Sawhill, an economist at the Brookings Institution. “I don’t think you’ll find too many people who will argue with that." . . . At least five large studies in recent years have found the United States to be less mobile than comparable nations.

The American Dream is still a respectable thing to shoot for. But, those of us who were born into a long line of relatively successful middle-class families (or, at least, a long line of families not mired in poverty) should probably be wary when telling people all they need to do is just work harder or be smarter.

The Rhetoric of Poor

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Swift) — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 00:16:00 +0000

Had a really interesting discussion with a conservative friend the other day about government programs to help the poor. We agreed on a lot.

We agreed that there are people in America who are poor due to some fault of their own. Maybe they don't work hard enough, for example. These people just need to "pull themselves up by their bootstraps."

We also agreed that there are people in America who are poor for not fault of their own. These people, we agreed, don't have boots and therefore can't actually pull themselves up without our help.

Therefore, we agreed, we the people (through the government) need to help both groups--the first group to get up and get to work, the second to have the resources required for their work to pull them out of poverty.

Here's where we disagreed: the ratio of lazy to boot-less. Liberals tend to see the ratio of lazy to boot-less somewhere around 15%-85%, conservatives tend to take the opposite view. For liberals, most poor people are poor because of external factors. For conservatives, most poor people are poor because they are lazy.

This is why the right is so furious with the left's desire to devise programs to help the poor--when the right says "poor" they mean "lazy." Even the term "entitlement program" suggests this view of the poor--they don't deserve our help because they aren't willing to help themselves.

This is also why the left is so furious with the right's desire to put the poor to work--when the left says "poor" they mean "people who are already working hard but are unable to succeed in their current conditions."

[originally posted on Google+]

The SC's role in Speech Inflation

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Swift) — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 23:13:00 +0000

My analysis of the rising cost of free speech begins in 1886 with Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, which is widely cited as the decision that guaranteed 14th Amendment “equal protection” rights under the law to corporations as well as people. This idea of corporate personhood came not from the Court’s decision, but from an aside added by the court recorder in the decision header. This shaky foundation has nevertheless been justification for granting corporations the right to protected fiscal free speech under the 1st Amendment.

Not long after the Santa Clara decision, the United States Congress began limiting corporate “speech” in elections, with the Tillman Act of 1907, the Taft Hartley Act of 1947, and the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 banning corporate contributions to federal campaigns and elections and placing limits on campaign expenditures . The Supreme Court quickly struck back in the 1957 case United States v. United Auto Workers, where they struck down a lower court’s decision allowing limits on corporate and union political expenditures (or did they?), and again in the 1976 case Buckley v Valeo, when they struck down key provisions of the Taft Hartley Act that limited personal contributions to a candidate. With Buckley, the court argued that spending on political campaigns is protected by the First Amendment, directly equating money with speech, and opening the door in 1977 for First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, in which the court ruled 5-4 that corporations have the right to spend money to influence political referenda. In 1990 and 2003, the Court seemed to reverse this trend when it ruled on Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce that laws could prohibit corporate funds being used in elections, and in McConnell v. Federal Election Commission when it ruled that the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (which regulated “electioneering communication”) was indeed constitutional.

But despite this feint in the direction of separating speech from money, the Court quickly ruled in the 2008 decision Davis v. Federal Election Commission that the 2002 campaign reform act did in fact infringe on candidates’ First Amendment rights, and in 2010 the Court took the next step by ruling, in the controversial Citizens United v Federal Election Commission decision, that corporations have a First Amendment right to unlimited political spending. The Supreme Court has made it clear that corporations are people and money is speech (other important SC decisions).

My project explores the Supreme Court’s arguments about the commodification of speech in each of these decisions, along with the fascinating 2011 case Western Tradition Partnership, Inc. v. Attorney General of Montana, in which the Montana Supreme Court directly challenged the majority opinion in the Citizens United case. These judicial arguments expose the political establishment’s feelings regarding speech and whether or not it should be free.

Someday?

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Swift) — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 16:48:00 +0000

I wish every candidate for public office would promise to:

*stop saying things that politifact or factcheck rules to be false or misleading.

*donate 50% of campaign contributions to local charities.

*spend own campaign cash correcting dishonest ads aired by affiliated SuperPACs or PACs.

The Rhetoric of Sorry

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Swift) — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 18:16:00 +0000

The game "Sorry" is a popular family board game. Each player has four pawns they try to move around the board, from their starting areas to the final goal. The game's name comes from the element of the game that requires players to directly interfere with other players' pawns over the course of the game. There are a number of ways one player can force another to move her pawns back to the starting area, thus setting them back significantly.

The game can get pretty bitter, with players knocking their opponents' pawns back to square one, joyful for being able to exact revenge for previous (or even future) offenses.

But, don't worry. You still say "sorry." It's all part of the game.

I've recently come across the game "Forbidden Island." This game is based on co-operative play, meaning that players work together to beat the game. There are various levels of difficulty, and the game can get very challenging even on the easiest level.

Both games are difficult and competitive, but "Forbidden Island" is much more nuanced (and, in my opinion, more enjoyable).

Lame economic metaphor alert: The reason I make this juxtaposition is that I get the feeling the current American economic view of capitalism is more like "Sorry" than it is like "Forbidden Island." We seem to regularly justify being jerks to other people with the excuse "it's just business" or "that's just the rules!" This rationalization is brilliant--we tell ourselves that we are helping the "invisible hand" work, that our economy wouldn't work right if people started looking out for others rather than their own bottom line.

Well, "Forbidden Island" is proof that a capitalist society doesn't need to be as ruthless, greedy, or competitive as we've made it out to be. Life is difficult enough as it is for us to spend so much time knocking other people down. And it doesn't even require a full-blown government socialism for the "Forbidden Island" mentality to work, but it might require us to change our perspective (and maybe even a few of the "rules").

Us vs. Them

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Swift) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 22:29:00 +0000

Mitch Daniels' response to the President's State of the Union speech was impressive, even if I didn't agree with it. I was interested by one argument of the speech (I'm working from the full text here) found in this paragraph:

“In word and deed, the President and his allies tell us that we just cannot handle ourselves in this complex, perilous world without their benevolent protection. Left to ourselves, we might pick the wrong health insurance, the wrong mortgage, the wrong school for our kids; why, unless they stop us, we might pick the wrong light bulb!"

This seems to be a popular rhetorical stance among many critics of the US government, and it is based fundamentally on the rhetorical division--distancing "government" from "the people." Daniels, and many others before him, seem to argue that taxes should be lowered because we need to get their hands out of our pockets, we know how to spend our money better than they do. In fact, he suggests that a lack of government regulation equates to being "[l]eft to ourselves."

Don't get me wrong--there are many things my elected representatives do that I wouldn't do were I acting alone. But isn't the entire premise of the United States that the government is made up of We the People? We are the government. And if we support the Constitution and its system of representation, then this isn't an issue of "us vs. them," this is an issue of "us." Isn't it?

Now, if Mr. Daniels and the rest want to argue that the electoral system is rigged, that elected officials no longer represent the people, or that the government is in some way representing someone other than We the People, I'm listening.

And I think he would have a point.

But he's not making that argument. In fact, no one on the right is, with the exception of Ron Paul and Buddy Roemer, neither of whom is currently be taken seriously by the Republican or Tea Party establishments. Like my friend Jon Ogden, I don't know why that is, partly because that would finally give backing to the us vs. them dichotomy so many conservatives enjoy making.

The Rising Cost of Free Speech

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Swift) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 01:24:00 +0000

In 1997 Judith Butler looked at United States Supreme Court decisions related to free speech to expose contemporary American thought on the nature of what she called "excitable speech." Since then, the topic of free speech has been a lightning rod for rhetorical critics, with researchers focusing on different iterations of “free speech fights,” each of particular relevance in an age when political opposition can be silenced as "Un-American," political candidates legally partition off protestors into “free speech zones,” and protesters of economic injustice are shot, pepper sprayed, barricaded, and arrested on public property. Even with all of this focus on free speech, by both rhetoricians and popular critics, a major point is overlooked: the rising cost of speech. Not only is speech no longer free, but its price must be regularly readjusted to keep pace with legal speech cost inflation driven by the United States Supreme Court.

This system, which Ron Greene argues “turns speech into money and money into speech” provides an “alibi” for economic and rhetorical abuses by those who are more financially able to be politically verbose. This conflation of money and speech is not a new phenomenon, either. The 2010 Citizens United decision is the most recent in a series of actions taken by the Supreme Court to fundamentally alter the nature of speech. Over the next few weeks, I will track opinions of the Supreme Court over the past century and a half through four key cases, exploring the rhetorical implications of a legal body that puts a price tag on speech.

I am interested in how this speech inflation plays out in the digital age. The internet is lauded as a democratizing force, a network that gives more power to individuals after generations of institutions and corporations. If money equals speech, though, isn't the leveling force of the internet all but erased?

OWS is a Meme

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Swift) — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 18:24:00 +0000

The digital age has not created memes, but it has sped up their creation and dissemination, popularized (or trivialized) them, and brought them to our attention. Wikipedia defines a meme as something that “acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena. Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes in that they self-replicate, mutate and respond to selective pressures.” As Nick Judd has argued, Occupy Wall Street is more of a meme than a movement.

It's demand-less rhetoric and adaptable structure make Occupy Wall Street a meme-driven meta-movement.Memes don't work in a vacuum: their context gives them meaning. For Occupy Wall Street, then, context itself gives the meta-movement meaning—Occupy Raleigh is different from Occupy Miami, in part because Art Pope is the most local 1% in North Carolina and Rick Scott has come to embody the 1% there.

The Occupy Wall Street meta-movement provides the framework for protests and mini-movements—Occupy Iowa is targeting the Iowa caucuses, Occupy Oakland organized an effective citywide strike, Occupy San Fransisco—joined by local religious leaders—staged a march on banks while carrying a golden calf (which they refer to as “a young version of the Wall Street bull”). Those specific arguments aren’t permanent, nor do they define their respective “Occupations.” Once these marches and strikes are over, the “occupations” will continue. In other words, most movements are all argument—anti-government, end this war, etc. OWS is an enthymematic and meme-driven meta-movement that leaves the premise out and invites adaptation and modification. It starts the argument but leaves blanks to be filled in. The OWS argument is powerful because the blanks aren’t filled in, and might never be.

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Swift) — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 15:33:00 +0000

Much has been made of Occupy Wall Street's "leaderless" structure. Some, like political tech expert Micah Sifry, have responded by saying that the movement is "leaderFull" instead:

No, political movements can't be leaderless. The Occupy Wall Street movement is, in fact, leader-full.
But it's a vastly different kind of leadership that is emerging. It's one that, like the networked technology that supports it, rejects all forms of top-down hierarchy and values peer-to-peer network weaving instead.

Some have interpreted this to say that everyone in the movement is a leader. This is a step in the right direction, but it doesn't quite explain the full depth of the movement. When renegades pretend to speak for the movement (like the man who threatened to blow up Macy's), some blame the "leaderless/full" structure, assuming there is no accountability, no way to reign in the rogues. And, if a "leaderfull" movement means that everyone is a leader, these naysayers would be exactly right. If everyone is a leader, then no one is.

Another way to put this: those who accuse OWS of being "leaderless" point to the fact that there is no figurehead, no Martin Luther King Jr., while those who defend OWS as being "leaderfull" counter that everyone in the movement is Martin Luther King Jr.

Neither is correct. There is a leader of the movement in each city: the General Assembly. The NYC General Assembly's website contains a detailed outline of the leadership structure. It is thorough, impressively dedicated to fairness, and clearly the official decision-making body of the group. Individual committees (also known as "spokes") are in charge of elements of the movement--communications, direct action, etc.--but all ultimately report back to the GA, which is made up of everyone--if you show up, you're a part of the General Assembly (a part. Not the whole thing by yourself).

In other words, not everyone is a "leader" in the Occupy Wall Street movement. The man who threatened to blow up Macy's might say he's part of Occupy Wall Street, and he might actually have been pitching his plan at a gathering of New York Occupiers (and that's the trick--everyone is allowed to speak, which introduces interesting problems in and of itself). But, until a plan is ratified by the General Assembly, his idea is no more official than is any other suggestion bandied about in Zuccotti Park or elsewhere.

Occupy Wall Street is NOT leaderless. Nor is it leaderfull. It has a leader, a single leader. It's just that the leader can't be arrested using one set of handcuffs.

Playground Rules

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Swift) — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 13:35:00 +0000

Image Source

IMAGINE we are all in elementary school again, most of us in third grade. Only, this time, things are a bit different: every day everyone goes to a large cage where the playground used to be. As soon as we're all inside, the sixth graders start to pick on the kindergartners and first graders. This goes on for a while until we decide we need to establish some rules. We outlaw hitting below the belt and pulling hair, we forbid breaking bones and poking eyes. Even when the regulations are enforced the sixth graders still pick on the younger students, and as the kindergartners mysteriously begin to disappear, the older kids gradually start picking on second graders and eventually us third graders.

From what I understand, modern political ideologies would each fix the problem in a different way:

Libertarians: This system is messed up! Get rid of all the rules--you're picking winners and losers. If you just let things play out, justice will be established again.

Conservatives: If you are picked on, you should work harder or work smarter. Go to the gym. Learn karate. Buy a weapon. Personal responsibility reigns supreme, and if you don't do what is needed, don't come running to me for help.

Liberals: We should band together and help the younger children. Provide health care and education, transportation and retirement insurance (the problem is, all too many of these liberals take campaign checks from the 6th graders).

Socialists: This system is messed up! What is needed is not a little bit of charity here, we need to change the dynamics. Fix the system so it isn't so easy for the 6th graders to pick on the younger students to begin with. Don't just outlaw breaking bones, get rid of the cage!

Now, to be fair, these are all oversimplifications, but it seems to me they capture the essence of each of the four points of our political spectrum. What am I missing?

Edit: Clarity (Jan 25, 2012)

The Greed Fairy

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Swift) — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 17:13:00 +0000

The Deseret News editorial on Nov. 6th, “Independence and Responsibility,” was remarkable. One of the most amazing phrases came in the last paragraph when the authors state “Genuine independence is about being free from broader influences.”

Many harbor the notion that capitalism itself is not a "broader influence." Somehow, they think, capitalism is the very definition of freedom, and our system allows anyone and everyone to do anything and everything they want. To them, capitalism doesn't ever restrict freedom in any way: people choose to restrict their own freedom.

An organization in Durham, North Carolina has put together the site playspent.org to demonstrate some of the horrible choices the poor have to face every day--pay the phone bill or pay for my child’s field trip? Pay the heat or go to the doctor? No one can understand the principles painfully exposed in playspent and still insist on pretending the majority of the poor have entirely brought it upon themselves. As if people who work hard, do their best, but still can’t provide for their families just need to be more accountable.

This sort of fallacy-inducing myopia just gives people intellectual cover to maintain a testimony in the greed fairy.

CEO Bonuses --> Carbon Tax

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Swift) — Tue, 10 May 2011 16:20:00 +0000

A recent Wall Street Journal study found that executive bonuses shot up nearly 20% in 2010, while an AP investigation found that 2010 CEO bonuses were far beyond pre-recession levels.

At the same time, wages have stagnated, the recession drags on, and . . . we keep on pumping carbon into the atmosphere, forcing our children to live with the smog and the enormous bills we are leaving to them.

So, here's an idea that addresses these two problems at the same time: institute a carbon tax that must be paid from the bonuses of CEOs themselves. Big businesses will still offer exorbitant bonuses in order to attract the best CEOs, but the top talent will be most wary of big polluters due to the fact that their bonuses will be taxed in direct relation to their carbon output. The greenest businesses will get a little help in their attempts to attract the best CEOs, the market will compensate by lowering carbon emissions across the board, and we'll have made big steps toward stopping global warming. All while putting that obscene compensation scale to work for America, rather than for the richest .01% of rich businesspeople.

Or, we could just institute the free market cap-and-trade plan modeled after the plan Republicans instituted in the early 90s to great success. Either/or.

In defense of pith

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Swift) — Thu, 05 May 2011 17:04:00 +0000

Neil Gabler argued in a Politico opinion piece last year that Republicans are much better at campaign clichés than are Democrats. This idea isn't really that new--think of the health care debate. We had "Obamacare," "socialism," and "death panels," vs. "increasing access," "helping sick people," and "decreasing the long term budget deficit." Is it any wonder that one side won, and is still winning?

I agree with Gabler when he says that "Republicans have spent nearly a half-century reducing their ideology to a few pungent political nuggets that have an almost Pavlovian effect. Who likes taxes, politicians or, now, government?" It seems obvious to me that the Republicans have won this battle, over and over again, over the past decades.

I disagree with Gabler's claim, however, that clichés are inherently "empty and meaningless." It is this kind of thinking that drives Democrats away from clichés and toward complex arguments that don't "stick." Chip and Dan Heath's 2007 book Made to Stick (which I highly recommend) argues that urban legends work because they're "sticky," not because they're true. The premise of their argument is that true arguments should be made to stick, too. If there are enough urban legends floating around there to keep Snopes.com busy, then why can't we make the truth sticky, too?

Imagine a woman driving down a road. Her husband is in the back seat with their sleeping baby. The woman gets to an intersection and needs to ask for directions, so she turns back and mouths "which way"--she doesn't want to wake the baby. Her husband mouths back "last time we turned right and got to see the Christmas lights, but we decided that we would go left so that we could get there quicker, even though we have to drive by the factory . . . ."

By this time, the light has changed to red and the family is stuck waiting, in no better shape than they were before.

Let's go back to our family in the car. If the husband had wanted to convey the same depth of information more effectively, he could've changed his response. Maybe he motions right and mouths "lights" and then motions left and mouths "quicker, but factory."

The second answer was sticky -- it got the point across in a succinct and memorable way. It was the more helpful of the two answers.

If liberals want to take control of the debate, ever, they need to start being sticky. Some, like George Lakoff, have shown that people don't hate everything the government does, but that conservatives have succeeded in making their anti-government message very sticky.

What if, during the health care debate, President Obama had said something like this (before the public option was dead):
"I have the greatest respect for the American men and women who serve in the police and fire departments. These brave individuals work hard to ensure that our fire system and police system remain the best in the world. That is why I want to take the principles that work so well in our fire and police systems and implement them alongside the most successful business practices of our health care system."

Or, what if Democrats had argued, simply, that the 2010 midterm elections were about capitalism:

"Democrats did some unpopular things in the past two years--we bailed out car companies and banks, we propped up a failing economy with a large stimulus package. We don't ever want to have to do these things again. At the same time, we are very proud that we saved American capitalism. We passed legislation, with hardly any Republican support, that would make it so this sort of thing would never happen again. A vote for a Democrat is a vote that says thanks for saving capitalism."

Instead, the Democrat argument was "The Republicans want the keys back--they were the one who drove the country into the ditch in the first place." The problem with this argument is that, apparently, most people agreed and still voted for Republicans--they disliked Obama's "socialist" "intrusive government" agenda more than they disliked Republicans bad driving skills.

As I said previously, it seems like the Republicans are winning the contest of rhetoric.

Arguments during the 2010 midterms

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Swift) — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 12:57:00 +0000

Here's how I understand the 2010 midterm elections:

The Republican argument went something like this:
"If you want bigger, more intrusive government, and if you absolutely love the health care law, vote for Democrats. Otherwise, vote for us."

This argument is powerful for a number of different reasons. As others have pointed out, it's not an argument for Republicans, but an argument against Democrats. The specifics aren't really there--normal for an out-of-control party in an election year, but noteworthy nonetheless. This negative nature is particularly powerful because so many people accept the premises that Democrats have brought bigger/intrusive government and that they love the health care bill. And the Democrats didn't seem to fight against these premises--they just accepted them.

The Democrats' response went something like this:
"Republicans did a bad job when they were in charge!"
or
"I don't know what you're talking about, I didn't vote for that liberal stuff" (or some other variation of distancing themselves from Obama/Pelosi/Reid).

These arguments are weak for a number of reasons. First, they didn't seem to be defending the health care bill at all, leaving that issue to be dominated by Republicans who could caricature it and their support for it. Second, they never countered the Republican claims--they weren't saying "we did increase short-term spending in order to save capitalism, but we decreased long-term government spending through financial reform and the health care law by xx billion dollars (similar to what Democrats have done many times in the past decades)." In other words, Democrats were working within the frame the Republicans set up for them. It seems like the Democrats weren't defending themselves, they were pretending to not be Democrats.

I'm sure this isn't true for every race in every district, but seems to be true overall. Do you agree? What do you think?

Never discuss politics in polite company

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Swift) — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 14:53:00 +0000

The other day I came across this chart on Ezra Klein's blog (he, in turn, got the chart from this fascinating/depressing Slate series):

I was intrigued. This chart seems so cut-and-dry, and maybe it is. I wanted to know what conservatives thought about this representation. What is it leaving out? What does it neglect to mention?

I tend to believe that there are people out there who understand the opposing argument and still hold their own opinion--in other words, there are people who are intelligent, well-read, and informed, and who still disagree with the other side's intelligent, well-read, and informed people. This belief makes political disagreements more work; it makes it impossible to disregard everything that I disagree with as stupid or poorly-informed.

Part of the reason I try to give the other side credit is that I have smart friends who fall all over the political spectrum. There are five or six people with whom I discuss politics on a more or less regular basis. They are people whose opinions I trust and respect. I recently sent Glenn Greenwald's scathing critique of Obama to my more liberal-minded friends, and they responded with some insightful points that helped me put his argument into context and understand it better.

So, back to the chart. I wanted to know what my conservative friends thought about this graph. I didn't know where to look online for a rebuttal, if there was one (I did check a few conservative blogs and sites, but couldn't come up with a rebuttal). My next step was to send it on to a couple of my conservative friends to see what they would say. The problem is, I knew they wouldn't respond. Not because they didn't have anything to say, but because they traditionally don't respond to my political emails.

And who could blame them? I think most people would get tired of having articles emailed to them that essentially call into question the sanity of their beliefs (I wish I would get more such emails, but that's a different story). On the other hand, my liberal friends tend to respond to my emails . . . .

If it ends up that I can only discuss politics with people I already agree with, what's the point?

Sites like PolitiFact, FactCheck, and Snopes do good work, but they don't supply substantive policy rebuttals (I've checked: none of them talk about the chart posted above). Is the answer simply a reliance on debate sites like ProCon and Debatapedia? These are great resources, but they all imply that we have to discuss politics in arenas that separate us from our opinions.

So, what do you recommend? Is there a strategy you use to discuss difficult issues with people who hold different views than your own? Do you agree with the old adage that you should never discuss politics or religion in polite company? Is there a way around this ideological gridlock?

The Wal*Marts of the Attention Economy

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Swift) — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 18:53:00 +0000

The Abuse of Rhetoric: Demagogy in The Economics of Attention and Saving Persuasion.

Both Lanham and Garsten comment on the proper and improper uses of rhetoric. Garsten posits that rhetoric is acceptable insofar as it is contained within the realm of persuasion, free from manipulation and pandering (2). Lanham argues that rhetoric is acceptable as long as it is allowed to serve as filter in the new economics of attention (19). While the thrust of both arguments is firmly in rhetoric's proper use, each adds to the discussion of the abuse of rhetoric—a concept I will refer to as “demagogy.” Lanham's and Garsten's models, when combined, suggest a new definition for the concept of demagogy. I will trace each rhetorician's definition of demagogy and then introduce a new definition based on a combination of the two.

Lanham's Demagogue

Lanham defines demagogy somewhat indirectly by showing two examples of what demagogy isn’t. The first is the notion that demagogy is polemic or agonistic debate. This theory is widely held—we are frequently told never to discuss tough issues such as politics or religion in polite company. To Lanham, this advice becomes more damaging to our democracy the more it is followed: “In democracies, we always call the methods by which we come to common purpose ‘politics’ and scorn them, as if there were some other way to decide business in a democracy” (Lanham 58). To Lanham, even nasty discussion and debate does not fit in the realm of demagogy.

Lanham's second anti-example is the idea that demagogues use ornamentation and flowery tropes. Lanham defines this desire for style-less substance in his “C-B-S” (clarity, brevity, sincerity) model: “You have a message that you want to send to someone else. It must be clear: you don’t want the wrapping to obscure the stuff. It must be brief. You don’t want to waste anybody’s time. . . . And you must be sincere. You must not, that is, have any designs on anybody, try to persuade them of anything. You must say exactly what you mean, neither more nor less. You owe the whole truth to everybody” (137). Lanham suggests that the C-B-S theory is not very useful: “As a way to live with others, it is unworkable. It suffers from the worst fault a theory can suffer from. It leaves out much of what it sets out to explain―human behavior. And if it does not work as a theory of behavior, still less does it work as a theory of expression. You don’t, as Sarah Churchill once said, owe the whole truth to everybody. You adjust what you say to time and place. A message is not an inert package of lead shot. It is intended for a particular recipient, with particular abilities and sensibilities” (140).

The rest of Lanham's discussion explores the idea that rhetoric serves as the invisible hand in the marketplace of attention (19). Rather than being a frivolous display of demagogy-based superfluity, rhetoric acts as a filter, directing attention toward the most useful and interesting rhetors. Other than this anti-description of demagogues, however, demagogy is outside the scope of Lanham's theory. He ignores the possibility that some rhetoricians might abusively take up more than their fair share of the attention market, that some individuals or institutions gain such rhetorical capital that they have a monopoly in the attention economy.

Garsten's Demagogue

Garsten begins his definition of demagogue at the same place Lanham does: the idea that passionate argument is a bad thing. For Garsten, the problem in a democratic polis isn't what he calls “messy public discourse”—passionate disagreement is key to Garsten’s understanding of true persuasion (211). The problem comes when a rhetor hijacks the discussion, moving it from the realm of rhetorical persuasion to the realm of demagogy. A rhetor hijacks the discussion either through manipulation or pandering. Garsten defines manipulation as “indoctrinating” the audience, and pandering as “simply repeating what [the audience] already think[s]” (9). In essence, the demagogue either substitutes his/her thought for the audience's (manipulation), or substitutes the audience's thought for his/her own (pandering). In either case, the demagogue is not appealing to the audience members' capacity judgment, a capacity Garsten believes to be central to any successful incorporation of rhetoric into public discourse: “[my] concept of persuasion points, in turn, to the human capacity for practical judgment. By judgment I mean the mental activity of responding to particular situations in a way that draws upon our sensations, beliefs, and emotions without being dictated by them in any way reducible to a simple rule” (7). Judgment becomes the ideal driving force in Garsten's version of the market of attention by engaging their personal biases. I will return to this idea of judgment as market force after a completing the discussion of Garsten's handling of demagogy.

Garsten and Lanham also both argue for the virtue of situated argumentation, of tailoring the message to the audience, as non-demagogic positive forms of rhetoric. Garsten traces fear of demagogues from Hobbes to Rousseau and Kant. Hobbes was so worried about demagogy that he outlawed any “rhetoric of conscience” that put trust in individual sovereignty (56). Rousseau’s fear led him to believe in an internalized sovereign, a public conscience that would limit the influence of demagogues (64). Kant took Rousseau’s stance one step further, arguing that rhetoric should abide by the “authoritative standard” of reason (Garsten 96). Garsten takes a different approach: “The rhetorical approach to deliberation differs from these recent theories in that it appeals to no concept of public reason, accepts that publicity and transparency are not always best, and suggests that partiality, passion, and even prejudice have a legitimate and often productive role to play in democratic deliberations” (5). For Garsten, partiality, passion, and prejudice are fair game in rhetoric as long as they engage the audience's judgment. Without this engagement the rhetor becomes a demagogue, one who warps the audience's judgment through either manipulation or pandering.

The New Demagogue

If Garsten’s demagogue is a judgment-warper, Lanham’s demagogue would be a market-warper, a rhetor who has somehow unfairly captured attention. The problem could happen when the demagogue tricks individuals’ judgment, the invisible hand of the market that usually navigates the argument marketplace skillfully. When individuals’ judgment is clouded by pandering or manipulation, they direct their attention disproportionately in the direction of the panderer or the manipulator. This is the problem Hobbes, Rousseau, and Kant all tried to avoid by removing individual judgment from the persuasion equation.

In the new model of rhetoric suggested by Lanham, the audience shifts from the receivers of an argument to the reward for the successful rhetor. The audience is no longer simply the listening polis, but more accurately becomes the measure by which rhetors are judged—the best rhetors will command the largest market share of attention: “[o]ut there, all you rent is 'eyeballs' (Lanham 233). The same shift can be said in Garsten’s model—he has freed up the attention market from the shackles of the Leviathan, the regulations of the universal conscience and reason, in order to allow judging individuals to make decisions on their own.

Garsten acknowledges that demagogues will always be around, at least as long as liberty and diversity exist (200-01), but attempts to preempt the problem of demagogy by training rhetors in the art of seeing the other side: “Citizens who can use speech to draw one another into exercising this capacity for judgment will find themselves more attentive to one another’s points of view, more engaged in the process of deliberation, and more attached to its outcome. That, at least, is the idea of rhetorical deliberation to which I would like to attract attention” (175). Garsten trusts that with a renewed trust in individual judgment will come a heightened focus on the kind of argument that can win the “other side” over.
Based on the combined ideas of demagogy put forth by Lanham and Garsten, I propose a new definition of the demagogue that would accurately capture the principles of attention economics powered by persuasion and regulated by judgment. My definition of “demagogue” is audience-based: if an argument will only be persuasive to people who already share the rhetor’s opinion, she is not engaging their judgment and is therefore a demagogue. If, on the other hand, the rhetor crafts an argument that engages her opponents in the debate and prompts them to exercise their capacity for judgment, she is not a demagogue. The rhetor cannot simply repeat shared values to an audience that doesn’t hold the same worldview (pandering), nor will the true rhetor attract an ideologically diverse audience through manipulation (due to Garsten-inspired trust of individual judgment). Garsten’s rhetor would never need to make an argument directly to people who already agree completely, as that would not engage any capacities of judgment.

This definition of demagogy is particularly useful today in the very real attention economy created in the digital realm. In Cicero’s day, when the audience consisted of selections of the polis literally roped into their role as audience, the focus of rhetoric was solely on creating good and ethical arguments. Today, that focus cannot be lost, but must also be coupled with the art of attracting an audience. We must consider the skill of attracting the right kind of attention, made up of by people we disagree with as well as those we agree with.

Potential rhetoric

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Swift) — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 20:08:00 +0000

Traditional rhetoric was a strategic venture in persuasion, featuring a rhetor consciously making arguments in rhetorical situations to a particular group of people. Ideas of identification and attitude (Burke), individuals and societies (Dewey), and rhetoric and dialectic (Plato, Aristotle, Kasteley), have helped me understand a new way of looking at rhetoric, exemplified in my own life in regards to politics and Facebook.

I do a lot of reading about politics—I thoroughly enjoy the back-and-forth that constitutes my mixed list of opinion and news sources. When I find a particularly compelling argument, I often post a link to that argument on Facebook (or another similar social site). Most of the time I'm not even sure who's reading the stuff I post, and there's really no way to tell. But, my justification for doing this comes from a new realization I had while studying this past semester, and that realization boils down to the the difference between kinetic rhetoric and potential rhetoric.

Kinetic energy is exhibited when a paint can falls and splatters all over the floor. Kinetic energy is expended to get an object moving now. Kinetic persuasion, then, is the focus of traditional—or, as Burke would call it, “old”—rhetoric (“Rhetoric Old and New”), the kind where a single rhetor marshals the available means of persuasion, stands up in front of an audience, and works to change minds the moment his argument is heard.

Potential energy is a different story, a story I learned partly through Burke's explanation of art as primarily based on experience (Counter-statement 77). Where kinetic energy puts a paint can on a ladder, potential energy promises future energy stored in that paint can. In order to increase potential energy, one must simply move the paint bucket higher up on the ladder. The same is true for rhetoric: potential persuasion is the kind that is more focused on networks and relationships—what Burke often calls “identification” (“Responsibilities of National Greatness” 37)—and less focused on winning hearts and minds. Potential rhetoricians, then, are more engaged in the art of small talk than the art of argumentation. They know that, in order to be persuasive in the future, they must focus on relationships now. They understand exactly what Burke and Dewey understood: while bullet points and tropes are rhetorically effective, some persuasion is more about bringing people together and uniting around common values.

Because of this understanding, and as I have come to value the work of aesthetic theorists like Burke and Dewey, I value communication and interactions like my political postings on Facebook: rhetorical in nature but not in purpose. These posts can unify people and help them bond in meaningful ways. I can greatly increase my persuasive energy as I build these relationships and bonds—as I move the paint bucket higher and higher on the ladder. Eventually, when the time is right, I'll make some kinetic argument that will push the bucket off the ladder. True potential rhetoric is not strategic, though: its highest power comes from building true relationships without strategically plotting at all. Potential rhetoric is more about the network than the agenda.

Works Cited:

Burke, Kenneth. Counter-Statement. University of California Press, 1968. Print.

---. "Responsibilities of National Greatness." The Nation 1967: 46-50.

---. "Rhetoric--Old and New." Journal of General Education V.April (1951): 203-209.

Dialectic and Non-Aristotelian Rhetoric

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Swift) — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 21:29:00 +0000

In Phaedrus, Plato demonstrates a surprisingly Burkean philosophy of rhetoric. Kenneth Burke believes that poetic rhetoric derives power from the identification it creates, the effects of shared experiences that come through a focus on creating a common experience rather than a polemical or persuasive artifact. Plato never mentioned the term “poetic rhetoric,” but indirectly discussed the concept in depth.

For example, one of Plato's strongest critiques of rhetoric is aimed at rhetoricians who focus solely on onetime persuasive speechmaking. Plato claims that rhetoric is more powerful when rhetoric is viewed as part of the ongoing give-and-take of dialectic:

The reason they cannot define rhetoric is that they are ignorant of dialectic. It is their ignorance that makes them think they have discovered what rhetoric is when they have mastered only what is necessary to learn as preliminaries. So they teach these preliminaries and imagine their pupils have received a full course in rhetoric. (69-70)

These preliminaries, referred to by Plato as “methods” (65) and “techniques” (69), roughly equate to what Burke would refer to as “old rhetoric,” the bare bones of persuasive speechmaking. Burke and Plato disagree with those, like Lysias, who seem to think that these forms are enough, that speeches should be focused on figures of speech rather than context and discourse.

Plato argues that rhetoric is more powerful when the words are crafted by rhetors “standing in front of” their audience (74) able to engage in back-and-forth “in their own defense” (82). This experiential addition to rhetoric, the necessary addition to the bare bones of rhetoric, is known to Burke as identification; to Plato as dialectic. Plato's dialectic requires a persuasive strategy which requires immediate response and discussion—a much more experiential type of persuasion than the passive one-to-many type taught by Aristotle as a way to move large audiences. For Plato, the elements of rhetoric are still important and useful, but only when used between parties who are able to examine motives and question assertions. This real-time critical analysis that sets Lysias apart from Socrates—Lysias would make strategic assertions at people, Socrates would discuss issues with people. Co-argumentation, this polishing of ideas in an informed and engaged discussion, requires that both sides allow themselves to be influenced through genuinely listening and applying opponents' ideas to their own.

Through this opening to influence and applying opposing ideas, Plato's dialecticians engage in an experience that requires all parties to be present and involved. If someone is passively listening—if they don't engage in the experience—the dialectical debate loses their input and criticism. It is only as all present parties engage that the experience can meet its full dialectical potential.

Socrates grants the best rhetoricians the ability to live up to his most respected position: Nehamas suggests that “The knowledge Socrates attributes to the true rhetorician . . . is at least in part the knowledge he has earlier attributed to the dialectician or philosopher” (xli). Plato's true rhetorician is able to combine the elements of dialectical experiences—elements that approach arguments as ongoing experiences rather than isolated statements of truth—with the polished methods and techniques of Lysias' rhetoric.

This combination, “forever immortal” in Plato's eyes (83), is the highest form of persuasion. This kind of rhetoric leads the speaker and the audience together toward better understanding. An understanding of this principle, Plato asserts, is how truly successful rhetoricians become successful: “Then, and only then, will you be able to use speech artfully” (83).

All quotes come from Alexander Nehamas' translation of Phaedrus.

Kenneth Burke on Technology

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Swift) — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 17:20:00 +0000

Kenneth Burke is prophetic in his critique of technology, foreseeing the dominance and prominence of technology in our culture long before the modern personal computer was even a twinkle in Steve Jobs' eye. Burke gives three suggestions to help us deal with the all-powerful force of the cutting edge: first, live with the vices and learn from the virtues; second, establish a habit of thoughtful reflective deliberation; third, embrace inefficiency.

Burke's critique of the obsession with technological vices is tempered by his argument that “society is sound only if it can prosper on its vices, since virtues are by very definition rare and exceptional” (114). In learning to live with the tech-vice majority we should listen to the rare and exceptional users of technology, the ones who have maximized the virtues of our technology. We should keep our eyes out for uses of technology that stimulate discussion, build communities, and establish meaningful relationships. Such endeavors merit more attention than those that create echo chambers, promote narcissism, or craft illusions of real interactions.

Burke suggests that thoughtful deliberation can be a powerful tool in controlling the vice of technology, a tool that has proven efficient at harnessing another potentially devastating force: government. Part of the reason our government works so well is because it doesn’t—it often takes months of bureaucratic squabbling for a president to do something as simple as declare war, a fact kings of the past would laugh at for its absurdity. Yet, it’s that same squabbling and longwinded debate that keeps the democracy in line, Kenneth Burke argues. Democracy is a successful blend of “organized distrust, ‘protest made easy,’ a babble of discordant voices, a colossal getting in one’s own way” (114). This engaged and somewhat inefficient discourse keeps our elected leadership on track and working. Like government, technology requires a constant reflective voice to control and guide it. Only through constant reflection and debate can vices as potentially ruinous as government or technology be harnessed for the good of society. Only as we consciously employ an “organized distrust” of technology will it ever be as productive as Burke’s vision of American democracy.

So what principles should guide the babble of discordant voices that would harness the power of technology? Burke suggests that inefficiency should be one such guiding principle, that the opposite is little more than an end-unto-itself: “efficiency breeds but the necessity of more efficiency” (120). Burke worries that when we focus our efforts on making life easier we inevitably create more problems that then require new inventions to make life easier. Each technology creates problems that future technologies will need to “fix,” bringing with them more problems. Eventually, this spiral results in a very complex, highly sensitive web of fixes and counter-fixes (120). As we analyze our technology, then, we must remember that inefficiency is sometimes needed to “prevent the machine from becoming too imperious and forcing us into social complexities which require exceptional delicacy of adjustment” (120-21).

In technology as in government, our chance to harness the power of our vices rests on the shoulders of individuals. We must take initiative and act on Burke’s suggestions in order to keep the vices from overrunning the virtues. Such actions could seem counterproductive, but really they shift the focus from the efficient and the easy to the pragmatic and the possible. Such a shift is based on the powerful underlying notion that “the criterion of ‘usefulness’ has enjoyed much more prestige than its underlying logic merited” (90). A paradigm shift of this magnitude, in Burke’s eyes, might actually succeed in channeling the rushing tide of progress.

All quotes taken from Burke's Counter-statement.

Avatar and Religion

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Swift) — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 04:29:00 +0000

The Vatican came out recently against what they perceive as Avatar's attack on religion. As they see it, Avatar preaches a gospel of nature rather than God, of naturalism rather than theism. I've heard this criticism echoed as a broader critique of environmentalist policies and general beliefs about caring for and preserving the environment.

I agree that, when taken too far, reverence for nature can distort or supplant traditional worship of God. But it doesn't necessarily have to. In fact, many religious environmentalists have managed to balance belief in God and protectiveness for God's creations.

I'll be the first to admit Avatar can be overly preachy at time. It is clearly advocating a number of agendas at the same time, one of which is environmentalism. But, just because someone or something is pro-environment does not mean they are somehow anti-God or anti-religion. Maybe their environmentalism is supplanting some other obsession.

In my opinion, Avatar is not replacing the God of religion with the god of nature, but is instead putting the god of nature above the god of money. Avatar's environmental message is not that we should stop worshiping the God of the Bible, but that we should reconsider our obsession with financial gain ignorant of the world around us.

Maybe the god of profit doesn't always justify abuse of the creations we're here to defend as stewards.

The Pedagogy of Twitter

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Swift) — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 13:27:00 +0000

There's no doubt that presidential candidate Barack Obama did more to advance politicians' use of social media than any other candidate in the 2008 election. Obama built on Howard Dean's revolutionary 2004 campaign, which took advantage of social media to build a following, organize activists, and ultimately connect with potential voters. Scholars across academic boundaries are uniting around the banner of social media with the hope that they will be able to connect with their students on the level that politicians like Barack Obama were able to connect with potential voters. President Obama's huge success with the youth vote in the 2008 elections suggests that following his example might teach us a thing or two about connecting with our students.

Teachers of writing and composition have particularly interesting things to learn from this shift toward the digital. Andrea Lunsford recently did a study of the writing habits of young people. She found that young people write more than ever, and that a striking percentage of that writing happens online. As teachers of writing, we have a choice to make. We can instruct students solely based on the traditional page, or we can teach writing where our students are actually writing: online. We can help our students do high-quality writing and research in the digital sphere, making them better writers where they write in their personal and professional lives as well as their educational lives. Just as President Obama has taken advantage of Twitter as a medium to create connections between followers and a cause, teachers can use Twitter to create connections between students and a subject.

While Internet newcomer Twitter has been embraced as a breakthrough in social media and mass communication, and Facebook has revolutionized the way millions of users experience the Internet, neither has been studied as an example of a medium for successful rhetorical argumentation. Scholars are becoming more interested in “microblogging” as a medium, but have yet to analyze the pedagogical implications in these capsules of prose.In this presentation, I will first briefly introduce Twitter as a writer's medium, after which I will discuss three types of rhetorical identification that Twitter allows students to create: with the teacher, with peers in the class, and with experts in their field. I will also suggest possible pedagogical applications related to each type of identification, built specifically to forge these relationships.

The accompanying "Prezi" presentation can be found here.

Twitter and the classroom

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Swift) — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 02:57:00 +0000

Below are listed a number of possible Twitter-based activities and assignments that can help students and teachers connect in new ways (or old ways using new media).

For an opinion piece:

The teacher tweets a question, something like: “What do you enjoy reading?” This kind of discussion helps students see that their teacher cares about their opinions (making them more willing to share those opinions in a graded setting) while allowing the teacher and the student to interact in an ungraded experience outside class.

For an analysis piece:

The teacher posts her favorite line of the piece on Twitter, inviting the other students to do the same. Students will come to respect the instructor's expertise as it is made available.

For a researched position:

Tweet three different sides to your argument. This will give the teacher the opportunity to respond in a non-threatening and very informative way to one of the most important concepts in a research assignment. The students will get these small comments and know that the teacher has put forth effort reading their work and formulating a response to it.

For a multimodal composition:

Tweet a link to your favorite webpage. Comment on the way the page is organized. The instructor, again, gains credibility through reading and commenting on students' personal opinions.

In summary, instructors will be able to connect with their students as they comment regularly on students' small and low-key opinions and assignments. Teachers will create an ambient scholarly buzz that will help the students feel connected to the class discussions and readings.

With their Peers

Some might wonder why Twitter is better at creating rhetorical identification than non-microblogging forms such as whiteboards, emails, class discussions, etc. The key comes in this element of phatic communication: the classroom will be augmented with an ambient buzz of scholarly discussion, collaboration, and commenting. Students will be more connected as they interact in such a proprioception-oriented manner.

For an opinion piece:

Write your first paragraph. Now condense that down into a sentence. Now condense that down into a tweet. Now post. Read and comment on 3 other argument sentences. This exercise helps students find the essence of their paper, which helps them focus their future drafts. It also gives students the opportunity to communicate “phatic-ly” with each other, to comment on others' efforts and identify with their opinions.

Post a link to a digital draft of your paper, along with a short description. Now go read two other papers and write comments. As students read their peers' extended arguments, they will become more invested in the success of their peers.

For an analysis piece:

Find an article that uses irony. Tweet the link and comment on whether you think the irony worked or didn’t work for the intended audience. Read three other tweets and comment on their analysis. This will fulfill the twofold purpose of helping the students develop a critical eye for audience awareness while at the same time helping them get to know each other and express themselves in phatic-based discussion.

Find an article whose audience is tree-huggers. Tweet the link. Respond to whether you are a part of that audience. Read and comment on peers' tweets. This assignment helps students learn to pick out audiences while at the same time giving them the chance to identify with other audiences. Students will get to know each other by reading and discussing peers' analysis and statements of belief.

For a researched position:

Condense your argument down to 140 characters and post it to Twitter. Now respond to another student's argument with a question. As students engage in this short-and-sweet peer-review session they will learn principles of analysis and coordination.

Find other members of the class who are researching similar topics. Tweet links relevant to all your papers. This example of scholarly proprioception will help students learn to engage in a scholarly community and share the load of research.

For a multimodal composition:

Tweet a response to at least three peers' profile pictures on Twitter. Does their picture capture them as people? Tweet any suggestions. Many students love pictures, and inviting them to look at their friends' pictures with a rhetorically critical eye will help them learn the principles, get to know their peers better, and grow closer together as a class.

In summary, as students share blips of informed thought with each other, they will begin to get a feel for how their peers think about the class's readings and discussions. This understanding will help them feel comfortable to engage in peer reviews, to share research, and to discuss class readings.

With Experts

If Twitter is so effective in passing links, is it equally as effective in helping students engage in a back-and-forth with experts in their fields? I believe it is, and here are a few examples of how that can come about:

For an opinion piece:

Read at least two other op-eds on your issue and tweet the more powerful along with why it’s the more powerful. Not only will students read up on their issue, but they will engage in the thoughtful discussion on the issue. This will help establish them as investigators of that particular issue, helping them join the topic's discourse community on Twitter.

Find at least five twitter streams of people who tweet about your issue. Follow them and ask them their favorite source on the matter. This is a wonderful way for students to engage with experts in their field. People are often quite willing to help over Twitter, especially if the student has spent the time to find high-quality Twitter streams.

For an analysis piece:

Tweet a link to your analysis along with the thesis statement. Ask for comments. This will invite the comments of those who agree as well as those who disagree with the student's analysis, engaging the student in the real debate about the issue. Here are some ways this might happen.

For a researched position:

Find a link to an opinion that disagrees with your own. Post it along with the reason you disagree with the opinion. Students will practice engaging with opposing viewpoints. Twitter's accessibility means that others—maybe even some who disagree with the student—will be able to read and comment.

For a multimodal composition:

Tweet a link to your completed project. Ask for feedback. It's amazing how many people are willing to help when contacted through social media. Students might even learn that someone in their network is an expert visual designer.

Find a twitter user who has a webpage you admire. Tweet them and ask how they designed their page. Even if the expert never responds, the students will have found a website whose design they appreciate and spent a few minutes crafting and sending a tweet. If the expert does respond, that's just icing on the cake.

In summary, students become more active scholars and citizens as they interact in the discourse community they are entering with their writing assignments. They are able to see that their issues really matter to the outside world, and that their assignments are preparing them to interact with experts on their issue. This interaction helps give students the perspective and confidence to actually engage with the experts, rather than summarizing or parroting their arguments.

For the full theoretical discussion of these assignments, see my series of blog posts based on my MLA 2009 presentation, and the accompanying "Prezi" presentation can be found here.

Conclusion and Bibliography

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Swift) — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 23:22:00 +0000

Despite Twitter’s brevity and the popularity of doubting it as a serious medium, Twitter allows for complex communication and pedagogical application that makes use of rhetorical identification and persuasion. This power is a compelling reason for teachers to consider social media as a veritable force in the classroom. We should learn from the model of the traditional newspapers: part of the reason they are losing business now is their reticence to move online and learn the new system the Internet makes possible. If we as teachers don't at least consider new media, we'll wake up one day to find that we have lost our monopoly on teaching writing. Someone else will have moved in and made us obsolete.

While I believe in letting students take charge of their own education, students won’t invest themselves in Twitter unless they see its usefulness and power. And they will never see its usefulness or power unless we guide them. This is our call as teachers: help our students learn to read and write as they take their scholarship to the next level of digital engagement.

The accompanying "Prezi" presentation can be found here.

Works Cited/Referenced

UP. Encyclopedia of Rhetoric: (e-reference edition). Oxford University Press. Brigham Young University (BYU). Web. 28 October 2009

Bitzer, Lloyd. “The Rhetorical Situation.” Philosophy and Rhetoric 1 (1968): 1-14.

Print.

Burke, Kenneth. A Rhetoric of Motives. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969. Print.

Consigny, Scott. “Rhetoric and Its Situations.” Philosophy and Rhetoric 7.3 (1974): 175-86. Print.

Dewey, John. The Public and its Problems. Chicago: Gateway, 1946. Print.

Godin, Seth. Unleashing the Ideavirus. New York: Hyperion, 2001. Print.

Hauser, Gerald A. Introduction to Rhetorical Theory. 2nd ed. Prospect Heights:

Waveland Press, 2002. Print.

Haven, Cynthia. “Stanford study finds richness and complexity in students' writing.” Stanford University News 12 Oct 2009. Web. 16 Dec 2009.

Jakobson, Roman. "Closing Statement: Linguistics and Poetics." Style In Language.

Ed. Thomas Sebeok. Cambridge: MIT, 1960. Print.

Johnson, Steven. “How Twitter Will Change the Way We Live.” Time 4 Jun 2009. Time.com. Web. 4 Jun 2009.

Lanham, Richard A. The Economics of Attention: Style and Substance in the Age of Information. 1st ed. University Of Chicago Press, 2006. Print.

Levinson, Paul. New New Media. 1st ed. Allyn & Bacon, 2009. Print.

O'Reilly, Tim et al. The Twitter Book. O'Reilly Media, 2009. Print.

Rosen, Jay. “Mindcasting: Defining the Form, Spreading the Meme.” Quote and Comment 19 May 2009. Web. 17 Nov 2009.

“Social Isolation and New Technology.” Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project 4 Nov 2009. Web. 30 Nov 2009.

“Stanford Study of Writing - Home.” Stanford Study of Writing. Web. 30 Nov 2009.

Stross, Randall. “Hey, Just a Minute (or Why Google Isn’t Twitter).” The New York Times 14 Jun 2009. NYTimes.com. Web. 30 Nov 2009.

Surowiecki, James. The Wisdom of Crowds. New York: Anchor, 2005. Print.

With Experts

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Swift) — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 13:25:00 +0000

Writing instructors shouldn't underestimate the power of Twitter to engage students in the content of the course. It is important to note that Twitter is not just a service for prioritizing Twitter information, but a tool to organize the information of the Internet as a whole. This comes from what venture capitalist and Twitter investor Fred Wilson calls “the power of the passed link” (Schonfeld). Using Twitter’s powerful system, essentially a system of digital road signs, savvy tweeters are able to discover and propagate influential and interesting ideas by passing links and using others’ suggestions as a way to navigate the information highway. This passing of content from one context to another fits into Barbara Warnick’s claim that “electronic media content has become rife with intertextuality” (93). Warnick suggests the hyperlink, one of the most intertextual elements found on Twitter, as an example of digital intertextuality (94). The hyperlink allows ideas to begin on a blog or website (Warnick’s digital intertextuality) and then spread to—and through—Twitter.

This is where “following” the right people on Twitter turns out to be invaluable: if a student is writing about politics, for example, she will follow—and receive tweets from—individuals who tweet about politics, often those in her region. Eventually, she will learn who are the most influential and the most well connected, and add to or subtract from the group of people she follows. In a short amount of time, that list of followers will become more helpful to her than the local paper or the blogosphere, precisely because they will pass on their own timely experiences as well as up-to-the-minute useful links to relevant information from all over the web. The simplicity and directness of these passed links, along with individuals’ commentary and personal experiences, combine to give the Twitter reader a very powerful supplement to traditional means of getting information. Twitter doesn’t always supplant traditional media; it supplements them through the referral system of passed links.

Sample Twitter applications

For an opinion piece:

For an analysis piece:

For a researched position:

For a multimodal composition:

the rhetorical situation room

The Rhetoric of Dreaming

The Rhetoric of Poor

The SC's role in Speech Inflation

Someday?

The Rhetoric of Sorry

Us vs. Them

The Rising Cost of Free Speech

OWS is a Meme

Playground Rules

The Greed Fairy

CEO Bonuses --> Carbon Tax

In defense of pith

Recommended readings: Osama bin Laden

Arguments during the 2010 midterms

Never discuss politics in polite company

The Wal*Marts of the Attention Economy

Potential rhetoric

Dialectic and Non-Aristotelian Rhetoric

Kenneth Burke on Technology

Avatar and Religion

The Pedagogy of Twitter

Twitter and the classroom

Conclusion and Bibliography

With Experts