Something written in today's readings caught my attention more than the rest. In "A call to action", Royster speaks to her experience as an editor at SAGE journal. She highlights the importance and personal gratification arising from striving to publish a journal which was "accessible to women from all walks of life."
This brought to my mind an important issue--well, perhaps not an issue, but certainly something worth pondering: how does rhetoric relate to the masses, to those not from the academic world? It does apply, this we know. But the texts and rhetoricians we have studied so far have certainly not concerned themselves with the masses. It was good to see Royster make a point about this in an otherwise very academically oriented piece of work.
This was especially interesting to me because it is an issue I hope to explore in my own project, both for myself and for anyone bored enough to peruse it. We do indeed see rhetoric all around us in our everyday lives--indeed, it is hard to go far without encountering some form of persuasive communication. But how does this "everyday rhetoric" compare with the formal theories and astute rhetoricians we've encountered in our academic lives, in this class?
I really want to explore this relationship, so as to find the importance of rhetorical studies. it's really been a struggle for me so far. This probably sounds weird, but I'd really like to speak with Royster on the subject. From her work, and from what others have written on the blog, it seems like something she too holds to be important.
This sounds really interesting to me. I had a thought earlier in the semester that I did not entertain further, but I considered analyses on the rhetorics of the meme. They are persuasive multi-modal texts, though brief. They even establish an ethos for themselves. Like "Grumpy Cat". Anything with a picture of her will relate to something she doesn't like. If we took a picture of her and put the word "Christmas" across the top, and nothing else, we would know that "Grumpy Cat" doesn't like Christmas. If I post that to my wall, then all my FaceBook friends will know that I don't like Christmas. I would do this for many rhetorical purposes, borrowing an established ethos. Maybe this is a stretch, but worth considering.
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