Porter – Rhetoric in (as) a Digital Economy

Porter, James E.  “Rhetoric in (as) a Digital Economy.”  in Rhetorics and Technologies : New Directions in Writing and Communication. Ed. Stuart Selber. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2010. Print. P. begins by noting that the digital economy of Web 2.0 should signal a paradigmatic shift in how we understand writing and rhetoric.  Relying on Anderson’s The Long Tail and Surowiecki’s The Wisdom of Crowds, P.... Read More

Cooper – Being Linked to the Matrix: Biology, Technology, and Writing

Cooper, Marilyn.  “Being Linked to the Matrix: Biology, Technology, and Writing.”  eds. Selber, Stuart A. Rhetorics and Technologies : New Directions in Writing and Communication. Studies in Rhetoric/Communication; Variation: Studies in Rhetoric/Communication. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2010. 15-32. C. begins by recounting how her early work in 1986 attempted to articulate a view of writing as social action or writing... Read More

Muckelbauer – The Future of Invention

Muckelbauer – The Future of Invention Chapter One – “The Problem of Change” Muckelbauer situates his book around one premise: the supposedly distinct scholarly approaches of humanism/postmodernism, foundationalism/anti-foundationalism, universalism/relativism have all hinge on a dialectical notion of change.  This means that if change is dialectical, every “new” reading academics perform is merely a negation of an existing reading. .... Read More

Ettlich – Theories of Invention in Late 19th Century American Rhetoric

Ettlich, Ernest Earl.  “Theories of Invention in Late Nineteenth Century American Rhetoric.”  Western Speech Journal 30 (1966):  233-241. E. notes that the topic of rhetorical invention has long been problematic/contested.  E. observes that Ramus’ revision of the liberal arts curriculum during the 1500s was the most serious challenge to rhetorical invention (classically conceived) before the 19th century.  Ramus assumed that invention... Read More

Berlin – The Transformation of Invention in 19th Century American Rhetoric

Berlin, James A. “The Transformation of Invention in Nineteenth Century American Rhetoric.”  Southern Speech Communication Journal 46 (1981):  292-304. 11 In this piece Berlin traces how the disappearance of invention as discovery occurred in the 19th century because of the “supremacy” of Campbell, Blair, and Whately in rhetorical theories of the 18th century.  In these three thinkers he identifies ideas that were compatible with... Read More