Here's my blog on classical rhetoric. I've never actually written a blog before, because despite being ridiculously verbal, I'm not very confessional. I want an audience to bounce off of, so blogs don't really appeal to me personally. However, they aren't really much different than webboard, so I can probably handle it.
I haven't finished the reading yet, so I'll probably put up another post before class but here's what I'm thinking so far. On page 17, Crowley and Hawhee (C&H) claim that, "Modern rhetoricians tend to think that its [language's] role is limited to the communication of facts." Really?!!? Perhaps this statement is true for rhetoricians (I don't think so), but it's completely, 100% incorrect for technical communicators. Carolyn Miller wrote an essay in 1979 explaining how limiting and almost misanthropic such a view was. Creating our reality with language is an essential, human function. In 1996 Slack, Doak, and Miller (different Miller) explained how technical communicators were moving away from the "clear channel" view of communication towards a post-modern, articulated view of communication. This view of communication holds that the framing, selection, and articulation of content not only creates the communication, but informs the reality of its writers and readers. Such a view is extremely powerful for everyone in the information age, but particularly valuable for technical communicators who must adopt it to become credible actors in the new economy.
Which brings me to Plato, or more specifically, the bone I have to pick with him. The Sophists put forth a view of language that rested on the idea that language allowed one to create a reality that worked, that did things. It did things by persuading others, but also by defining reality advantageously for audiences and rhetors alike. However, Plato essentially rejected this view of language in favor of the idea that language should attempt to accurately portray "reality." The problem with this view is that it presupposed a finite, knowable (at least theoretically, no one was wise or good enough to really know it) reality that everyone strived to uncover or define. Like the gold standard for money, it provided a basis for language to both stand on and be measured by. And like the gold standard for money, it has some real drawbacks. The problem is obvious. There isn't a knowable, theoretically or otherwise, reality. Consequently, Western culture wasted a lot of time trying to discover ways to know the truth, when we should have been looking at ways to use language.
When we see language as a tool to manipulate our environment with, we can use it more powerfully to create a "place" to live in. This view doesn't mean that we can say it's hot outside and go swimming when the therometer reads 32 degrees farenheit. (Ok we can say and do that, but it doesn't stop our lips from turning blue.) That's not a language use that works for us. Rather when we understand that describing o-rings as safe when they erode half-way through is just language manipulating our perceptions of o-rings, we can begin to ask questions and use language to work towards goals like launching shuttles that don't blow-up.
Plato's idea of a meaningful reality outside our perception and language side-tracked this more useful view communication. Basically, western culture wandered around in the linguistic desert for 2000 years searching for truth. Now, we're finally getting back to where the Sophists put us even though the ghost of Plato still haunts our cultural memory. Now, maybe, we can get some work done.
Kendall
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I suspect there's a difference between being confessional and being reflective. The blog, in its practical use here, is the perfect dialect tool.
Know that one can revise blog posts and add to them, too, if you want to add to your ideas multiple times.
You know, in our first week we talked a bit about the matrix. The central question is the matrix is Baudrillard's idea of the excluded middle, and the idea that so what if we don't know reality. Steak tastes better not knowing where it has been. Reality isn't all it's cracked up to be. This is something we see time and time again. Reality is just a perception, and that's okay. That's what we get when we move from Aristotle on, in particular. Deal with it, in an organized way.
Now, later we see rebellion toward the acceptance that not knowing reality is fine. No exit. Satre. But, well, reality bites, so deal with it. Solipsism.
All we need is gold, like you say, some form of measurement. Well, that's what stasis theory is--something to begin to see a standard; and once we're there, then let's argue to find truth.
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