For the past six weeks, my knowledge of composing and rhetoric has continuously grown immensely. Many key terms have been brought into light, reflection of course being one of them. What comes to mind when I think of rhetoric are the five cannons, as determined in the time of Ancient Greeks; arrangement, invention, style, memory, delivery, and rhetorical situation. Rhetorical situation, Bitzer tells us, is everywhere. Rhetorical situation is surrounded by context, and made up of three important constituents; exigence, audience, and constraints. According to Bitzer, rhetorical discourse comes into existence as a response to situation, and speech is given rhetorical significance by the situation. It is also important to know that rhetorical situation is a condition of discourse, and many rhetorical situations remain unsolved thus, it is not always necessary to come to a consensus, but I think that is the aim of rhetoric; persuasion. Rhetorical situation invites discourse capable of participating with the situation, rhetorical discourse is considered a fitting response to a situation, and the situation controls rhetorical response. Rhetoric, as we have established, is not only present in speech, but actually many different mediums, almost anywhere you find composition.
Composition is one of those things that is simply hard to define in it’s own nature. Something so omnipresent, with so many different variations credited to remediation, is made use of everyday. Words that come to mind are print, word-processing, and literacy. Kathleen Yancey determined, in her Keyword Moment, that “Literacy today is in the midst of tectonic change.” This is true. As a class, we had talked about how earlier forms of composition are on the brink of extinction. Technological advancements are everywhere, and they are changing everything we know about composing. Among other things that come to mind when I think of composition, are the names of different mediums employed specifically in this class. This became apparent when the Digital Studio came and gave their presentation, and we all became familiar with all these different computer programs waiting to be taken advantage of, that gave us an advantage in composition. Many classmates seemed to have taken that advantage in everything from glogsters, vuvox, and prezi, to more advanced programs like publisher, indesign, and photoshop. These experiences I found to be very valuable to my understanding of composing.
My idea of knowledge is conceptual of my own. It seems that knowledge is something that is self-sustaining, and the more of it you have the better. Knowledge can only be considered new in the sense that before you had it, it wasn’t yours. It is important to have prior knowledge before you can learn more about a particular subject. This is why college course are labeled appropriately; introductory, 2000’s, 3000’s, 4000’s. It’s importance to this class is simple, you want to possess more knowledge than what you had before the class. That knowledge then becomes useful for the next endeavor, and that’s the great thing about knowledge, you can only get more of it and more out of it.
Reflection is possibly the most important part of composition, and I’m not just saying that because it’s my keyword, and if I am, oh well. The three components of reflection are projection, retrospection, and revision. Each one I recognize as I analyze my own process of composition. Projection, to put it simply, is an considered an important process to reflection because it begins when we project ourselves onto what we compose, and see it as though someone else would see it if they were to examen it for themselves. Retrospection then shows us the importance of looking back, to the time when we were composing, and determine whether or not we are satisfied with the composition. If we are not, revision comes into play, and we change what we intend to see differently with our composition.
As of this present moment, my own theory of composing consists of inspiration, integration, and execution. To start with, before I compose I try to find inspiration from all the things that surround me. Then I put them to work by incorporating my own thoughts, this is what I mean by integration. Lastly, I execute my composition after I think I have it all figured out. I can’t really explain the rest, it just happens. But those first few things seem to be the most important, and most consistent, when approaching my own theory of composition. Composing is truly an art, as it is something that gives form to expression. I’ve said before, in previous journals, that an important element of composing, is the ability to spread democracy. Writing over the internet specifically has given democracy as we know it, a new voice. It’s as if the grassroots movement has gone completely digital, and I am a big advocate of this. I encourage everyone to stay updated with things that the government has been trying to impose, like blacklisting certain websites. Who is to say what is and is not appropriate to share over the web? In fact, I am going to be so bold as to post a link to sign a petition, time sensitive, if you believe what I believe about our freedoms of speech and composition.http://demandprogress.org/blacklist/
In sum, it is really so important that we understand that with this knowledge of composition comes a lot of freedom of expression too. Especially with the internet.What better way to, formally or informally, have our ideas shared with the world? And who knows what might someday come of that.
No comments:
Post a Comment