A Winded Recollection

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Looking back on this road to understanding rhetoric and remediation, it seems like it all happened so quickly. We've been painfully deriving the meaning and significance of the key terms we've studying closely enough to form meaningful relationships with them. We first met them with fear and resistance, unfamiliar with their nature. Over time, and after putting them under our analytical microscopes to see their structure, we've been able to carefully examine their applications. Not only for a classroom or scholarly setting, but how to utilize them in everyday life to really exercise our intellectual muscles. This class thus far has been like a child eating their first steak. We cut off large chunks and forced them into our mouths, underestimating the toughness in comparison to the sharpness of our proverbial teeth. In our excitement to consume (or understand) something new, we got a little ahead of ourselves. Looking back on it now, I feel I’ve chewed, churned and digested the concepts so repeatedly that they’re second nature now. 

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There are a few concepts that stand out as especially important. These include: composition, the rhetorical situation, and remediation. I was naïve enough to come into this class thinking that I had a steady grasp on composition. I mean, I did take about a million classes to study the English language and “how to write” through my compulsory education. I’d been taught to compose all sorts or mind-numbing essays for an audience comprised of folks who would judge my ability to inform or persuade on a scale of 1-5. Of the classes I’ve taken in college, none have given me the ammunition to blow an audience away quite like this class has. The study of rhetoric goes hand-in-hand with successful composition. Even with all of the emphasis on creating something meaningful, the greater role is played by the revision process, where we learn to become more flexible with our work. To break apart what we’d spent so long crafting, chipping away at imperfections to reveal of piece of work that is all our own. 

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Rhetoric has got to be the scariest word we’ve had to define. Rhetoric is the small and mighty of all the concepts we’ve been working with thus far this semester. It packs a heavy punch, carrying a fist full of vocabulary that no one with a formal background on the subject had been exposed to. Of those, the rhetorical situation encompasses the nature of rhetoric best. By understanding the rhetorical situation, we can examine a situation at face value and below to surface to write or create something that will impact an audience. The rhetorical situation puts the power in the hands of the composer to influence an audience. When done correctly, and with passion and charisma, there is virtually nothing that a rhetor can’t accomplish. 

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Media. When an unexposed person thinks of this word, they think TV, news, “big brother,” and so on. In this class we’ve learned that, while all of these things are media, it isn’t limited to the traditional understanding of the word. Media is the medium, media is all around us. Media is the building block of remediation. The little scavenger hunt that we did on Tuesday was a lot of fun. Not only because we were using what we’d learned to get creative under a time constraint to reveal that remediation is all around us, but because I realized that (like myself two months ago), most people don’t have a clue what it means. Remediation is like evolution, essential to our growth and survival in a changing world. Remediation allows us to take an original copy of something, duplicate in into another medium, and have a completely different perspective on the original concept while still retaining its integrity. 

In retrospect, I've personally gained a wealth of knowledge, as well as an entirely new perspective of composition as a whole. I know that this is just the beginning and I'm excited to use this knowledge as I continue to expand on it to become a more powerful writer, composer and orator.