Theories of contemporary rhetoric

One of my hobbies is knitting so reading Williams reviews of contemporary rhetorical theories made me just want to take parts of all of them and knit them together to make one very eclectic theory. I mentioned in an earlier blog post that same thought about classical rhetoric. I think it’s a no-brainer that each predecessor influences the next theory.

New theories get developed based on the perceived flaws of the old ones. One thing that stands out for me is that some new theories just take an old theory and invert it. Like current traditional theory with its emphasis on the bottom-up approach (structure) (45) gave way to new rhetoric and Kinneavy’s top-down approach (knowledge-generating) (53). Another example of this kind of inversion is postmodern theory as defined by Raschke to mean “everything that cannot be compressed in the term modern”. Modern meaning an attitude, a method of thought dominated by “empiricism and rationalism” (88,89) as opposed to Derrida’s deconstruction theory that there is “no connection between reason and what words signify” (91). Currently we are now moving toward what Fukuyama says, the “Great Reconstruction” (95). Every one of these theories is an attempt to correct what studies and test results conclude is wrong with the one that came before it. Unfortunately none of the new theories have been that successful at least according to the kind of evaluation tools that are used. I wonder if more emphasis should be placed on how we evaluate writing. Maybe those tools are flawed? Again as in classical rhetorical theories, politics and economics has played a part in developing contemporary theories.

Something that really stood out about current- traditional, romantic, and new rhetorical theories was that they put the writer at the “center of composing” and “ignore the influence of the audience” (80). I do believe some writing can ignore audiences like one’s personal journal, but most writing is for an audience and I agree that the audience basically controls what the writer produces (81,82).

In my own writing for grad school I have courses that involve scholarly and creative writing for an audience ranging from the professor, to a peer review audience like my classmates. Those pieces of work have particular style and content just for that audience.
My blog about my son’s last year as a Penn State football player has a different audience. I write it for friends and family, but I know since it is on the Internet it could be read by others not in my immediate target audience. So often when I am writing something for this blog I think about whom else may read it and then I write from that perspective. So I can see how the audience dictates what you write.
My conclusion about all these theories is that each one has some good and bad points. The problem is the same in writing, what criteria do we use to sort out the good from the bad to come up with something useful to facilitate rhetoric.