Influences on My Research
This is a question I am likely to get: I will need to show how the readings on my list will impact my research. I take this to mean I will need to identify which sources could best support my future research, show how, and explain why. Since my research will be focused on identity (especially gender) and social media, two sources that I will definitely use are Cheryl Glenn’s Rhetoric Retold, Judith Butler’s Excitable Speech, and Kenneth Burke’s Rhetoric of Motives; I will also undoubtedly use some of the many digital rhetoric resources on my Composition Studies reading list.
Cheryl Glenn argues for a broader definition of rhetoric that includes women and other minorities in the rhetorical canon. Such a redefinition calls for a rhetoric of silence to be included. For example, Anne Askew’s refusal to answer her Inquisitor’s questions upon her arrest signify that she was aware of her rhetorical situation enough to realize that speaking would not change her audience’s minds. Instead, she chose not to speak, and in such a refusal denied the Inquisitor power over her. Surely this is not the only occasion when a marginalized figure exercised silence in a rhetorical manner (a typically arhetorical maneuver) . It might be difficult to measure rhetorical silence in social media, since to participate in social media is to interact in some way with the platform or artifacts on it (for example, posting a photo or liking a status, or even simply increase the page visit counter by one more page view), but perhaps there are other typically arhetorical maneuvers used in rhetorical ways.
Judith Butler also has some interesting notions pertaining to identity and language. Specifically, she discusses the military’s Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy as it pertains to stating homosexual desire and intention. The presumption behind the policy is that a statement of homosexual desire is also a statement of intention to act on that desire, but Butler cautions us not to conflate desire with intention. Such a conflation oversimplifies language. She also points out that the distinction between desire and intention is observed when someone makes a racist threat; it is generally taken for granted that that particular person may not intend to act on the stated (violent?) desire, thus keeping desire and intent separated. This distinction has implications for digital rhetoric, especially considering some of the rhetorical sites I may study in the future (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube comments sections, Instagram, Reddit, 4chan) are some areas where cyber bullying and threats are most prevalent. The distinction also has implications for issues of power and marginalization: if racist threats are written off as desire with no intent, but issues of homosexuality and gender are not, what does that say about who is allowed to express their identity and who is not? Why does the racist threat get to slip by, while the homosexual declaration is penalized? These are issues of identity that will likely appear in my research, and Judith Butler will be able to give me a framework from which to examine them.
Kenneth Burke’s notion of identification is also an interesting concept to apply to studies of social media. Many people (especially my generation and younger) have spent a lot of their lives on social media and use it as a main route for communication with family, friends, and sometimes complete strangers. Users create an online identity for themselves that may or may not match who they are in real life: they choose which photos, tweets, statuses to post; what photos, tweets, and statuses to like, comment on, and retweet; and what pages or accounts to follow or subscribe to. In effect, they choose how they are represented to a select circle of people, usually with the hope of being accepted or liked by them. Thus, users engage in identification in order to choose which artifacts to post to their social media.
Another resources I can use is Bakhtin’s concept of double-voicedness (saying something simultaneously literally and figuratively) as it plays out in social media, especially as it could pertain to Burkean identification: how people say something that can be taken multiple ways in order to both make fun of and refrain from alienating some people.
I could also use Miller’s concept of genre as a social action for some fruitful discussions about digital rhetoric. I co-authored an article that examined how women feel less comfortable writing in certain genres than others because of the kind of knowledge each genre precludes, which is tied to the kind of social action it is meant to perform.
Exam. Play. 