In a perfect world it would be easy to note the lines of demarcation separating then from now. Back to reality though, and we find that the past elements that shaped yesterday are merging and bouncing off and back with the elements of today, creating weird combinations of rhetoric and reality that are hard to acknowledge. The three essays we examined this class show the reality of today (even though Jamieson's seems to be a little dated).
In Jamieson's article she points towards a changing trend in media where the feminine style is becoming higher valued over the male counterpart. She writes, "the intimate medium of television requires that those who speak comfortably through it project a sense of private self, unself-consciously self-disclose, and engage the audience in completing messages..." (805).
Where once we valued combative arguments, the distancing of emotions, and the strong, silent type, now we value expression, indicating emotion, harmonizing tendencies, and as Thompson writes, "the prolific, the outgoing, and the shameless." Thompson points how CEOs, a typical manly figure, surrounded in secrecy and hierarchy, is now being brought down to the people. We are turning into a social society and secrecy is no longer valued. We want these titans of industry to express their emotions, say how their business works, ask for input, and communicate with us, the little guys.
We see that Jamieson's analysis was spot on, even though she was writing back in the 80's, when Reagan was president. She focused solely on television, but with the rise of the internet there is a much greater influence on style than she could have imagined. A word that she didn't mention, but has resulted as an offshoot of this trend towards feminine rhetoric, is transparency.
We want to know everything about the company we work for, the boss we are under, the product we are buying, and even the president of our country. Obama is the most prolific twitter president we have seen thus far. One of the reasons for his popularity is his embrace of social media and apparent transparency. As Thompson might say he is a "President 2.0." Now this isn't to say that he is the same person behind closed doors, but this series of closed doors is becoming smaller and smaller until we are soon left with only one room, in which only the most essential secrets will be kept.
It is interesting to see how the public image has shifted away from the strong, independent leader to one that is social, communicative, cooperative, and engaging. In a sense it is a shift from manly rhetoric to woman rhetoric, in the public domain. This might be just for the people, but Thompson would seem to push that soon all things private will also be transformed into this style of rhetoric.
At the same time as this discourse is going on, we have Wysocki, who pushes against this strain of socialness and culture deciding what is right and wrong, beautiful or ugly, important or not. To do this she examines and argues against Kant's theory of reality. She boils him down to saying, " (he) labels as necessary--our bodily sensations--as being social before we can ever experience them" (171). To explain this it is necessary to remember that Kant believed that our sensations were bound by our concepts of them. We can't think on our sensations without these preconceived notions of language, constructs, and social conventions. Therefore when we say that something is beautiful, it is not the beauty itself we admire, but the form of that beauty.
This form is constructed socially and the ideal of a nation changes as the value changes. Wysocki points to the changing trend in art, mainly the focus of beauty, to illustrate this point. But for us, this idea of form is important because the ideal style of rhetor that we created was, and is, defined by the times we live in and the technology available. It is not reality itself, nor is it a trend towards universality. It is a form that we have accepted in this era, and it too will probably pass (eventually).
One thing that Wysocki said that helps me to embrace the openness in rhetoric is, "we use the expected social constructions of form just enough to hold onto what audiences expect, but where we can then also make visible the particularities of our own lives and experience and hence make visible the limitations of the forms we have been asked to grow into..." (172).
Your comments seem to suggest writers (as rhetors) should embrace modern formats as they present themselves, like Jamieson with her emphasis on television and your own stress of the internet as the not-so-new but progressive medium. Social media has had probably the biggest influence on our younger generations, invading the platforms of our lives. Consider life before facebook when there was only myspace. It was a website that people went to to connect socially, but it wasn't nearly as tied into our society the way facebook has situated itself in the last decade. Facebook is everywhere. You can sign into other websites and online forums using your account information, you can link your page with others all over the internet, and its difficult to find someone who isn't connected. To think this is obviously not the final format to ever present itself, you have to wonder what;s coming next. In regard to academics, I just started using google drive for the first time, and while its not a perfect program, it makes my life a whole lot easier. Once it is a little more updated or something better comes along, we can get rid of the printer altogether, though I'm not sure I'm on board with the total shift from print to digital. I think these transitions are the beauty of the future, a statement that will be a tough sell to the naysayers and traditionalists.
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