5 Digital Rhetoric

The term rhetoric itself can be traced back to Ancient Greece. Rhetoric is the art of persuasion through speech, written language, and visual art. Rhetoric can be interpreted into multiple forms and categories. San Diego State University defines rhetoric as “the study and uses of written, spoken, and visual language.” It can be used to keep social groups in line with organization, for classroom management, produce political speeches, and ultimately cause a change.  Doug Eyman uses Bizzell and Herzberg to definition rhetoric as “a number of overlapping meanings: the practice of oratory; the study of the strategies of effective oratory; the use of language, the study of the relation between language and knowledge; [and] the classification and use of tropes and figures” (Bizzell and Herzberg). Many would argue that rhetoric shouldn’t have one simple definition. Rhetoric continues to grow as years go by and accumulates multiple definitions as well.

Rhetorician scholar Richard Lanham, the first user of the term digital rhetoric, explained the term in his lecture revolving around it. Rhetoric consists of persuasion within words, as explained in the previous paragraph. There are many uses for this tool and can be in multiple different forms: language, art, dance, and music. Symbols are also another format of using rhetoric. Digital, in its proper meaning, refers to anything curated with your digits. This can take away from the usual definition that is associated with digital.

When intertwining these two terms a new one forms: Digital rhetoric. Digital rhetoric can apply itself to many different forms and in a variety of ways. It is a word that keeps unraveling like a flower continuing to bloom. He uses digital rhetoric in a lecture that proceeds to be published in Literacy Online and in his own The Electronic Word: Democracy, Technology, and the Arts. According to Eyman’s “Defining and Locating Digital Rhetoric,” Lanham could connect computer-mediated communication and rhetoric. To quote Eyman’s “Defining and Locating Digital Rhetoric,” “The term ‘digital rhetoric’ is perhaps most simply defined as the application of rhetorical theory (as analytic method or heuristic for production) to digital texts and performances” (Eyman).

There are multiple scholars that contribute to the overall conversation of digital rhetoric. They can all be used to create an understanding of how controversial the idea of digital rhetoric was for many scholars. There are scholars who made the argument that digital rhetoric doesn’t apply to the computer itself, but the images and text itself.

This means that digital rhetoric doesn’t only have to apply to technology. You can interpret it in many forms like rhetoric itself. Digital rhetoric expresses itself in multiple formats as well. As stated by Buchanan, digital rhetoric comes in forms of “media discourse, online political campaigns and parody…” (Eyman, Digital Rhetoric). Understanding the similarities between the term ‘rhetoric’ and digital rhetoric itself makes it all that simple to discover its uses.

Visual rhetoric and digital rhetoric can be considered similar due to multiple instances. They’re both broad in the sense that they both have the ability to be applied to new objects of study. Digital rhetoric is included within multiple fields simply for the fact that it incorporates visual aspects. Fields such as graphic design, computer graphics, computer science, and internet research.