Available Means of Persuasion, The. David M. Sheridan
New Media Theory
Series Editor, Byron Hawk
The New Media Theory series investigates both media and new media as a complex ecological and rhetorical context. The merger of media and new media creates a global social sphere that is changing the ways we work, play, write, teach, think, and connect. Because this new context operates through evolving arrangements, theories of new media have yet to establish a rhetorical and theoretical paradigm that fully articulates this emerging digital life.
The series includes books that combine social, cultural, political, textual, rhetorical, aesthetic, and material theories in order to understand moments in the lives that operate in these emerging contexts. Such works typically bring rhetorical and critical theories to bear on media and new media in a way that elaborates a burgeoning post-disciplinary “medial turn” as one further development of the rhetorical and visual turns that have already influenced scholarly work.
Other Books in the Series
Mics, Cameras, Symbolic Action: Audio-Visual Rhetoric for Writing Teachers, by Bump Halbritter (2012)
Avatar Emergency by Gregory L. Ulmer (2012)
New Media/New Methods: The Academic Turn from Literacy to Electracy, edited by Jeff Rice and Marcel O’Gorman (2008)
The Two Virtuals: New Media and Composition, by Alexander Reid (2007). Honorable Mention, W. Ross Winterowd/JAC Award for Best Book in Composition Theory, 2007.
The Available Means of Persuasion
Mapping a Theory and Pedagogy of Multimodal Public Rhetoric
David M. Sheridan, Jim Ridolfo, and Anthony J. Michel
Parlor Press
Anderson, South Carolina
www.parlorpress.com
Parlor Press LLC, Anderson, South Carolina, USA
© 2012 by Parlor Press
All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America
S A N: 2 5 4 - 8 8 7 9
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sheridan, David M. (David Michael)
The available means of persuasion : mapping a theory and pedagogy of multimodal public rhetoric / David M. Sheridan, Jim Ridolfo, and Anthony J. Michel.
p. cm. -- (New media theory)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-60235-308-4 (pbk. : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-1-60235-309-1 (alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-1-60235-310-7 (adobe ebook) -- ISBN 978-1-60235-311-4 (epub)
1. Persuasion (Rhetoric) 2. Persuasion (Rhetoric)--Study and teaching. 3. Communication--Study and teaching. 4. Communication--Technological innovations. I. Ridolfo, Jim, 1979- II. Michel, Anthony J. III. Title.
P301.5.P47S54 2012
808--dc23
2012005615
1 2 3 4 5
Cover design by Jim Ridolfo and David Blakesley.
Cover image: Photograph by Jim Ridolfo. Used by permission.
Printed on acid-free paper.
Parlor Press, LLC is an independent publisher of scholarly and trade titles in print and multimedia formats. This book is available in paper, cloth and eBook formats from Parlor Press on the World Wide Web at http://www.parlorpress.com or through online and brick-and-mortar bookstores. For submission information or to find out about Parlor Press publications, write to Parlor Press, 3015 Brackenberry Drive, Anderson, South Carolina, 29621, or email [email protected].
Contents
1 Kairos and the Public Sphere
PART II: Kairotic Inventiveness and Rhetorical Ecologies
2 Multimodal Public Rhetoric and the Problem of Access
3 Kairos and Multimodal Public Rhetoric
4 Composing with Rhetorical Velocity: Looking Beyond the Moment of Delivery
PART III: The Challenges and Possibilities of Multimodal Semiosis
6 A Fabricated Confession: Multimodality, Ethics, and Pedagogy
7 Public Rhetoric as the Production of Culture
PART IV: Practice and Pedagogy: A Synthesis
9 Multimodal Public Rhetoric in the Composition Classroom
Acknowledgments
In this book we join with a growing number in our field who argue that writing is not the result of a single individual working in isolation, but necessarily involves multiple collaborators, technologies, texts, and discourses. It is particularly fitting, then, that we take a moment to name some of the more salient ways that others supported this book. First, we are grateful for the support of David Blakesley, founder and publisher of Parlor Press, and Byron Hawk, the editor of Parlor’s New Media series. The guidance David and Byron provided, from their review of our proposal to the finished product contained here, was invaluable. Similarly, we are grateful to the two reviewers who read an early draft of this manuscript and made many useful suggestions for revision, and to Terra Williams, who meticulously copyedited the final manuscript. This book is stronger because of their input.—D.M.S., J.R., A.J.M.
I have been very lucky over the past nine years to have worked in an intellectually rich culture created by colleagues (undergraduates, graduate students, staff, faculty,