The Rhetorical Canons as an
Ecology of (New Media) Practice
Collin Gifford Brooke
Syracuse University
Modern Language Association
December 27, 2006

A quick overview
• Rhetoric & New Media
• The trivium & the canons as an ecological
framework
• Tagclouds (an application)

A Rhetoric of New Media?
• One for all/All for one
• From criticism to production
• From objects to interfaces/activities

Web 2.0
Platforms vs Applications; Fluff vs Stuff

The Classical Trivium
(redefined)
Grammar Ecologies of Code
Rhetoric Ecologies of Practice
Logic Ecologies of Culture

Culture
Practice
Code
The Trivium as layered scales;
each implies a different kind of knowledge

Fallacy of Scale
The shepherd, qua shepherd, acts for the good
of the sheep, to protect them from discomfiture
and harm. But he may be ‘identified’ with a
project that is raising the sheep for market.
Kenneth Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives

Invention
Arrangement Style
Memory Delivery
Classical Canons = Ecology of Practice

Different media enable certain practices,
constrain others, and leave yet others untouched
The Classic Canons New Media Practices
Invention Proairesis
Arrangement Pattern
Style Perspective
Memory Persistence
Delivery Performance

Example: Tagclouds

(Arrangement) Pattern:
snapshot of text or set of
texts
abstraction of sequence
into pattern
distant reading (Moretti)
Yochai Benkler’s Wealth of Networks

(Memory) Persistence:
Slider allows users to
compare clouds from
multiple speeches
“Stickiness” keeps
terms active in the
cloud, demonstrates
trends
Chirag Mehta’s Presidential Tag Clouds

Delivery (Performance):
A tagcloud index of the
past twelve years of
College Composition
and Communication

Some conclusions
The canons each describe multiple practices
Any given platform is likely to involve multiple canons
Any rhetoric of new media must account for both the
productive capacity of rhetoric, and its intrinsically
technological dimension

Shameless Plug
Lingua Fracta:Towards a Rhetoric of New Media
(Hampton Press: Forthcoming 2007)