For my trackback assignment, I plan to extend
a portion of my dialect assignment to more fully explore the concept of
audience. Specifically, I am interested
in the intersection of audience and the creation of social norms and
identities. Since audience is such a
fundamental part of the rhetorical process, many scholars have obviously
touched on this concept. Therefore, to
narrow my topic, I’d like to look at how rhetorical scholars view the role of
audience in the meaning-making process, as opposed to being merely passive recipients of
the rhetor’s message. In this regard, my
trackback will be heavily weighted to more modern theorists.
The major scholars that I plan to review will
start with Maurice Rene Charland and Walter Ong. Then, I will move backward into Chaim
Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca, while interspersing Kenneth Burke’s
theoretical underpinnings. Lloyd Bitzer
will most likely also come into play at some point in this mid-section. I will continue to work backward to Aristotle’s
early notions of the role of audience.
Interesting to see the connection between your dialect assignment and your trackback assignment. So the intersection of audience and identity; that is especially important to try to trace and tease out. Have there been books published on this that you can look at? Will you take a cultural theory perspective? Ong can be read that way, or in terms of technologies/modalities.... It will be interesting to choose specific rhetors and emphasize audience and identity. I wonder if you can find a problem to connect this all to; that is, if you have a problem to solve with audience/identity today, perhaps tracing the history will bring particular understanding that can shed light on the problem to solve today.
ReplyDelete