Our schema focused on the readings “Kairos and Multimodal Public Rhetoric” by Sheridan, Ridolfo, and Michel as well as “The Usefulness of Classical Rhetoric” by Cobertt. These reading covered similar topics in vastly different ways so the best way for me to see the connections within these texts was to look at them in terms of a diagram. Additionally, the final conceptualization of these connections ended up looking more like a floor plan than an intricate pathway. This was partly due to my inexperience with the program, draw.io, which led to one-way networks rather than reciprocal pathways.
Sheridan et al. define the concept of Kairos as “the way rhetors negotiate or ‘struggle’ with and against their contexts as they seek a particular discourse” (Sheridan et al., 50). Put simply, the authors argue that kairos should be taken into account though all parts of the writing process: before, during, and after. This made me ask the question, “how do we grapple with these multimodal public texts in the present time as social media has become a popular platform?”. Additionally, Corbett introduces the subject of the faceless audience and how giving an audience a “face” gave the rhetor a form for their discourse. He makes that argument that we need to bring this awareness and importance of the audience “back to the composing process” (Corbett, 162). This begs the question “Does social media aim towards a formless of form focuses audience? How does the Kairotic struggle take form in this context? These questions served as a guide for my interaction with these texts.
I believe the answer to these questions is complicated but can be examined in a couple of ways. I will focus on just one for the duration of this assignment. Social media as a multimodal public text can be looked at through Sheridan et al.’s lens of a before-after framework of composition. As Joel stated in class, students explicitly know their audience for different social media platforms. For example, Facebook is for their parents while Snapchat is explicitly for friends. This would be seen in Sheridan et al.’s point of view as before the composition of a text. Kairotic inventiveness begins before the rhetor commits themselves to a specific mode or media (Sheridan et al., 53). At this point in time, the audience has a face and form. This original message follows the linear communication model that Kneupper discussed last week (Kneupper, 1981). However, as the kairotic struggle continues as the text moves into production, delivery, and reproduction. The context begins to get more complex after the text moves through these processes.
The circulation of a text takes on an important role, as the message needs to be delivered or published to its intended audience. This illustrates that the kairotic struggle extends beyond just the creation of a text of thesis. The rhetor desperately needs the notion of kairos in how they compose their message (Kinneavy,). Social media itself privileges circulation over all other rhetorical concerns (Sheridan et al., 61). This emphasis on circulation and reproduction of a text leads us to an audience that has form but is faceless in that they are not the intended audience.
I am personally still struggling with these constraints of facelessness and form as it is related to media as we use it now. As Sheridan et al. call for a full assessment of the kairotic context; I believe we need to take a deeper look into how we view audience in a multimodal space. How does our view of audience transform in this situational context? As rhetors, how do we account for this reproduction of our discourse in a kairotic way?
-AM
