Rhetorical Perspective

[Seth L. Kahn-Egan]

I've been reading the postings on this thread pretty carefully, and
there's a take on the issue that I haven't seen from anybody yet.  For the
record, I'm not entirely behind this idea--it's just a thought I've been
stewing on for some time...

The use of the term "perspective" seems to guide the discussion towards
a variety of spatial metaphors; rhetoric is a place from which we
see/read/make language/symbols/etc.  What happens if we shift the metaphor
from spatiality to methodology--instead of conceptualizing rhetoric as a
vantage-point, we might think of it as ways of seeing/reading/making
language/symbols/etc.  What got me thinking about this is a conversation
last semester in my rhetorical theory course, during which we bandied
around the relationships between composition and rhetoric.  I suggested
that composition is the content of our discipline and rhetoric (or, if
you prefer, rhetoricizing) is the method.

I haven't really been able to think this through in any kind of systematic
way, so pardon its sketchiness.  Does this seem like a viable distinction
to anyone else?

Seth Kahn-Egan, Syracuse U.

Seth Kahn-Egan
Syracuse University
PhD Student in Composition and Cultural Rhetoric
slkahneg at mailbox.syr.edu
315-423-8042 (home)
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