Public: something you encounter walking around town—people, advertisements, businesses. Public seems like an ordinary, everyday word. We are the public. We've heard of public restrooms, public television, public school, or maybe even Public Storage.
But what about rhetoric? Lots of people equate rhetoric with something negative. Rhetoric makes us think of politicians. We say, "What did he say this time? Ah, that's just a bunch of rhetoric!" This common usage of rhetoric has almost come to be equated with lying. But rhetoric is everywhere, it can be used for good, and we use it without even realizing it. Aristotle said rhetoric is "observing in any given case the available means of persuasion." How do you convince people to agree with you? Whatever strategies you use, that's rhetoric.
So back to the combination of these two words: Public Rhetoric. Almost anything we see around us can be viewed from a rhetorical lens. All of the following can be "read" as means of persuasion: neighborhood design (Is it a gated community? Does everyone have a fence? How many parks are there?), school architecture (Are there columns? What color is the school? How many stories is it?), car dealerships (Is it a shiny, silver building? Are cars parked on fake mountains? How big is the lot?), human bodies (What are people saying with their clothes? How about piercings or body art?), and of course all kinds of words (advertisements, news stories, street signs, and on and on). Someone said, "Everything's an Argument," and they were right.
The purpose of this blog and your lab assignments is to "read" an artifact in the world and then share something you noticed or learned about how it utilizes public rhetoric. Maybe you want to ask people why they live in their chosen neighborhoods or how they feel about an institution's building. Or you might want to "read" films about these topics and share your observations about the rhetorical choices the directors made. Or maybe you want to focus on "reading" the words or visual presentation of written texts like a newspapers or magazines or news feeds. Whatever you choose to "read," think of how your chosen artifacts are "public" and try to unpack what "rhetorics" they use to make an argument. [1 image, 1 quotation, 2 links, 400 words]
