Webs, Schemas, and Why I Wanted to Play with Legos

In working through this assignment, I found myself struggling to connect all of the moving parts, especially with a team. I have had the advantage, through years and years of Jesuit schooling, to have had a number of philosophy and theology classes that have dealt with the formal and informal value logic and Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca used as the basis of their explorations into rhetoric. However, I did find myself often questioning my assumptions about this prior knowledge as I worked through the schema as Rob and I learned and taught each other. I also welcomed the invitation to play and to see how that could be productive. While our schema ended up different than I had originally anticipated, it was a product of negotiation, and it encapsulates our understandings and thinking. I look forward to seeing the rest.

Contradictions and Connections: The New Rhetoric, Culture, and Western Ideology

As one member of the only group of three, I think our process to the schema was a little different than everyone else’s, so I’d like to touch on that before going more in-depth about the schema’s effects on my current understanding of the rhetorical theories we have covered thus far. We started with a Google doc, which we populated with what we all thought were key terms and concepts. Thereafter, we met for several hours to discuss how our terms were related to one another and to other readings. Because Angela works best visually, she sketched a draft of our schema in dry erase markers on the wall of the study room while the three of us discussed the terms we chose and the relationships between them. While we were doing that, I used my technological skills to create an electronic version in Microsoft Publisher. While we were populating the one on the wall, I focused on typing terms, quotes, and citations. Afterwards, we all came together as a group behind the laptop and reproduced those connections in one form digitally. In some ways, I think we may have perhaps been acting out some parts of the rhetorical theories we have covered in class as we discussed them, acting as orators (Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca), rhetors (Aristotle), readers (Barthes), or maybe even communication people (Asante) on a microcosmic level, drawing on relative truths (or our perceptions of them) to generate a visual representation of how we experienced Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca’s new rhetoric as we read it. I also almost feel like there were elements of Afrocentrism in it, as we all sought to share communication without privileging one skill set or approach over another.