Trends towards globalization force cultures, which were
previously content with isolation, to continually come into contact with each
other. As a result of this contact,
rhetorical traditions are also continually interacting with each other and,
therefore, our conceptions of rhetoric must also readjust to describe the
rhetoric contained within these contact zones.
With this idea in mind, I’m not even sure if mutually exclusive
rhetorical traditions exist anymore. Is
it possible for different rhetorical traditions to come into contact with one
another and still retain their mutual exclusivity? Possibly not.
Take for example LuMing Mao’s characterization of Chinese citizens
living in America. According to Mao,
these citizens may embody a rich Chinese rhetorical tradition, but their
contact with the Western rhetorical tradition has shifted their rhetorical
patterns towards a new rhetoric, a rhetoric that is both Chinese and
American. Although this new rhetoric is
both Chinese and American, I wonder where this amalgamation stops. If Chinese-American rhetoric comes into
contact with Afrocentric rhetoric, does the new rhetoric reflect a
Chinese-American-Afrocentric rhetoric? Would
this imply an eventual amalgamation of all rhetorical traditions that all
humans would embody? That might seem
like a stretch, but as I continue to think about it, I wonder if it really is
that implausible.
As rhetorical scholars, how should our study of rhetoric shift to accommodate for globalization? Do we maintain that mutually exclusive rhetorical traditions still exist or do we accept that mixing of rhetorical traditions are inevitable? I tend to favor the latter.
As we move into modern rhetoric, especially Burke, think about how seeing communication as a slippery and flowing and ever-evolving situation is important. We have studied the recent shift in rhetorical theory toward the audience and a call to action. How has rhetoric moved since? There is still a focus on audience, but it's also on situation, I'd say, and the complexity of difference in audience and situation. We talked about universal audiences and how there really can be no such thing. Like Chinese living in the US, there is a constant shift, what Appadurai would call a flow or scape, neither this nor that, neither fully a Chinese rhetoric or an American one. So with all of the permutations we have, how can we study and teach rhetoric to accommodate? That is the question, as you say. Perhaps studying where we've been (history of rhetoric) is helpful in order to recognize patterns, such as focusing on different canons.
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