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last.updated 6.14.09

Delivery

Purpose

Delivery, the canon that informs how rhetors present their message, has evolved from rules about how to speak and move to strategies for choosing appropriate media. However, this raises questions about whether strategizing media should be considered delivery or whether these rhetorical strategies should be all new canons. We will discuss what delivery is in the context of writing is and should be, especially in the age of new media.

Discussion–From Voice to Velocity

As a class, we will address the following questions...

• What questions do you have about the readings?
• Describe Aristotle's approach to delivery. What does he value? discourage?
• For Whately, what are the natural and artificial methods? What strategies does he provide that can be applied to written texts? How are his strategies relevant to writing as it becomes more multimodal?
• Ridolfo and DeVoss question whether the canon of delivery is sufficient enough to cover the rhetorical decisions that one makes when composing texts that have life beyond their original. What is rhetorical velocity? what is amplification and how does it relate to rhetorical velocity? What other types of texts have rhetorical velocity?
• How does the "Chocolate Rain" video and the related videos illustrate rhetorical velocity? What is the argument in the original text? What different arguments do we see in the responses? What do these examples illustrate about the ideological nature of rhetorical velocity?

Activity II–Considering Your Own Velocity

As an individual you will...

• Describe the text you will be composing for the DOA and the argument of your text
• Explain how you anticipate others might use your text
• Explain what you are going to do to make your text have rhetorical velocity

Compose your responses to these prompts in as much detail that you can in an email to the instructor who will respond to your message.