Reading the first chapter of Kevin Brock’s book Rhetorical Code Studies (2019) felt like my favorite character in a show being revealed as the most heinous villain. I’m an unrelenting hater of code. It’s the reason why I chose to take math—another subject I despise—instead, unlike one of my friends. And I’d do it again, no matter how difficult my other option may be. In contrast, I’ve really been enjoying learning about digital rhetoric and its subsections. I already have a personal essay project planned for the summer break that will incorporate what I’ve learned through digital rhetoric. (Get ready to play Beethoven’s 5th symphony in a minute.) Imagine my surprise when I realized that code was the tool that built and made digital rhetoric what it is. Oh, the agony and irony.
It’s rather obvious when thought about, though. What else enables digital rhetoric to be what it is? Without code, not even digital spaces would exist. However, I don’t know how to feel about Brock’s assertion that code itself is rhetorical. I agree that the interface it makes up is rhetorical. I think that individual media (e.g., videos, images, and audio) can also be rhetorical. And algorithms are certainly rhetorical. But something sounds off to me when I hear that code itself is rhetorical. It’s like saying that the strings and sticks that help manipulate a puppet are also a “puppet.” They aren’t; they are just tools that makes puppets what they are.
To illustrate what I mean, imagine looking at a block of code. Does it persuade you in any way? Or would you be squinting your eyes trying to figure out what it’s trying to say before giving up? It’s only persuasive once the human-friendly layer is viewed. It needs to translate into—or make—something else before becoming persuasive. So, we have to Bob-The-Builder rhetoric via code; code itself isn’t exactly rhetorical.
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