Defining and Locating Digital Rhetoric, written and studied by Doug Eyman, discusses writing digitally while using rhetoric. He also discusses the difference regarding print and digital writing. Now, the idea of writing online is much more apparent than it was at the time of Eyman’s study. This poses the question: “Why does it still matter?”
How Eyman Views Rhetoric
Whether we realize it or not, we are always using rhetoric when we write, no matter how we write. Eyman cites Richard Lanham in his lecture “Digital Rhetoric: Theory, Practice, and Property, “Lanham suggests that digital production (and the theories that are brought to bear upon all postmodern production, from psychology, evolutionary, biology, sociology, and literary theory) will be called to argue for certain positions within the frame of law (particularly copyright law), which is ‘rhetoric’s ultimate home’ (1992, 242),” (Eyman 24). Writers are using rhetoric everywhere, no matter the writing, the genre, or the subject. It applies to modern times, especially now with the idea of students reading and writing online text. Rhetoric also applies in the world of music.
Rhetoric’s Modern Day Usage
Artists use rhetoric when writing songs, or doing concerts on tours. Take Taylor Swift, for example. She uses it via the “easter eggs” in pictures or performances that leave fans speculating what her next move will be; a new album, or perhaps, Reputation (Taylor’s Version)? She writes songs with a deeper meaning as well. In her new album “The Tortured Poets Department,” she has a song called I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can), where she opens the song, “The smoke cloud billows out his mouth like a freight train through a small town. The jokes that he told were revolting and far too loud.” Swift uses a simile to compare her boyfriend smoking to a freight train going through a small town to explain the unexpectedness, the shock, or disapproval people may have about it, the way they’d feel if a large train actually went through their town.
Digital rhetoric doesn’t age, but rather, it improves. We continue to use it even when we don’t realize it, and that will be the case for as long as we are writing.
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