Use of Rhetoric

While reading the first "On Being Useful: Rhetoric and the Work of Engagement," I thought of my hypothetical community engagement project. The problem I identified is that "it is common to think about community engagement in terms of ourselves—the work that we are doing, the impact that we hope to have, and the way that our presence changes a community (Grabill 1). The way we think of our own work is rhetoric. Our actions reflect this rhetoric.

I like how Grabill made the turn to focusing the "public work of rhetoric" on others, and I think that's exactly how it should be. What if we help develop a new rhetoric? This rhetoric should combine the original rhetoric of the group and the rhetorical tools that we, as scholars engaged in communities, bring to the community.

What I found the most interesting was that Grabill and Hart-Davidson marketed WIDE under the name of Capital Area Community Media Center to argue that it was engaged and needed in the community. Grabill goes onto explain that "Rhetoric is always material, and it is most powerful when it makes things that enable others to perform persuasively" (Grabill 14). This use of rhetoric was designed to make a Thing.

I guess i never thought of using rhetoric in this way before.