Cassie Lagner- From the Rhetorical Situation to Rhetorical Ecologies

The author that wrote this was Jenny Edbauer. She is an Associate Professor of Writing, Rhetoric and Digital Media. She is a professor at the University of Kentucky. She wrote “From the Rhetorical Situation to Rhetorical Ecologies” which was published by Taylor & Francis, Ltd. Jenny Edbauer chose to write this article in hopes of having an audience of potential colleagues, writers, or possibly people studying Rhetoric. I think this because this 21 page article was a very dense reading in which someone who was learning about rhetoric, like me, may have a hard time following. I think this reading gives another opinion on what rhetoric means, so therefore it can benefit someone who wants a different look on it or wants to compare rhetoric situation and rhetorical ecology. The text is mainly comparing the two types or rhetoric, rhetorical situation and rhetorical ecology. The main argument I got from this reading was that it explained rhetorical ecology as being about how it takes the connections of everything around a situation into play when a conversation is going on. Rhetorical situation is that it is just focusing on the conversation and not the surrounding situations. She brings up different authors opinions of different situations. Jenny Edbauer brings up a long topic about Austin, Texas saying how the city has changed drastically because of new technology. At first I did not quite get the connection between rhetoric and talking about the city but I came to realize that the connection was because of the drastic change, that let to many different issues and topics. She brought it back to rhetoric by explaining how rhetoric ecology is the connections between all the issues surrounding the main event. She mentioned “Rhetorical situations involve the amalgamation and mixture of many different events and happenings that are not properly segmented into audience, text, or rhetorician.” At first I did not understand the definition of amalgamation but when I looked it up I understood the rest of the definition and think that is a good way of explaining rhetorical situations. The definition I liked best for rhetorical ecologies was that they “are co-ordination processes, moving across the same field and within shared structures of feeling”. All together I thought this reading was dense, and at times hard to follow, but I think I understood the main idea Edbauer was trying to display.