Discussion Post 3

Discussion Post 2 (2/15): "What does circulation (or the potential for circulation) contribute to the composing process?" - Jackson Tarpley

With the introduction of new technology into the writing world, rhetoric is now circulated at an exponentially higher rate than it was a mere one hundred years ago. With development of the typewriter and eventually the word processors we use today, the speed in which texts can be produced and distributed is incredible. Information can now, potentially, spread worldwide in a matter of minutes. Considering this fact, we must now consider how that kind of worldwide network effects large-scale globalization through discourse. And additionally, we must look at how the rapid circulation of new rhetoric has affected the writing process as a whole. The way that writing spreads through the internet today has changed quite a bit with the development of social media platforms, and even the creation of the modern day blog. Writers must now publish content on the internet with the possibility that it could be read around the world. They must communicate their ideas knowing that they may be spread throughout many different outlets. With all these facts in mind, we must now acknowledge that Bitzer's idea of exigence must be changed to reflect this new-world style of writing. Edbauer touches on this in her essay on rhetorical ecologies. She says, "what we dub exigence is more like a shorthand way of describing a series of events." Essentially, she is claiming that Bitzer's exigence may not even exist, but instead different 'facts of life' influence people to have common beliefs and ideas. According to her, exigence is in fact "an amalgamation of processes and encounters: concerns about safe neighborhoods, media images, encounters of everyday life in certain places, concerns about re-election, articulations of problems and the circulation of those articulations, and so forth." Those 'articulations' as she calls them, create the void in which rhetoric is used to fill. In conclusion, because of circulation, the 1960's style of rhetoric in writing has been all but completely dismissed by the common writer. Writers must now communicate knowing their discourse will circulate far and potentially very rapidly. Think about this, the mere fact that Twitter exists (and is so commonly used) has caused users to now simplify their rhetoric down to 140 characters, and craft it in a way that they think will be the easiest to spread quickly. Creating a big network is crucial for a successful writer in 2016, and that network is formed by rapid circulation.