Tools, Technologies, Inquiry

    After exploring the different tools and technologies listed on the assignment sheet, we determined that we would compile a bibliography using Zotero. We think that Zotero would be very useful for a larger, more focused project, because the program includes multiple kinds of documents (PDFs, websites), and the documents can be tagged according to the user’s interest. We don’t necessarily see Zotero as a technology that would invite certain inquiries (or prohibit certain inquiries for that matter) – the tool just seems to be more focused on making connections and patterns by amassing texts and musings/annotations on those texts.  

     What follows here is an assessment of the limitations and affordances of the different tools we explored during this assignment. Archive Grid would allow one to see, for example, secondary materials written about Francis Bacon (there are no primary, manuscript materials from him); however, the site does host primary materials. The INPHO project’s ontology, however, allows a user to examine the complex relationships among terms and thinkers, which would help us answer the question from Tuesday regarding the relationship between rhetoric and inquiry – INPHO seems pretty well-suited to help us see the link between those concepts and to trace them across texts. We found it much more helpful. On MONK, if a user knew of a particular researcher who had compiled bibliographic material on that site, then one could peruse that material to see the connections that have already been made (problematic because there seems to be no logical organization to the untrained user). Internet of Encyclopedia of Philosophy allows you to search rhetoricians/philosophers, topics/periods. However, instead of searching the primary texts, the user is directed to a description of the text. A search for terms is hosted through Google (linking to different spaces). We searched for rhetoric, and the search brought us to different spaces, but not to the texts. On the whole, it seems suited to aligning thinkers and terms.

     We would like to be able to trace, for example, shifts in terminologies and understandings. Specifically, when did eloquence become known as style? Being able to search a genealogy of terms would be both useful and effective in tracing our terms. Dates and figures associated with this shift would help the user notice paradigm shifts and open up new ways of understanding the rhetorical tradition through those terms. Some of the tools show clear groupings of people, which represents an intellectual network specific to time and place and specific ways of thinking about the connections that should be made across the rhetorical tradition. We think this could either be prescriptive or helpful, so it is something that we should be aware of.

Molly and Logan 

Rhetorical Historiography using Zotero

Josh Eskew
Martha McKay Canter
Dr. Graban
Digital Project #3

For our Digital Project #3, Josh and I were interested in the functionality of Zotero, so we downloaded it and began exploring. Within minutes we had begun gathering a bibliography of some of the authors we have read in our class.

Zotero is a tool that is useful to build a bibliography of a trace, or guide someone through a trace concept. Using this, it is easy to impose a structure of a text which quickly renders apparent some organizational structure. For example, we searched "Peter Ramus" on JSTOR through the FSU proxy and received 13 pertinent documents within seconds.

It is obvious that Zotero makes the standard activities of research much easier and accessible, but it also opens new pathways for analysis. Assume we took made a digital library of our traces and the texts from these courses. We could use tags within Zotero to notate different concepts and where they appear, and then we could run a search or create a library with its own structure based on the passages that we have tagged. We could also use tags to create cross-references, and so we can explore the relationships between different texts and different concepts much more readily.

Moreover, this tool is incredibly useful for graduate students who are building reading lists for prelim exams, or for dissertation research, or for that matter, for any research project. For that matter, this tool allows us to create separate folder for any variety of research projects without having to worry about storing it on our drives or locating it. Searching with Zotero is fast, word/concept specific, and simple. A search of the small library we created in a few minutes of the term "logic" produced a short bibliographic list of sources. By collecting texts for specific research projects allows the user to run a quick search across the texts collected.

There seems to be a scaffolding benefit, too. For a project on St. Valentine, for example, a wide collection of texts could be quickly accessed running an initial search of the words, “St. Valentine;” from there secondary and tertiary tags or terms searches would allow the user to swiftly narrow the term for research. What is the benefit of this, then, compared with a pre-existing database? It seems that the answer to that is that Zotero stores your collection of sources for you, not unlike a collected annotated bibliography. But it’s personal, and tailored, and taggable, and organizable in user specific ways.

Explorations of Zotero - Archival and Organization

Overview and Step One 

We looked at a number of the resources, such the Archive Grid, Zotero, and the Monk Project.

Archive Grid: We could map and locate physical archives, search by topic, and get links to the appropriate archive websites with contact information.

Zotero: Keeps track and downloads information from resources found online. Captures and collects bibliographic information and places it into user-created folders.

Monk Project: Helps identify patterns in texts, complementary to Word Hoard and pulls from The Nora Project and various databases.

The Center for History and New Media was also an interesting collection of various open-access resources available online. It had a broad listing of resources for different historical periods/categories.

Exploring Zotero 

For the second part of the assignment, Christine and I chose to work within Zotero to build a bibliography for our course. We spent a fair amount of time simply getting the program to work, but immediately began to see its utility. We learned that, based on the source, it’s going to catalogue resources in a different way (Google Books versus PDF versus Database listing) and the information will differ depending upon the kind of database accessed. We also learned that in working with the tool we can add our own information if it is not present, create notes detailing our thoughts, and tag entries for specific purposes, further enhancing the organizational utility of the program.  However, some obstacles involve where and how you access resources. We began by working off campus and, as such, were not able to collect the same kind of data by adding sources from Zotero. Even when signing in remotely, there were still some issues in getting the program to successfully archive and store PDF original documents on the individual computer. One needs to be careful about how one adds documents and whether the correct proxies are set up for user access to protected content.

I feel that Zotero could help in broad concept tracing if we were to use tags associated with different rhetorical terms. It might allow a larger purview of sources from which we could draw connections between texts that might not otherwise be readily visible. But because of the user-nature of inputting tags, it could be less useful at the beginning of research, in that the user wouldn’t necessarily be able to comprehensively tag the text. Tags can also help organize a list of search terms used to acquire the sources input into the bibliography. Essentially the cross-searching abilities—finding keywords in the content of all documents stored in your library—mean that you can easily find patterns across texts. In twenty minutes I don’t believe we can actually fully appreciate the full utility of this text.

I feel that this resource could be incredibly helpful for tracing concepts across specific individual texts, pointing to where connections might exist. Because this is a tool for organizing sources, it’s a frame for understanding whatever you’re looking at, while allowing you to see the way that your sources overlap. Once you build a library, you could search agency and all texts that have that term should appear. So it could be seen as searching history through similarity.

- Christine Maddox Martorana

- Bret Zawilski

On Campbell and Inquiry (and Other Things ...)

Hello, Everyone:

As promised, I report today's discussion questions here, in case they can be useful as you work through your trace of Campbell's Philosophy of Rhetoric.

1. Reflect on the table of contents: What do you notice? Where does emphasis appear to be in the treatise? How is it organized, and what can that organization tell you about the “new rhetoric”
2. What is the audience’s role in making knowledge, and how informed do you think Campbell thinks the audience is or needs to be?
3. In what way do Campbell’s attitudes toward hearers affect (disrupt or complicate or destabilize) efforts to see rhetoric as inquiry?
4. Suppose we want to present Campbell as a reformer or innovator—where do we have a case for this claim?
5. How does Campbell approach the oral and written? To what extent does he focus on one to the harm or detriment of the other?

At this point in your tracing -- and because this is an extremely rich text in all of your trace concepts -- be prepared to have your first sense of your trace "terms" shaken up, or disrupted slightly. Feel free to rely on the questions on your heuristic and on finding new ways to answer them in this text.

Looking forward to your findings,

-Dr. Graban

Digital Research Day #2

Hello, Everyone:

In advance of Tuesday's class, I ask that you spend (at least) 20 minutes familiarizing yourself with the second digital research activity sheet, which is uploaded to Blackboard and focuses on the online Concordance. The activity invites you to search Locke and Vico, anticipating ways of bringing them into conversation, while also observing how you can do this via digital concordance. Please just get as far as you can with it and stop when you need to.

Like Locke, Vico will be very interested in language in use, which causes some revisionary historians to treat him as an early discourse theorist. So, based on the searching that Alex and Internet Archive allow you to do, I will ask you to discuss in class how you think Vico is important as a rhetorical player and how his theory diverges from Locke’s.

Here are some questions we may turn to in class on Tuesday:

1) Does Vico think that

• sign systems are arbitrary or universal?
• the mind precedes language or arises with language?
• we go to language to discover “real” cultural and sociological theories about a nation or to discover ways that truths are distorted?
• rhetoric is potentially a threat to probability and a harm to inquiry, or a help to probability and a guide to inquiry?
• ingenuity is seen in metaphor or in imagination?
• we should be more concerned with training youth for civic action or with the ways in which knowledge becomes incorporated into social institutions?
• the poet is a scientist or a creationist?

2) How did the evidence from your concordance search enable you to answer one of the goal questions on your activity sheet? How did it enable you to answer any of the questions above?

3) Both tools enable the same kind of searching, although one tool was obviously built to be a concordance, while the other was not. What are the affordances and limitations of one over the other? What kinds of historical queries do you think each one would encourage? 

I really look forward to this,

-Dr. Graban

On Locke and Language

Today's discussion of John Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding may bring us to this space. Editors Patricia Bizzell and Bruce Herzberg tell us that, although Locke was not widely thought of as a rhetorical theorist at the time he wrote this, his discussions of how language related to knowledge were pervasive in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century thought (at least in England and Scotland, and--by way of trans-Atlantic travel--in America) (B/H 815). We are trying to figure out what makes this relationship between language and knowledge so complex for Locke. In pairs, please compose a brief post in which you note how Locke discusses, makes assumptions about, or illustrates one of the following concepts:

• the origins of language 
• the imperfections of language 
• the nature of ideas

Feel free to submit your response as a comment to this post.

-Dr. Graban

Digital Research #1: Reiterating Aristotle in Hobbes

Like Aristotle, Hobbes focuses on the rhetoric of the courtroom: his opening sentence suggests a legal stance. Hobbes writes, “we see that all men are naturally able in some fore to accuse and excuse: some by chance; but some by method” (4, e-text). Here he implies that apprehension of the method, i.e., rhetoric, avoids the dependence on chance. Rhetoric is a useful tool that can be used to accuse and defend in a courtroom. Hobbes, an English philosopher, writes from a position of privilege. He is middle class, his father was a clergyman, and his foundational text, Leviathan, establishes his politics as a monarchist who argued for the absolute sovereignty of the king in a time of civil war in England.

Hobbes’ definition of rhetoric, “that faculty, by which we understand what will serve our turn, concerning any Subject to win belief in the hearer,” again harkens to Aristotle’s teachings on rhetoric as the art of persuasion. Similarly, he writes that rhetoric enables a person to speak on any subject. Even the structure of the text, which begins with a definition of rhetoric and continues by defining different types of orations, follows Aristotle. Moreover, Hobbes relies on enthymemes, legal oratory, and defines the difference between writing and speaking in his text. Hobbes is credited as the first English translator of Aristotle. Finally, Like Wilson, he is writing for lawyers and he’s English.

Historiography: there several sections missing in the electronic texts (i.e., end of chapter 21, and chapters 22 and 23 are not present); the electronic text includes a number of texts that are separate from The Art of Rhetoric; the format can influence the reading of the text for readers who do not like to read on screen, or who prefer a book or paper text;

What is rhetoric, based on this text alone? Hobbes’ text suggests that rhetoric is a professional tool for lawyers and politicians.

The Art of Rhetoric (1681)
Table of Contents

Preface: to the reader

Book I
Chapter I: The Whole Arte of Rhetorick
Chapter II: The Definition of Rhetorick
Chapter III: Of the Several kinds of Orations: and of the Principles of Rhetorick
Chapter IV: Of the Subject of Deliberatives; and the abilities that are required of him that will deliberate the business of State
Chapter V: Of the ends which the Orator in Deliberatives, propoundeth, whereby to exhort, or dehort
Chapter VI: Of the Colours or common opinions concerning Good and Evil
Chapter VIII: Of the Several Kinds of Governments
Chapter IX: Of the Colours of Honourable and Dishonourable
Chapter X: Of Accusation and Defence, with the Definition of Injury
Chapter XI: Of the Colours, or Common Opinions concerning Pleasure
Chapter XIV: Of those things which are necessary to be known for the definition of Just and Unjust
Chapter XV: Of the Colours or Common Opinions concerning Injuries, comparatively
Chapter XVI: Of Proofs Inartificial

Book II
Chapter 20 – Common Places 78 – 80
Chapter 21 - Example, Similitude, and Fables – 81 - ? (missing section of scan)
Chapter 22 – 23 missing
Chapter 24 – Offensive Enthymemes – 87 – 91
Chapter 25 – Enthymemes and Possibility - 92 – 93
Chapter 26 – Places of Seeming Enthymemes – 94 – 96
Chapter 27 – Answering the Arguments of the Adversary – 96 – 98
Chapter 28 – Amplification and Extenuation – 98 – 99

Book III
Chapter 1 – Elocution and Pronunciation – 101 – 103
Chapter 2 – Words and Epithets – 103 – 105
Chapter 3 –Flat Oration – 105 – 106
Chapter 4 – Similitude – 106
Chapter 5 – Purity of Language – 106 – 108
Chapter 6 – Amplitude and Tenuity – 108
Chapter 7 – Convenience and Decency of Elocution – 108 – 110
Chapter 8 – Two Forts of Styles? – 110 – 112
Chapter 9 – Delightful Oration – 113 – 115
Chapter 10 – Things Aforesaid - 115 – 117
Chapter 11 – Style in Writing, Style in Pleading – 117 – 119
Chapter 12 – Parts and Order of an Oration – 119 – 120
Chapter 13 – The Proem – 120 – 123
Chapter 14 –Places of Crimination and Purgation – 123 – 125
Chapter 15 – Narration – 125 – 128
Chapter 16 –Proof, Confirmation, and Refutation – 128 – 132
Chapter 17 – Interrogations, Answers, and Jests – 132 -134


--Josh and Martha

Digital Research Day #1

Hello, Everyone:

We did not have an opportunity to finish our digital research activity today, so -- as agreed -- I'll ask you to return to it sometime before next Tuesday's class (1/29), focusing on a single text from the list on your worksheet.

Remember that neither the list of texts nor the list of tools is meant to be exhaustive, but simply representative and generative -- hopefully pointing us to limitations and gaps, conditions and constraints, promise and possibility.

If you could, please work through the tasks, then work with your partner to compose a coherent response -- which you can comment to this post -- titling it informatively, and signing it appropriately. I will be most interested in what you learn about historiography as a result of the various questions and tasks you complete on your text. Dig deep, and consider how either the task or the tools might reflect certain attitudes we take towards Modern rhetoric as a history, and also as a methodology. Consider whether (or not or how) such a task disrupts the security of what we have come to know as major locations, corpora, or themes and players in Modern rhetoric.

-Dr. Graban

Welcome Message

Dear Everyone:

Welcome to the course! As a reminder, please send me the following in an e-mail before Thursday (1/10):

• your top two (2) choices for trace concepts
• your preferences for two (2) article assessments.

I look forward to Thursday's historiography discussion.

-Dr. Graban