Digital Rhetorics

This Foreword, about robots, written in both poetry as well as prose, introduces the edited collection _Androids, Cyborgs, and Robots in Contemporary Culture and Society_, edited by Steven J. Thompson (IGI Global, 2018). The link on the thumbnail cover at
https://www.igi-global.com/book/_/179222 will take you directly to the published Foreword, which is open access. The attached PDF, sent directly to me from IGI-Global to use here, is presented with written permission of the publisher.

Web 2.0 applications such as YouTube have made it likely that students participate in online back-and-forth exchanges that infuence their rhetorical literacy. Because of the back-and-forth nature of online communities, we turn to the procedural, critical, and progressive qualities of dialectic as a means of accounting for what makes public deliberation effective and how we can teach students to deliberate.

Sid Meier's Civilization allows players to build empires that span the earth and the ages. Complementing existing scholarship on ideologies, practices, and subject positions inculcated by the game, this article interrogates the very conception of subjectivity Civilization fosters in players. Building upon ludological and cybernetic principles, the author takes a formal approach to analyze the processes of human—computer interaction that emerge in the course of players' engagement with the game. Characteristics of the turn-based genre as well as Civilization's interface mechanics, representations of historical processes, and manual are considered for the ways in which they solicit player input. The author contends that player interaction with Civilization reifies a conception of himself or herself as a sovereign agent constituted of pure internality.

As video games increasingly become an important frame of reference and as they are more and more taken seriously in education and research, there is a growing need for a methodological tool for video game analysis. In this paper, rhetorical theory in general and pentadic analysis in particular are introduced as useful means to stimulate a critical approach of video games. A case study is presented in which a popular video game (Bioshock) is analysed using this rhetorical approach. It is argued that pentadic analysis can overcome a number of binary discussions within the contemporary field of video game criticism, thus offering interesting perspectives for research and education (e.g. as a reflection tool).

Draft version of Olaison, Lena; Saara L. Taalas. (2017). “Game of Gamification – Marketing, Consumer Resistance and Digital Play”, in Mikolaj Dymek and Peter Zackariasson (eds.) The Business of Gamification: A Critical Analysis. Arlington: Routledge: 59-80.

The current definition of demagogy provided by rhetorical theory is neither preventing nor adequately explaining the abuse of rhetoric so prevalent in contemporary political dialogue, and while it might not be the job of rhetoricians to do the former, rhetorical scholarship should certainly engage more thoroughly in the latter. I suggest that we need to reexamine demagogy in the context of the digital age due to the unique rhetorical dynamics of the online political landscape. Demagogues have a new and dangerous power online that has not yet been explored in rhetorical scholarship. I begin exploring this new power by tracing the scholarship on demagogy, proposing a new focus for demagogy studies based on deliberation and Edwin Black's idea of “second persona,” examining the digital exigence for this focus, and finally presenting case studies of both traditional and digital rhetoric to test this view of demagogy.

While the concept of communication has long been bound to a reductive model of the exchange of information, very few scholars of communication would argue that these assumptions are realistic, without a long list of qualifying caveats. But the concept of communication, built from the integration of semiotic signification with the idea of information as the 'carrier' of transmitted meaning, is so deeply ingrained and simple that even displacing it can seem futile, if not absurd. Nevertheless, these foundational assumptions tightly constrain the ways in which any interactional phenomena can be conceived--and constraints upon our ways of understanding communication drastically limit our capacity to understand our worlds and the social processes that generate them, at any scale or level of abstraction. 

Communication as Gesture traces the concept of communication from its roots in classical rhetoric to its integration in structural linguistics, semiotics, information theory, and cybernetics, integrating perspectives from contemporary rhetorical theory, relational psychology, interactional sociology, philosophy, cognitive linguistics, discourse studies, multimodal semiotics, and more. Because so much of our contemporary world is lived with and through digital media technologies, the study of new media and social media provides a rich illustration of the constraints imposed by our reductive assumptions--and hints at the possibilities generated by rethinking them. The gesture theory of communication introduced presents a dimensional account of communication that is intuitively accessible and theoretically rich while overturning reductive assumptions of the linear character of interaction.

https://books.emeraldinsight.com/page/detail/Communication-as-Gesture/?k=9781787565166

Marshall McLuhan probed and explored the social and cultural environments created by media technologies and the modes of perception engendered in those who found themselves immersed therein. In this essay I argue that digital games produce a form of electronic "acoustic space", an instantaneous, inclusive, decentred environment quite distinct from their carefully realised but ludologically irrelevant backstories. Taking as my case study Sid Meier's complex and involving Civilization series, I examine the 'aural' mode of engagement that digital games can encourage and even require. I close by evaluating the equivocal environmental rhetoric of this enduringly successful title, and the continuing relevance of McLuhan's provocative and fruitful analyses.

Because of the vast changes to the communication landscape over the last two decades, along with the influence of emerging technologies on students’ writing practices, empirical studies that describe students’ experiences in multimodal composing are required to determine how the goals and practices of composition teaching might be better supported and reimagined. In response to this exigency, this article presents findings from an empirical study of graduate and undergraduate writers’ multimodal composing processes. Findings from focus group interviews and written reflections show that students’ attempts to draw on their print-based rhetorical knowledge while composing multimodally worked well when they perceived print-based and multimodal composing tasks as similar, but they faced significant difficulties when they perceived the need to adapt their print-based composing knowledge to suit new or unfamiliar aspects of multimodal composing. Specifically, students found it difficult to conceptualize an audience and negotiate the multiple semiotic resources afforded by multimodal composing. In an effort to mitigate such challenges, we provide two conceptual frameworks that help students move more fluidly between print-based and multimodal composing. These pedagogical approaches enable writing specialists to better support students’ efforts to engage successfully in multimodal composition tasks.

En el anterior proyecto de investigación, Alfabetización académica en entornos digitales (2011), indagamos cómo la lectura y la escritura en entornos digitales pueden integrarse al proceso de alfabetización académica a través de varias actividades didácticas, tanto individuales como grupales. Durante dicha investigación, nos acercamos a un novedoso concepto denominado retórica digital. El presente proyecto, Aproximación a la enseñanza de la retórica digital, toma en cuenta esas consideraciones para profundizar y ramificar el análisis sobre la retórica digital y cómo puede ser enseñada a los estudiantes. Producir y analizar textos argumentativos del género discursivo digital no es una competencia que se circunscribe solamente al ámbito académico. Las estrategias y las técnicas para leer críticamente o componer un contenido digital a partir de una perspectiva retórica son centrales para la formación de los alumnos como ciudadanos y consumidores concientizados. La retórica digital se hace presente en los videojuegos, en el marketing viral, en las políticas comunicacionales de los Gobiernos, en los contenidos digitales que producen los usuarios de la Web 2.0, en las campañas políticas y en muchas otras esferas. El discurso argumentativo digital se construye con y se distribuye a través de redes sociales, sitios Web para almacenar y compartir videos y fotos, blogs, wikis, etc.

Research concerning computer hackers generally focuses on how to stop them; far less attention is given to the texts they create. Phrack, an online hacker journal that has run almost continuously since 1985, is an important touchstone in hacker literature, widely read by both hackers and telephone and network security professionals. But beyond its instantiation as a compendium of illicit technical knowledge, Phrack was, above all, a rhetorical publication. The files in each issue of Phrack created a shared rhetorical vision concerning the place of the hacker underground within society and in relation to law enforcement officials, as well as what it means to be a hacker. This essay examines two important events in the evolution of the hacker movement through the lens of Phrack—Operation Sundevil and the arrest of Kevin Mitnick. How these events were framed in Phrack both shaped and reflected emerging shifts in hacker collective identity.

Life is Strange, INSIDE, Oxenfree—all these video games represent a seemingly entirely new genre. Young Adult videogames diverge from the male, gloomy grown-up stereotypes and replace them with adolescent protagonists in their coming of age stories. Their commercial success seem to validate their endeavors. However, YA narratives are hidden in plain sights for many years within JRPGs. Shin Megami Tensei – Persona 4 (short Persona 4 or P4) is a cultural ambassador. This paper examines how the game’s procedural rhetoric in combination with its Young Adult story advocate in favor of specific Japanese values. The time structure of P4 reinforces a longterm orientation and requires strategic planning as well as tactical flexibility. So-called “Social Links” represents Japan unique take on collectivism. Each link encapsulates a small YA narrative and offers different benefits to social-active protagonist. Finally, grinding mechanics reflect the notion of
repetition-based learning. Japanese schools teach through engaging with developing several solutions to a singular problem. The same holds true for the grinding process. All these elements combined create a game rhetoric promoting these aspects of Japanese culture.

In 2016, Hillary Clinton was nominated as the first female presidential candidate of a major party in a United States election and Sylvanas Windrunner was appointed as the first female Warchief of the Horde in the fictional land of Azeroth in which the popular MMORPG World of Warcraft is set. This article is a rhetorical analysis of how authority and ethos were constructed by, respectively, Lady Sylvanas and Garrosh Hellscream in the World of Warcraft and Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in the 2016 United States election. As well as investigating issues of race and gender, it explores how these four figures deploy what Richard Weaver has termed "charismatic" and "ultimate" terms to establish the legitimacy of their actions and positions. This paper was published in Popular Culture Review 29.1 (Spring 2018): 31-50. It is an open access journal; the link is posted below.

A Retórica é a disciplina que estuda o modo como comunicamos persuasivamente com os outros e está presente em tudo o que fazemos, desde comprar um seguro automóvel, passado pelos anúncios de publicidade até à deliberação política. Não obstante ser, por vezes, reduzida a simples actividade empolada e oca, a Retórica é essencial na vida democrática e pilar indiscutível da sociedade civil. Ela é uma contribuição incontornável para o diálogo e o compromisso, sendo uma ferramenta indispensável para ajuizar não apenas a força da eloquência, mas também o rigor do raciocínio e da argumentação.

Nesta Introdução à Retórica no Séc. XXI, Samuel Mateus apresenta os fundamentos da Retórica ao mesmo tempo que os integra nos desafios contemporâneos. Alargando o horizonte persuasivo da Retórica para além da eloquência e do discurso verbal, Mateus explica, de forma rigorosa, mas acessível, a importância que a Retórica assume hoje. Adoptando uma perspectiva comunicativa acerca da Retórica que se situa para lá da sua estrita dimensão histórico-filosófica, Mateus salienta a vitalidade desta disciplina, seja na Retórica Mediatizada, na Retórica Visual, na Retórica Digital, seja ainda na Retórica do Silêncio.

O livro encontra-se dividido em quatro partes: os Fundamentos da Retórica; o Sistema Retórico; Retórica e Comunicação; os Campos de Estudo da Retórica na Actualidade.

Introdução à Retórica no Séc. XXI irá despertar o interesse nos estudantes de Retórica das mais diversas áreas (Ciências da Comunicação, Filosofia, Estudos Clássicos) mas também dos investigadores em Retórica, Filosofia da Linguagem, Teoria da Argumentação, Comunicação Política, Publicidade, Crítica Literária, Comunicação Digital ou Design de Jogos.

This chapter examines the neo-liberal multiculturalist ideology of the Mass Effect series of digital role-playing games. I show that both games in the series profess the unmitigated superiority of neo-liberal multiculturalism as a form of dealing with difference. While the narrative conceit of the Mass Effect series is an alien threat to annihilate all sentient life in the galaxy, its key thematic is the biological and cultural differences that render the spacefaring races populating the Milky Way vulnerable to such a threat. In this context, the various systems of rules and the procedures for sorting and executing those rules valorize players’ heterogeneous configurative practices and the neo-liberal multiculturalist performances they enact.

The primary goal of this paper is to investigate the basic factors that videogame orators can utilize to engage their audience(s). The Metal Gear Solid saga serves as an excellent subject for investigation, considering it covers about twenty years of videogame history while being credited as one of the most influential games of all time. The first step is to clarify the reason for videogames being a difficult medium for rhetorical intervention. Secondly, the analyzed game franchise Metal Gear Solid is to be introduced. While its vast narrative would overextend the limitations of this chapter, it is necessary to understand the basic dystopian themes and acknowledge their rhetorical presentation. The core unit Painting a Picture with Pixels introduces the four basic levels of game rhetoric: stage, agents, agency, and immersion fractures, the last one of which is one of four new theoretical concepts. Immersion fractures and its antonym, immersion shatters, will be equally introduced as ludo-performative stasis and the homunculus digitalis. The former describes the necessity to engage in the activity of playing in order to activate narrative or persuasive content, while the latter explains how the game’s artificial intelligence serves as proxy for distance communication.

The paper accommodates Espen Aarseth’s concept of 'virtuality' and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s concept of 'suspension of disbelief' to the context of modern story forms. The primary focus will be on the videogame. The premise is that suspending disbelief at narrative improbabilities is a skill required to construct narrative coherence. Constructing narrative coherence of stories that contain virtual elements entails supplementary suspension of disbelief at virtual improbabilities, suspension of virtual disbelief. Since increasing the degree of virtuality often increases the requisite traversal effort, virtuality can be said to set increased demands on story traversal as well. This results in the dilemma of 'virtual balance:' while virtuality has the potential to strengthen diegesis, it on the other hand sets heightened demands on story traversal and narrative coherence. The concluding argument is that these heightened demands may be turned into rhetorical tools.

Interactive non-fiction uses the affordances of emerging media to educate and persuade audiences. Practitioners of the form aim to create knowledge, and then to persuade others to act upon this constructed knowledge. However, the historical propensity of practitioners to use emerging media has resulted in uneven access and literacy. Privileged communities and groups have access to the technology and get to tell stories first. Communities without access to these media are slow to gain literacy and are unable to express themselves in an emergent digital culture fully. Compared to their privileged peers, these groups are unable to use the rhetorical affordances of these emerging media for their ends. This inequity puts them at a distinct disadvantage. Community workshops for interactive non-fiction can be established to democratize this didactic use of emerging media. These workshops are both pedagogical and a site for social action. To put this theory into practice, I developed a workshop based on historical cases of practitioners using emerging media to create non-fiction with communities as a form of social action. The emerging media chosen for my workshop was mixed reality. The workshop was part of a devised theater class on the campus of the Georgia Institute of Technology. Students gained media literacy through participating in the development of a mobile app that uses mixed reality, and by using that app to create knowledge about safety on campus through performance activities. The knowledge they created came from the students’ personal stories and documentary material. Combining the workshop tactics and the app, students were able to create rhetorically effective and didactic scenes. The ability to use physical space as a canvas to create a digital-visual-spatial argument about how an event should be represented was impactful. Particularly effective was a shared gaze that enabled all of the users to see and create in a shared mixed reality. Evaluation of the workshop showed that students believed that they were able to create compelling mixed reality scenes about their community through the app and that the scenes they created could encourage social action.

Depending on how you approach it, economic justice is either an extremely old intellectual tradition or a relatively new one. From the first perspective, economic justice is part and parcel of classical political philosophy—Plato’s The Republic and Aristotle’s The Politics, for instance, both discuss property distribution in an ideal society, emphasizing the philosophy of justice over economic precepts. From the second perspective, the one we embrace, economic justice is a uniquely modern inquiry that emerged with the writings of Karl Marx and his revolutionary critique of the capitalist political economy. For Marx, economic justice can be understood as a critical enterprise that attempts to locate contradictions between universal and particular conceptions of human freedom and intervene politically into these contradictions with the aim of creating a more just, equitable, and egalitarian society. So conceived, economic justice liberates the collective potential of humanity from its exploitation and degradation by
capitalism as well as the various legal institutions it develops to control human behavior for the purpose of extracting of surplus-value. It is this Marxist perspective and the various historical reformulations that it has authorized that influence the way rhetoricians and scholars of cultural studies conceptualize economic justice in the discipline of communication. While not all of these scholars endorse an explicitly Marxist line of thought, they all attempt to conceptualize economic justice as a normative political category that influences various models of rhetorical agency and social change.

Celem artykułu jest opisanie zjawiska identyfikacji w odniesieniu do retoryki cyfrowej. Na przykładzie aktywności koreańskiego zespołu BTS w mediach online pokazane zostały środki służące utożsamieniu się nadawcy (artyści) i audytorium (fani) na poziomie wspólnych doświadczeń, przeżyć i działań.

In this chapter, I discuss the problem of scale in environmental communication, specifically in the use of visualization technologies to promote ecoliteracy and communicate massive environmental issues (such as sea-level rise or climate change) to public audiences. By displaying topologies of place at scales beyond the individual and human perspective, geovisualization technologies present posthuman perspectives. However, these scalar technologies also produce discrete challenges for environmental communication. By presenting geological perspectives of deep time, digital technologies undermine human(ist) conceptions of place and environment. Rather than using geovisualization technologies to engage place as a topos, I demonstrate how Gregory L. Ulmer’s concept of MEmorials, as discussed in Electronic Monuments, offers ways to engage places of change and catastrophe as networked, ecological, and emergent. MEmorial mapping allows writers to access what Zach Horton terms “thick ecology,” engaging with sites of large-scale disaster beyond the rigid boundaries of scale. This approach “asks us to think with the scales of the planet in all of their interconnected complexity” (21). Rather than relying on Cartesian topologies, these practices engage place as a trans-scalar network. As technology unsettles Heideggerian notions of “world” based on scalar topologies, it also opens up new thresholds for considering how individuals relate to place in the boundary event of the Anthropocene.

يعالج البحث التضفير المعقّد بين السرديات الصغرى (سرديات الحياة اليومية) والسرديات الكبرى (خاصة السرديات الوطنية والتاريخية)، وارتباط ذلك بإنتاج تمثيلات متنوعة للواقع والتاريخ. ويحاول أن يجيب عن سؤالين بحثيين رئيسين هما:
1. ما أشكال العلاقة بين السرديات الكبرى والصغرى في المتن الروائي المدروس؟
2. ما أثر التقنيات البلاغية والسردية في المعالجة الروائية للسرديات الكبرى، وبخاصة سرديات الحروب؟
يوظف البحث عُدّة منهجية متنوعة للإجابة عن هذين السؤالين، تُستمدُ بالأساس من حقول التحليل البلاغي والسرديات وتحليل الخطاب. ويدرس تحديدًا أربعة أنواع من تمثيل السرديات الكبرى، هي:
1) تمثيلات الحرب الأهلية: بلاغة الكذب في رواية "مدائن الالتهاب".
2) تمثيلات الهزائم الوطنية: جدلية التاريخ والأسطورة في رواية "رجل من زمن منعكس".
3) تمثيلات الاحتلال العسكري: الذاكرة بوصفها مقاومةً في رواية "دوامة الرحيل".
4) تمثيلات التمييز: عقدة اللون وسرديات ما بعد العبودية في رواية "جارية".

Misinformation constitutes one of the main challenges to counter the infodemic: misleading news, even if not blatantly false, can cause harm especially in crisis scenarios such as the pandemic. Due to the fast proliferation of information across digital media, human fact-checkers struggle to keep up with fake news, while automatic fact-checkers are not able to identify the grey area of misinformation. We, thus, propose to reverse engineer the manipulation of information offering citizens the means to become their own fact-checkers through digital literacy and critical thinking. Through a corpus analysis of fact-checked news about COVID-19, we identify 10 fallacies-arguments which seem valid but are not-that systematically trigger misinformation and offer a systematic procedure to identify them. Next to fallacies, we examine the types of sources associated to (mis-/dis-)information in our dataset as well as the type of claims making up the headlines. The statistical patterns surfaced from these three levels of analysis reveal a misinformation ecosystem where no source type is exempt from flawed arguments with frequent evading the burden of proof and cherry picking behaviors, even when descriptive claims are at stake. In such a scenario, exercising the audience's critical skills through fallacy and semantic analysis is necessary to guarantee fake news immunity.

This essay theorizes the unnaturalistic enthymeme, an emergent argument formation surrounding analogico-digital photography. Instead of presuming the naturalism of images, we contend that contemporary audiences have a heightened awareness of the ways that digital photography is altered. Drawing on the quadripartita ratio, or four categories of change associated with rhetorical figuration, we explore a series of image controversies that denaturalize assumptions about photographic realism. We examine how contemporary protesters respond to this shift in interpretive conventions by making the unnaturalistic enthymeme visible through culture jamming commercial billboards. The unnaturalistic enthymeme does not supplant the naturalistic enthymeme, but instead enables a “hypersophistic” attitude in visual culture—one that decides the veridicality of photographs through argument instead of assumptions about technological objectivity.

In recent years, humanists and social scientists have shown increasing interest in human-animal relations – to the point where many now speak of an ‘animal turn’ in the humanities and social sciences. Across history, psychology, anthropology, literature, sociology, philosophy, and law, an interdisciplinary field of human-animal studies has been forming. Certain common themes run through this diverse field, not least the reproduction of human-animal difference, and the conditions and the implications thereof.

Despite the long history of language use as a marker of such difference, the academic quest to investigate the boundary between human and nonhuman has, somewhat surprisingly, not taken root within rhetorical studies – at least not until now. For this edited volume, we therefore call for chapters that investigate the place of nonhuman animals in the purview of rhetorical theory; what it would mean to communicate beyond the human community; how rhetoric reveals our ‘brute roots.’ In other words, this book invites contributions which enlighten us about likely or possible implications of the animal turn within rhetorical studies. Would such a turn imply, for instance, that rhetoric needs a nonanthropocentric reconfiguration? The question, perhaps, is this: What difference would it make to the discipline if we assumed that nonhuman forms of communication were as interesting as human ones?

Launching in September 2012, Tinder has become a popular phenomenon in the world of online dating and hookup culture. Simultaneously, it carries notorious reputation for being home to hypersexual and toxic masculine expressions. This analysis examines Tinder Nightmares, an Instagram page featuring failed attempts at hooking up, as a site that promotes counter-disciplining the deliberate toxic masculine performances on Tinder. Through a Foucauldian lens, we argue that this page delimits the toxic masculine performances through the outward display of crude performances, the showcasing of witty responses from Tinder users, and the extension of counter-discipline through digital circulation practices on the page. Given that Tinder is a location-aware app, the discipline offered through Tinder Nightmares surfaces in interpersonal, physical, and networked spaces, as Tinder users become multiply implicated public subjects of shame across media platforms. Launching in September 2012, the mobile dating app Tinder, which allows users to connect with (swiping right) or passing on (swiping left) others nearby through simple profiles, has become a popular cultural phenomenon in the dating world. As of 2014,

As the form of a medium affects how the content is perceived and can, in turn, affect the perceptual processes of those who behold it, what the following study attempts to reveal and argue is that the form of any medium is inherently rhetorical; and, whether of conscious intention or accidental design, the form affects the audience’s perception of the content and the mental processes which produce that perceptual reality. More specifically, I argue that form of a medium has the potential to—and perhaps always does—function as symbolic action; it induces cooperation in the audience, even if it is merely the technical processes of perceiving and interpreting the content within the respective medium that is determined by and dependent on the form. Accordingly, this project examines the methods and strategies that William Blake and virtual reality employ in the construction of the form to rhetorically move their respective reader/user to an intended mode of perception: Blake, on the one hand, attempts to catalyze a critical mode of apperception in his readers, while virtual reality, on the other, intends to induce a mode of passive presence. Moreover, rather than composing a traditional thesis presented through the medium of a printed paper, I am also constructing a virtual artifact—a virtual exhibit, so to speak—consciously employing the virtual rhetorical components I identify.

I begin with my investigation into virtual rhetoric by examining the virtual reality simulation Gnomes & Goblins. I will then move on to an analysis of select plates from three of Blake’s earliest Illuminated Books: There Is No Natural Religion, Songs of Innocence and of Experience, and The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Following this is a brief discussion and explanation regarding the creation of my virtual exhibit. I conclude by suggesting that the form of a medium, because it can function as symbolic action and rhetorically evoke a change in perspective, has the potential to ideologically manipulate or liberate those who experience it—especially in the case of virtual reality.

This article focuses on a national study of writing instructors regarding the inclusion of social media in their teaching. The results from this study indicate the field’s burgeoning interest in social media in the writing classroom: as technological tool, as content for analysis, as a composing space, and much more. These findings suggest the value of social media as a pedagogical component and address the potential benefits and challenges for social media’s use in the classroom.

In combination with disability studies practices and philosophies, I draw from glitch theory, deconstructionism, and new technological capabilities to argue that we, as new media writers and writers with disabilities, never simply compose and consume in the universal manner tradition leads us to believe. I argue not only for a model of creating and consuming media (textual or otherwise) that resists normalizing conceptions of revision, polished (finished) writing, coherence, and linearity, but also one that embraces irregularities and glitches as essential, inherent features. Finally, I provide examples of how to perform these models and practices, which I call glitch writing and hyperactive teaching.

Our times are characterized by a rapid evolution of means and ways of communication. Thanks to the Internet, the genres of persuasive functional texts are constantly appearing (and disappearing). These include messages encouraging to unblock advertisements. The message sender aims at convincing the Internet user to uninstall the adblocker (the name comes from the most popular AdBlock software), resign, or at least to add the given website to the so-called white list because the service earns money thanks to the displayed ads. In this article I analyze a text corpus of 50 examples, mainly in Polish, using a research apparatus of rhetoric. On this basis, I discuss genre characteristics and distinctive argumentation strategies, which-as the analysis shows-can be arranged in a system defi ned by two axes: potential losses or profi ts and agency, which can be in the domain of either the sender or the recipient. As a result, I present typical patterns of contemporary messages encouraging to unblock advertisements on the Internet. Nasze czasy charakteryzuje szybka ewolucja środków i sposobów komunikacji. Za sprawą internetu pojawiają się (i znikają) gatunki perswazyjnych tekstów użytkowych. Do nich zaliczam komunikaty namawiające do odblokowania reklam. Celem nadawcy tychże komunikatów jest przekonanie internauty do zrezygnowania, przynajmniej w przypadku danej strony internetowej, z tzw. adblocka (nazwa pochodzi od najpopularniejszego tego typu oprogramowania AdBlock), gdyż dzięki wyświetlanym reklamom serwis zarabia pieniądze. W artykule analizuję korpus 50 tego typu przykładów, głównie polskojęzycznych, używając aparatu badawczego retoryki. Na tej podstawie omawiam cechy gatunkowe oraz wyróżniające się strategie argumentacyjne, które-jak wynika z analizy-można rozmieścić w układzie wyznaczonym przez dwie osie: potencjalnych strat lub zysków oraz sprawczości, którą może się cechować nadawca lub odbiorca. W rezultacie przedstawiam obraz współczesnych komunikatów namawiających do odblokowania reklam w internecie. License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 international (CC BY 4.0). The content of the license is available at

A speech by Bronx activist Majora Carter at the 2006 Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED) Talks event was reposted on the web and has since been embedded on blogs and sites around the web, garnering significant positive reaction. This paper comprises a case study of the text of the speech, its immediate delivery at the TED conference (as captured by videocameras at the event), and the way the message has been re-mediated by bloggers and web commentators in the years since. The paper examines the talk and its subsequent circulation both as an instance of environmental justice rhetoric, with its tropes of community and embodied experience, and as an exemplar of the way orality and human bodies in peril retain rhetorical force in an increasingly mediated environment.

In an early tractate, ‘De dialectica’, Augustine discusses how an argument succeeds and identifies two sources of disturbance: ambiguity, which inheres potentially in any verbal sign, and obscurity, which arises from the interaction between sender, receiver and sign. In ‘De doctrina christiana’, also early for its theorical parts, Augustine analyses ambiguity and obscurity with specific reference to the Bible. He discusses obscurity intermittently in his later works, always as a disturbance of communication that arises and changes by situation. This paper considers the two early tractates’ presentation of obscurity arising from signs, senders (authors, preachers, discussants), and receivers (hearers or readers), and then engages the recurrence and stakes of those ideas in Augustine’s later thought and writings. Words and sentences can be obscure if they violate linguistic convention (consuetudo). Metaphorical language and allegory are inherently ambiguous and have a peculiar form of obscurity: the preliminary difficulty of recognising them for what they are. The sender has to adapt, or not, to the knowledge of his hearers or readers, who themselves need a certain competence for successful communication. Biblical obscurity poses specific questions about its purpose (as divinely intended and humanly perceived). Augustine here seizes on some older considerations in exegesis: namely, that obscurity exercises the mind, makes successful understanding precious, and procures delight for the successful reader. In order to understand the Bible the reader must be educated and have an upright moral sense, and successful understanding changes him and elevates him toward God. Of particular interest is Augustine’s answer to the question why metaphorical language brings pleasure. Allegory and metaphor delight the reader because they involve the senses and allow knowledge already acquired to appear in a new way. Augustine’s discussion of obscurity is subtly nuanced because obscurity itself varies with each instance of communication:  it can be dangerous (e.g., when heretical preachers abuse it), but in the Bible it is a vehicle of divine grace.