Rhetorical Machines

Writing, Code, and Computational Ethics
Erscheinungsjahr 2019
ISBN: 978-0-8173-2021-8
Verlag: The University of Alabama Press

Buch, Englisch, 296 Seiten, Hardback, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm

Reihe: Rhetoric Culture and Social Critique Series

A landmark volume that explores the interconnected nature of technologies and rhetorical practice.
 
Rhetorical Machines addresses new approaches to studying computational processes within the growing field of digital rhetoric. While computational code is often seen as value-neutral and mechanical, this volume explores the underlying, and often unexamined, modes of persuasion this code engages. In so doing, it argues that computation is in fact rife with the values of those who create it and thus has powerful ethical and moral implications. From Socrates's critique of writing in Plato's Phaedrus to emerging new media and internet culture, the scholars assembled here provide insight into how computation and rhetoric work together to produce social and cultural effects.
 
This multidisciplinary volume features contributions from scholar-practitioners across the fields of rhetoric, computer science, and writing studies. It is divided into four main sections: ""Emergent Machines"" examines how technologies and algorithms are framed and entangled in rhetorical processes, ""Operational Codes"" explores how computational processes are used to achieve rhetorical ends, ""Ethical Decisions and Moral Protocols"" considers the ethical implications involved in designing software and that software's impact on computational culture, and the final section includes two scholars' responses to the preceding chapters. Three of the sections are prefaced by brief conversations with chatbots (autonomous computational agents) addressing some of the primary questions raised in each section.
 
At the heart of these essays is a call for emerging and established scholars in a vast array of fields to reach interdisciplinary understandings of human-machine interactions. This innovative work will be valuable to scholars and students in a variety of disciplines, including but not limited to rhetoric, computer science, writing studies, and the digital humanities.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturwissenschaft
• Sozialwissenschaften Medien- und Kommunikationswissenschaften Kommunikationswissenschaften
• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Textlinguistik, Diskursanalyse, Stilistik

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction by John Jones and Lavinia Hirsu
- Part I: Emergent Machines
- Chapter 1. A Conversation with A.L.I.C.E.
- Chapter 2. Engines of Rhetoric: Charles Babbage and His Rhetorical Work with Mechanical Computers by Jonathan Buehl
- Chapter 3. Definitive Programs: Rhetoric, Computation, and the (Pre)history of Controversy over Automated Essay Scoring, 1954–1965 by J. W. Hammond
- Chapter 4. Treating Code as a Persuasive Argument by Kevin Brock
- Part II: Operational Codes
- Chapter 5. A Conversation with Mitsuku
- Chapter 6. The Mathematical Assumptions within Computational Literacy by Jennifer Juszkiewicz and Joseph Warfel
- Chapter 7. Inventing Rhetorical Machines: On Facilitating Learning and Public Participation in Science by Ryan M. Omizo, Ian Clark, Minh-Tam Nguyen, and William Hart-Davidson
- Chapter 8. Race within the Machine: Ambient Rhetorical Actions and Racial Ideology by Joshua Daniel-Wariya and James Chase Sanchez
- Part III: Ethical Decisions and Protocols
- Chapter 9. A Conversation with Elbot
- Chapter 10. Metis in Code: CV Dazzle and the Wily Encounter with Code Libraries by Anthony Stagliano
- Chapter 11. Good Computing with Big Data by Jennifer Helene Maher, Helen J. Burgess, and Tim Menzies
- Chapter 12. Nasty Women and Private Servers: Gender, Technology, and Politics by Elizabeth Losh
- Part IV: Responses
- Chapter 13. Rhetorical Devices by James J. Brown Jr.
- Chapter 14. Full Stack Rhetoric: A Response to Rhetorical Machines by Annette Vee
- Bibliography
- Contributors
- Index

Über Autor(innen)

John Jones is an associate professor and the Director of Digital Media Studies in the Department of English at The Ohio State University. His scholarship has appeared in Communication Design Quarterly Review, Rhetoric Society Quarterly, Computers and Composition, and the Journal of Business and Technical Communication.
 
Lavinia Hirsu is a lecturer of applied linguistics, composition, and English as a foreign language at the University of Glasgow. Her work has appeared in Computers and Composition and The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning.