Reading Response 1

RR Prompt: How might these two fields–feminist rhetorical studies and digital rhetoric–inform one another? Do you see productive connections? Disconnections?

The connection between feminist rhetorical studies and digital rhetoric is that they are both “new” forms of rhetorical studies. Both texts Walking and Talking Feminist Rhetorics and “Defining and Locating Digital Rhetoric” acknowledge the implications of traditional male and textual rhetoric of persuasion, debate, and power. These two modern forms of rhetoric—feminist and digital—are connected by their efforts to re-define/develop what counts as rhetoric. Feminist rhetorical studies includes women in discussions of rhetoric, including many examples of female rhetoriticians and their works. Digital rhetoric seeks to expand the mediums of rhetoric as well as what rhetoric is “outside of the tradition of written and spoken argument” (Eyman). Both forms of rhetoric seek to broaden the meaning of rhetoric in the goal of making the field of rhetoric overall more diverse, more accessible, and less limiting.