​How Gen-AI worked as a tool for rhetorical invention
I used ChatGPT to help me develop the main ideas for this project. My initial prompt was:
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“I have been asked to track down the implications of dialogue as a terministic screen and present a rhetorical invention and research in a notebook or commonplace book of rhetorical invention. I have already done a keyword essay and a bibliographic essay on the term dialogue. How do I present it now as a terministic screen in a commonplace book of rhetorical invention?”
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ChatGPT replied, “What you’re being asked to do now is shift modes—from explaining ‘dialogue’ (keyword + bibliography) to using it as a lens that actively generates insight. A terministic screen (Kenneth Burke) isn’t just a definition; it’s a way of seeing that selects, reflects, and deflects reality. A commonplace book of rhetorical invention is where you test and extend that lens across examples. with a lengthy and comprehensive set of ideas.”
This was followed by a comprehensive set of suggestions for my inventions and five examples I could develop: a political speech, a classroom interaction, a social media thread, a piece of literature, and a personal conversation. Since my principal research area is the courts system and linguistic diversity, I chose to develop two dialogues based on courtroom interactions between judges and defendants (Artifacts 1 and 2), two social media threads based on interpreters’ exchanges (Artifacts 3 and 4), two dialogues originally created by GenAI for my first terministic screens deliverable, i.e., the keyword essay (Artifacts 5 and 6), and two excerpts from literary works that I asked CoPilot to help me find (Artifacts 7 and 8).