Meta-perspective on rhetorical invention
I chose the word dialogue as a term I thought would be rhetorically important for the larger-scale work I am doing towards my dissertation on judicial discourse. As I worked through the keyword essay and then the bibliographical essay I realized the term was much richer than I had anticipated. I also started to see how it was rhetorically much more significant than I had originally thought it would be. Its many definitions and links to other terms, like dialogism and its computer-born stepsibling dialog [box], challenged me to think, “what else can this word select or deflect from its situated meaning?” Rather than “finding the possible means of persuasion” (Blakesley 2002, 7), the terministic screens project has led to explorations of the hidden as well as the overt meanings a term can hold. An ideal application of Burke’s pentad to the term dialogue would result in something like this:
•Act – reciprocal exchange of ideas or information
•Scene – face-to-face encounters or virtual platforms
•Agent – all participants in a conversation involving turn-taking
•Agency – spoken, signed, or written language
•Purpose – mutual understanding
But that same pentad can work in the opposite direction. What if something that looks like a dialogue is actually being controlled by a single participants who gets to decide who gets to speak and who doesn’t? What if instead of exchanging information in more than one direction everything is flowing in just one direction? Sometimes dialogues can be externally deceiving, disguising power dynamics, like when a politician stands before a crowd in some town hall event to answer questions but is actually deflecting through misdirection and nonanswers. Venues can also be adverse to bidirectional exchanges, like a Zoom connection that only allows a presenter to speak and mutes everyone else, so that even when there are many participants only one of them has the agency to speak. There are many situations that look like dialogues, but a closer look reveals they are something else: an exchange between a judge and a defendant, a lecturer in a classroom, .
•Act – controlled unidirectional communicating of information
•Scene – face-to-face encounters or virtual platforms
•Agent – a single participant in a communicative event
•Agency – spoken, signed, or written language
•Purpose – persuasion, propaganda, instruction
