Inventing local rhetorics: Towards a topographic critical praxis
Inventing local rhetorics: Towards a topographic critical praxis
Author(s): Pamela PietrucciSubject(s): Anthropology, Communication studies
Published by: Polskie Towarzystwo Retoryczne
Keywords: local rhetorics; space; materiality; fieldwork; in-situ methodologies
Summary/Abstract: This essay offers a pluralized conception of local rhetorics. The local has traditionally been conceived as the backdrop or flat surface where rhetoric/discourse is situated, or at best as a contextual dimension of rhetorical situations. The history of usage of this term – evoking a fix and inert connotation that often indicates a bounded locality or site – has contributed to its neglect as a tool for rhetorical theory, while its actual use in rhetorical praxis has proliferated in conjunction to the turn to field and site-based methodologies and practices. By drawing on fieldwork about the rhetoricity of a post-disaster locality to ground my theoretical reflections, here I offer a conceptualization of local rhetorics via multiple ontologies and ecological theories. Finally, throughout the essay, I suggest a rhetorical-topographic approach as a methodological orientation to integrate existing theoretical and methodological pathways for exploring the multiple rhetoricity of the local.
Journal: Res Rhetorica
- Issue Year: 9/2022
- Issue No: 4
- Page Range: 4-28
- Page Count: 25
- Language: English