Question about the choice of the term "rhetoric'

[Tom Johnson]

Dr. Barker,

I was checking out the PhD program at Texas Tech the other day and noticed the juxtaposition of rhetoric with technical communication. This intrigued me, because rhetoric is usually an academic topic never mentioned in the workplace. I'm wondering how rhetoric fits into the tech comm discipline. Are you using rhetoric to mean discourse, persuasion, engagement, or something else? 

Regardless of the definition, why choose the term rhetoric, which seems as ancient as Aristotle and seemingly irrelevant in a business world where skills in usability, design, elearning, and audiovisual media carry more weight than a background in rhetoric? Even if the content of the discipline is the same (audience analysis, communication fit), isn't it simply the wrong word? 

Tom

http://idratherbewriting.com

[Thomas Barker]

Thanks for the comment. The term rhetoric is meant to evoke the tradition of theory and analysis that underlies academic approaches to communication. As such, it has lots of explanatory power when someone is trying to say why one design works and another doesn’t. Besides, isn’t it the academic’s job to articulate the human and humanistic aspects of a discipline. I would think that workplace practitioners would be encouraged to know that their work has ties with a prestigious tradition that goes back to Aristotle. We do teach the skills you mention, so it’s not like our graduates just learn rhetorical theory. But we do it within the context of rhetorical effectiveness with users of technology.