The Rhetoric Garage

Hi everyone, and welcome to my second rhetoric-themed blog. A special welcome to those of you following me here from my previous blog, The Counterpoint. I hope to see some familiar faces (metaphorically speaking) here.

This is just a brief post to introduce the idea behind this blog. What I do here is look at examples of public discourse and analyze them from a variety of rhetorical perspectives, with the goal of both shedding some light on the texts I look at and also making "rhetorical criticism" something that's interesting, fun, and purposeful for a wide audience. I'm not interested in creating miniature versions of graduate seminar papers here. Rhetoric is a practical art, and so should rhetorical criticism. Ideally, this blog will play a small role in bridging the gap between the ivory tower of academia and the world in which we all live.

The title is meant to capture this idea. As a mechanic will put up a car on a lift, examine it, take it apart, diagnose any problems, and monkey around with it using whatever tools are needed, this blog examines specific examples of rhetoric, examines them using a variety of tools and approaches, and diagnoses what's going on with them. It's a hands-on, dirt-under-the-fingernails sort of thing. I want this blog to be pragmatic.

A related point is that this blog makes no pretensions to objective, disinterested critique (if such a thing were even possible). As readers of The Counterpoint know, I'm proudly progressive in my politics, and my writing here will reflect that. Most of the texts we'll look at on this blog will be political, and I'll more often than not be critiquing and criticizing rhetoric that's conservative, reactionary, and/or simply backwards. In other words, this academic has an activist streak that will be on display.

I'd also like the blog to be as much a dialog as possible. If you have suggestions for particular texts you'd like to "bring into the garage" for an inspection, please leave a comment saying so. And, of course, any good mechanic welcomes second (and third, and fourth) opinions. What you're getting are my initial takes on things--rhetorical criticism on the fly. Getting your creative, insightful, and even combative responses to whatever I happen to be blathering about is an integral part of this blog's work. If I just want to pontificate to myself, I can do that just fine in seminar rooms and academic conferences. Let's try to get a populist vibe going here.

As for when to expect posts . . . well, it'll probably be whenever I have a chance. I don't guarantee daily updates (at least not with full analyses), but what I might lack in quantity I'll attempt to make up for in quality. If nothing else, I'll at least try to point you toward interesting takes by other people on days when I'm lacking the time to do my own tinkering in the garage.

I think that'll do it for now. I'll be gradually getting this site set up over the next few weeks, adding stuff in sidebars, links, etc. as I'm able. Let me know if you have any suggestions.

As always, thanks for stopping by!

Cheers,

Ted