Falco 1

Anthony T. Falco
Professor Benjamin Ristow
WRRH: Digital Rhetoric
Critical Reading reflection #1 (revised)
March 15th, 2015 (Midterm Porfolio)
Writing and Rhetoric is the central academic focus I dedicate my time to here in
college, it belongs to me partially as, my major. But what does it mean? Aside from
writing being an act that involves the hand motion ultimately creating something with
words, what is it? For me it is a way obviously to communicate without opening ones
mouth. It is the extra step technology produced way back in history to elevate
communication beyond oral conversations and to legitimize speech completely. It made
talking more accurate and less abstract. The ability to see what has been said on paper
and to keep a log of those papers became the foundation of this technological era we live
in now. It can be attributed as responsible for delivering man from the Stone Age.
Hand in hand with writing is the term rhetoric. From middle school
(approximately 6th grade) and on I learned about this term, tried to define it, capture it,
understand it and now at twenty years old I am still trying to put my finger on it.
From Silva Rhetoricae I learned how to better understand the term. To take it
more as a performed term than a memorable definition. That being said I made a
connection to my academic focus. Rhetoric is similar to the genres of creative non-fiction
and travel writing. It lacks a central definition because it incorporates multiple shared
aspects. These aspects of rhetoric have been around since the beginning of writing. I took
rhetoric to be the study of language. What makes that language effective? What makes us

Falco 2
as an audience buy into that written piece? The short answer is everything. Rhetoric
breaks down that everything to define what is truly effective; it is the art of persuasion.
To me it is the DNA of each written work that surfaces in the decisions of the writer for
instance, the language, the sound of each word, the rhythm of the tone, punctuation
choice, word choice, paragraph breaks . . . etc. To understand how to be an effective
writer one must understand how rhetoric operates.
Rhetoric is even a prominent part of the technological evolution in the world. We
see in this term new media how that might be. Prior to the online article new media to
me was a vague definition. I just assumed it to mean the advancement in technology. I
mean what is old media? I thought both were particularly new considering that this type
of technology has only existed for a small period of time compared to the history of this
world. But new media is what ever is current in cyber space. It is almost as whatever is
trending on the Internet or television or cellphones. It could be anything. Something
small like a blog or something large like a social media app. New media is just composed
of the current technological fascination. For that fact it is always changing, evolving,
progressing. What was new media yesterday could be old media today. The power of new
media belongs to its ability to publicize anything. We can set the trend for new media,
even create it if we want to but overall at this stage we definitely unanimously participate
in it regularly whether voluntarily or involuntarily.