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Giannasi Christina Giannasi Professor Leslie Wolcott ENC 3331 4/10/14 Engagement as a Citizen of Rhetoric In order to influence the opinions of citizens in a community, rhetoric and citizenship are the key ingredients. Rhetoric is an ancient device used for persuasion. Citizenship may mean belonging to a specific community, but it is also a term for people who engage in that community. Rhetorical citizenship is the use of rhetoric to influence change in a community. My involvement in the local community can be described as rhetorical citizenship because I not only dove headfirst into my community, but I wrote about the experience in an attempt to influence a group within that community. Rhetoric is an art: it is a skill to be learned that teaches its student to craft words for a specific audience to influence change in a society. Rhetoric is the power behind language. I understood it best described as "knitting desire and language (Leith). Once the concept was comprehended I formed my opinion of it based on the explanations and examples given by Socrates. Socrates introduced rhetoric as something untrustworthy, particularly in court or government, when he questioned, "the rhetorician need not know the truth about things; he has only to discover some way of persuading the ignorant that he has more knowledge than those who know." This is an excellent point because it happens by the minute in democratic societies especially. This example shows rhetoric in a negative light, even though it can have positive advantages. Rhetoric is a power that can be used for good or evil in a society. The invention of rhetoric, its makeup of ethos, pathos, and logos, are the building blocks of persuasion. The dangerous part lies in its power to make a connection, create understanding through logic, and convince an audience to change their mind, relate to, or accept what is being said or written.

C. Giannasi Rhetoric has a strong dependence on audience. Rhetoric is completely ineffective without an audience that has relevance to the speakers message. As an employer in advertising or public relations, for example, it is important to know that employees have a perfectly clear understanding of writing with rhetoric. In advertising and public relations especially, marketers are required to know how to connect to an audience. Identification with an audience involves heavy work on the rhetor's part because he or she has to find a common interest within a group and appeal to it. An example of Grimke's antislavery speech while confronting mob violence is a genius use of identification (Palczewski). In her speech, Grimke used ongoing mob violence to her advantage to connect with the audience. In addition to an ethical rhetor, the speaker or writer understands who his or her audience is and which side of the argument they are coming from. Rhetoric also employs the use of character or persona. Rhetoricians are similar to actors in their performances because they are presented with an opportunity to influence others. Furthermore, they both portray a character: a rhetor must convince his or her audience of the honesty and truth in their persona, just as an actor convinces a theater. This development of character is necessary to develop in rhetorical writing. Writing for the public involves catering your writing to deliver the same message to different people. In Tactics of Hope by Mathieu, public writing was said to be "about connecting with people, making them feel represented and encouraging them to get involved." This idea reminded me of methods taught in my major. The public writing described in the reading reminded me of tactics used in advertising where the person delivering the message is creating a need or sense of urgency that the audience is made to believe will have an effect on them. With this view of writing and rhetoric, there is a blatant need for a purpose, as there is with all writing. Once significant characters of rhetoric, such as audience and character are understood as concepts, they must be applied to influence change. Rhetoric must serve a purpose, which is where

C. Giannasi citizenship enters the equation. Simply put, citizenship is typically defined as membership in a community. However, when I speak of citizenship, I mean the more complex version involving cultural identity, participatory action, critical literacy, public writing, etc. and not merely membership of a particular nation-state. I noticed this in Wans writing In the Name of Citizenship when she quoted Christian Weisser saying he wanted to help [his] students become active citizens who are capable of using language to defend themselves, voice their opinions, and take part in the public debates. My own definition of citizenship is similar because I view citizenship as participation, or engagement, in a community one belongs through action. Civic engagement is putting learned rhetoric into action. In this class, I have learned that civic engagement is directly related to citizenship. This class has reinforced my opinion on citizenship within a community. Rhetoric must be taught in classrooms, but not limited to them. A combination of rhetoric, writing, and civic engagement are necessary to promote social change within a community. This combination of concepts forms rhetorical citizenship. I have applied rhetorical citizenship in my Rhetoric and Civic Engagement class as well as beyond. Specific to this class, my experience participating in the Transit Interpretation Project (TrIP) of Orlando helped to support change in the local bus system. My contribution of a creative writing piece tied together my engagement in the community and my rhetorical writing to promote a movement for change. My initial view of civic engagement was summed up as volunteering. Since TrIP, I have learned that civic engagement is a much broader spectrum. Engagement in ones community can include voting, writing a letter, participating in or attending events that bring change in a community, working with children, arguing for anyones rights, in addition to volunteerism. Through involvement in a community, one becomes a true citizen. I originally defined rhetoric as an art. When this artistic form is applied to involvement in a community, involvement becomes civic engagement. I did more than participate in TrIP because it was

C. Giannasi an assignment. I understood what it meant for me to be on that bus, observing and absorbing those experiences that I would later transfer into a medium for others in my community to relate to. The goal of TrIP was to raise overall awareness. My personal goal, after engaging in the project, was to raise awareness of womens safety on public buses. My writing for the transit project was meant to appeal to young women especially, so I formatted my rhetorical piece in a blog-like style accompanied by comical hashtags. My submission to the TrIP website gave my interpretation of what it was like for a young woman, alone and in unfamiliar territory, to depend on a public bus. I chose young, female writers to target first because I could relate to them best. I was a part of the audience I was attempting to connect to. Furthermore, if young women in the community choose to utilize the public bus system, I wanted them to know what they were getting into for safety purposes. I momentarily joined a niche community of bus-riders within my regional community in an attempt to understand a lifestyle different from my own. By doing this, I was able to recognize common problems that might inhibit others in the larger community from taking advantage of a truly great resource that is public transit. This was my connection to civic engagement. Rhetoric was introduced to my project once I began to write about it. I documented my experiences aboard the Space Coast Area Transit bus and through targeting an audience, establishing character and person, and connecting new things to what the community was familiar with, I applied rhetoric. A common theme I made connections with in my writing through experience was fear (particularly my own). In one of our class readings by Mathieu in Tactics of Hope, something important addressed was the fear of writing in a public forum. Although some writers involved in the StreetWise paper had very serious reasons to fear for things like their personal safety, I think many writers have a fear of sharing their writing. The bus tour they conducted is a great example. Writing is personal. Writing involves everything you have that is yours: your thoughts, ideas and opinions; your experiences; even

C. Giannasi your skills and education. On the bus tour, writers shared personal things about themselves, and that can be terrifying. The section on StreetWise writers made me think of TrIP because it was about sharing experiences with the world, whether they directly related to the writer's life or not. Not all of us depend on a bus every day; just like some of the StreetWise writers weren't all homeless. It was their connection with the community, an unaware audience, which helped the writers rhetorically, as it had helped me. Rhetorical citizenship weaves together the art of persuasion and involvement in a community. It can be harnessed in many ways, such as how I did with writing for the Transit Interpretation Project. Rhetorical citizenship involves making a change, whether it is changing minds in a community, changing a law, or changing a senator. Rhetoric is what fuels this change, while citizenship creates the connection. In conclusion, it might be relevant to state that if no one partakes in rhetorical citizenship, society would not function or even exist as it does.

C. Giannasi Works Cited Mathieu, Paula. Selections from Tactics of Hope (pdf) Wan, Amy. In the Name of Citizenship: The Writing Classroom and the Promise of Citizenship (pdf) Leith, Sam. Words like Loaded Pistols: Rhetoric from Aristotle to Obama. New York: Basic Books, 2012 Palczewski, Catherine Helen., Richard Ice, and John Fritch. Rhetoric in Civic Life. State College, PA: Strata Pub., 2012. Print.