Hey, nice quote.

You know, I've been thinking in terms of social constructionism for so long now that the need to emphasize the social context seems almost unnecessary sometimes. To demonstrate it is essential, sure, but to emphasize it through explicit mention makes me wonder who needs the convincing. In my case, my own reference group of Christians and other theists may need to see the rhetorics of their religious communities as social inventions. A hard pill to swallow for some. But so great once you "get it."

But I wonder who among the more secular needs the convincing. Is it, for these audiences, a way of reminding people who are prone to the influence of the disseminated word, people for whom human inventions bias them toward alienation and being subjected to and made victims of their own social forces?

Whatever the case, it's a good reminder, even for those of us who are used to thinking this way.

I really like the new layout. An improvement, IMO.

I think the need to emphasize "social context" is also a hold-over from the current-traditionalism of the 19th and 20th centuries. Of course, Aristotle mentioned kairos, and other theoriests have discussed the importance audience (St. Augustine, Campbell, Whately), but Fred Newton Scott was the first to emphasized the importance of the integratation between social context and discourse in the early 20th century. As James Berlin notes in Writing Instruction in Nineteeth-Century American Colleges, current-traditional rhetoric's emphasis on empiricism and observable data--as it related to composition and instruction--set the stage for die-hard, prescriptive rules that were applicable for every situation and every writing assignment. Scott's ideas weren't recognized and dissiminated until the "New Rhetoric" movement of the 1960's and 70's.

I think that, as young post-modern scholars, we've grown up with the notion that "everything's up to an interpretation," a la Stanley Fish. Heck, Wayne Booth's The Rhetoric of Rhetoric was one of the first books I've came across by a contemporary rhetorician who's argued that there are some "irrefutable truths" that stand with question--like torturing a child (his example).

Thanks for commenting, Brandon. And, I'm glad you like the layout.

RDG