Un-Rapunzeling Communication:
Rhetorical Equity and Rhet/Comp Journal Practices

Paul Muhlhauser & Tara Salvati / Journal of Multimodal Rhetorics (2021) 1-11

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The Rapunzel effect is a white patriarchal communication practice emphasizing one type of communication and one way to access meaning, putting the audience in the unfortunate position of having to do all the work to get to meaning—to get to the gist of an idea.

To challenge this Rapunzel effect and un-Rapunzel communication in rhet/comp journal articles, then, is to practice what we call rhetorical equity. Rhetorical equity is communication practice and value for encouraging authors and journals to imagine more diverse readerships and audience preferences when composing texts and including audiences. Rhetorical equity acknowledges diverse readerships with unique education backgrounds and histories. The ethic appreciates that even someone in the same academic discipline may not come to a text in that discipline with the same knowledges or needs or motivations. The ethic assumes from the beginning that the purpose of a text is assistive: to enable readers to get the most meaning they can. Rhetorical equity is a communication value for keeping inclusivity in mind when composing texts. In terms of un-Rapunzeling, consider rhetorical equity a practice in providing more ways to access communication, be it access to a stairway, elevator, wifi, an infographic, or a podcast. To un-Rapunzel, finally, is to listen to Asao B. Inoe’s (2019) Conference on College Composition and Communication chair’s address and be part of a necessary change: “We must stop justifying White [to which we add patriarchal] standards of writing as a necessary evil. Evil in any form is never necessary.”

Rhetorical Equality and Rhetorical Equity

Rhetorical Equality

Rhetorical equity isn’t quite the same as rhetorical equality. Rhetorical equality is an important concept, to be sure, and emphasizes readers’ technological accesses to a text. In practice, rhetorical equality is readers accessing texts in distribution channels they prefer (i.e., among social media channels); having access through devices they use (i.e., texts work on desktops and pads, and smartphones); and being web accessible (i.e., designed in a way so that users who may have limited access to parts of a text due to a disability have equivalent accesses—like “alt” text for a visual image or closed-captioning for videos or tabbed browsing for navigating a website). If rhetorical equality were an equation, it might look something like this: Rhetorical equality = distribution channels + designed for a variety of devices + web accessibility.

Such rhetorical moves are ethical, taking into account a range of audience abilities, devices, and distributive media preferences. Still, the accommodations being made to various audiences are technological. They are the type of limited accommodations one might consider a part of white patriarchal communication system, a system in which texts, especially in academic contexts, are fixed: designed/written/composed for a very narrow audience range most often using “traditional” or SAE (Standard American English) styles in one way. Understanding is on the audience. Authors are, whether they are aware of it or not, trapped in a communication ideology where the default is text, not texts, where there is a rhetorical situation rather than a rhetorical situations. It’s a kind of “separate but equal” position with regards to audience understanding. All audience members may come from separate positions, but they are assumed to all have the same ability, resources, desires, and time to understand one text.

Rhetorical Equity

Rhetorical equity comes from a more “all people are created equitable” position, acknowledging a diverse range of audience members with regards to a text. In other words, audience members have unique positions and histories and experiences in relation to accessing the meanings of a text(s).

This is not to say equity has not been an important aspect of rhet/comp discussions. It has. Selfe (1999), Warschauer (2003), Selber (2004), and countless other scholars discuss equity with regards to technological integration and the myth that access + will (a bootstraps mentality)=success. These scholars disrupt and challenge the idea that just having equal access to technology means all students will be able to use it. They note that besides physical resources (i.e., computers, tablets, smartphones), more holistic approaches are recommended, which takes human resources (e.g., education and literacy) and social resources (e.g., community buy in and feedback loops between stakeholders) to be equitable technological practices. More recently, Chamberlain, Haver, and Hartline (2015-2016) have added another important and related layer to technology and equity, helping to create more equitable views of who can be technological. They argue for the importance of cultivating design dispositions in girls learning to compose in digital environments. They point out how the Do-It-Yourself ethic fostered by the access myth is not an equitable position. It’s isolating and plays into white techno-patriarchial assumptions as well—do it alone, without help or consultation—that seems to be at play in much technological design.

Students' rights to their own language and code-switching/code-meshing discussions also work in the realm of equity. Smitherman (1995), Young (2009), Canagarajah (2011), and innumerable other scholars point out the language ideologies implicit in higher education and how SAE is a mythical, untenable standard that limits what students do when they write, damaging their identities and denying them the “rights to their own language.”

Paul Muhlhauser & Tara Salvati / Journal of Multimodal Rhetorics (2021) 1-11

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These authors encourage students to access their entire repertoire of language and learn how to use that repertoire to communicate successfully in a variety of situations.

Rhet/comp is very conscious of equity, of thinking about equity in a variety of environments and situations. However, these authors do not discuss or include considerations of rhetorical equity more holistically, of being authors concerned with multiple accesses, of creating multiple texts for diverse audiences.

Rhetorical equity promotes a different kind of inclusion, adding another dimension: textual diversity. A diversity of texts that acknowledges readability and reader preferences for experiencing meaning or getting to meaning and understanding. The idea echoes and expands upon Artz, Hashem, and Mooney’s (2018) ideas on transmodality, arguing that in order for a better and more diverse understanding, texts should be presented through different outlets.

Similarly, the idea of expanding access is one of the main points from Boyle and Rivers’ (2016) article. They point out that while many academic journals are open access, they are not always accessible to people with varying needs. For Boyle and Rivers, accessibility is not an issue of people being able to access and process journals; rather it is more of a rhetorical issue because, “accessibility emerges from a nexus of varying abilities, rules, regulations, available materials, and differing purposes” (p. 5). In addition, it is important to note that considering access in a more holistic way is kairotic, as Muhlhauser, Blouke, and Schafer (2015) point out. Allowing for texts to be adaptable to different times and places and/or situations makes them available to audience members whose “right” time and “right” place are variable. Depending on the situation, a “right” kind of text for “right” time can change (e.g., an infographic is much more useful for reviewing concepts of a particular text immediately before a presentation for someone in a “time crunch” than reading a longer text).

Certainly, transmodality is a rhetorically equitable move in practicing textual diversity; however, we prefer transtextuality: a constellation of texts expressing a core concept, theme, or vision rather than a singular text. After all, communicating a text in a variety of ways in the same mode can also be helpful for audiences to access meanings. The constellation of texts in transtextuality is conceptually helpful in understanding how audience members have their own histories and experiences guiding their readings of a text. Starlight in constellations arrives from different distances and takes different amounts of time to reach earth. Similarly, transtexts, in terms of rhetorical equity, are composed keeping different “distances” and “times” in mind for audience members. In other words, having constellations of texts enables a range of audience members with their own educational, cultural, and socio-economic histories or “distances” and “times” away from texts to access meaning from the ones they “see the light” the best. In relation to transtextuality, rhetorical equity considers, then, rhetorical situations, rather than a rhetorical situation.

Articulating texts in different ways and practicing transtextuality can come with an unfortunate assumption: that there is a “primary” text, a text that is the ONE for which all other texts become paratexts¹. Such an interpretation, as we have mentioned, is a white patriarchal communication practice that creates a hierarchy of readers where there are those who are privileged enough to “get” the “authentic” primary text. But that isn’t really fair with regards to rhetorical equity and runs counter to the concept. Such an interpretation means that “real smart” readers get the “authentic” primary text. Though discussing education, Curtis Linton (2011) describes equity well in relation to audience: “Equity is about building the possibility for everyone to succeed, no matter what they look like or where they are from” (p. 14). Rhetorical equity, in other words, does not start from the assumption that there is a hierarchy of readership. Rather, rhetorical equity asks authors to do more in regards to content creation and accessible literacy. It asks readers to wonder about how something could be presented differently and in addition to.

If rhetorical equity were an equation, it might look like this: technological access (i.e., what technologies are available and accessible to audience members) + distributive access (i.e., how accessible is information for sharing) + readability access (i.e., how accessible are the varied texts for understanding and comprehension) + preference access (i.e., how accessible are the varied texts designed for audience member predilections and/or kairotic needs) ⩭ rhetorical equity. Rhetorical equity is “⩭” because it includes reader understanding in accessing meaning, not just techno-accesses or something that works or does not work. With rhetoric, there is hardly ever a “=” with regards to meaning, but that’s okay because rhetorical equity understands readers understand meanings differently.

See the table for a breakdown of how rhetorical equality and rhetorical equity consider access.

Paul Muhlhauser & Tara Salvati / Journal of Multimodal Rhetorics (2021) 1-11

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Table 1

	Access Types
Rhetorical Equality	Technological	Distributive
Rhetorical Equity	Technological	Distributive	Readability	Preferences
Considerations of Access	Considers audience members with diverse abilities and diverse technologies	Considers audience members’ ability to distribute, circulate, and share information with each other	Considers audience members’ varied knowledges and expertises kairotically (at particular periods of their lives)	Considers audience members’ desires and/or kairotic needs for experiencing a text and/or kairotically (for particular times and places)

Webtexts and Rhetorical Equity

There have been a few experiments with rhetorical equity in rhet/comp, experiments that take into account readability and reader preferences. Artz, Hashem, and Mooney (2018), for instance, do the most with transmodality in their transtextualities. In their work, Artz, Hashem and Mooney created three different modes of communicating the value of transmodality in rhet/comp journals. The use of the video quickly summarizes the goals and ideas of the paper and allows for the viewer to consume the media in a movie trailer-esque way. The audio discussion, which is based on a podcast format, is more informal than the other modes presented; however, it is also the one with the most content, allowing Artz, Hashem and Mooney to go into greater depth about the value of having transmodal options. Their alphabetic statement, though short, gets directly to the point and relies heavily on conversational styles of presentation. The argument of the entire ‘manifesto’ is to highlight that not all people read and learn the same way, especially people with disabilities. They argue that “accessibility shouldn’t mean standard access or lack of richness and complicity… technology affords us a broad diversity of options and opportunities for composing in new, different and multiple modes.”

Muhlhauser, Blouke, and Schafer’s (2016) “May the #Kairos be with You” is a transtextual webtext taking three different forms in an effort to accommodate audience readability and preferences: an “academicky” article, an infographic, and a toggle between the two. The more academicky article is written as a traditional academic essay in both form (e.g., text on a page) and style (e.g., long detailed arguments with lots of references to theorists). The academicky, as discussed here, means it is complete with citations and expected sections (i.e., introduction, lit. review, discussion, and conclusion). There’s a lot of jargon, long clauses, and sometimes confusing references, especially for one not “in” the rhet/comp subdiscipline of techno-rhetorical studies. The infographic, by contrast, is less detailed and uses imagery (both pictures and video) to help illustrate concepts. The infographic code-meshes, mixing more academic language with conversational style (e.g., “kinda” and “whatta”) and Star Wars references. The toggle version allows audience members to move between the two, so if they would like to get more information and read more of the details of the arguments presented, they can access them easily.

Women and Language’s recent publication on Parks and Recreation’s problematic feminisms, “‘Believing’ in Feminism, Lovable Sexism: Rhetorical Inaction and Fallacies of Authenticity” (Muhlhauser, Fowler, & Schafer, 2020), comes in a number of versions: an academicky version written as a traditional article; a slideshow with imagery that gets to the gist of the arguments being made and links to the more detailed arguments in the academicky version; and several supercut videos that mash together scenes from the show to illustrate the issues and present them in more accommodating ways beside the linguistic descriptions in the academicky version. Unlike in “May the #Karios be with You,” the transtextuality practiced here focuses more on reader preferences rather than readability as reflected in the “May the #Kairos be with You” infographic, though the supercut videos do provide another avenue for understanding the white hegemonic masculinity on display in the show, giving readers access to understanding that may otherwise be confusing from solely linguistic descriptions.

Paul Muhlhauser & Tara Salvati / Journal of Multimodal Rhetorics (2021) 1-11

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More experimentally, “Swipe Right on Find/Replace: Invention, Equity, and Technofeminist Potentials of Find/Replace Technologies” by Muhlhauser and Self (2018) practices transtextuality in three forms: as a traditional academicky article; as a remake of that more traditional article which includes pop culture references, an interactive interface that allows audience members to find/replace text in the article, and shifting text so the article can’t be read the same way twice; and a swipe interface imitating dating apps where the theorists used in the texts are the “dates” and their profiles are the theory.

The second and third versions of “Swipe Right” are the most challenging and least academicky. Though it uses most of the “academicky” content, the second version of the work—”find/replace”—includes more illustrations of issues being discussed, including clips from films, links to other resources, and screenshots as evidence. This version assists readers less familiar with jargon and provides ways to access the meaning through examples and more thorough explanations. Footnotes are even more easily accessed as pop ups, so a reader doesn’t have to be taken away from the main content to the bottom of the page.

The most experimental version, the swipe interface, takes the same meaning and purposes, but re-forms them so readers experience the article in a game-like manner by “swiping” right or left on the faces of theorists used. The experience is unsettling and reveals quite clearly a lack of diversity in scholarship: nearly all the images (twenty total) were of white people and gets users thinking more critically about find/replace as a concept and wondering “How can citation be equitable, intersectional? What could intersectional citation mean?” The swipe version, furthermore, as a Tinder-like interface, also illustrates how readers in their find/replace selection processes may or may not see all the folks writing in a discipline with important things to say and how often a user might swipe left on an article that is too long or written in a way that just doesn’t access them. See the table for a breakdown of a few ways to practice rhetorical equality and rhetorical equity with regards to transtextuality.

See the table for a breakdown of a few ways to practice rhetorical equality and rhetorical equity with regards to transtextuality.

Table 2

	Access Types
Rhetorical Equality	Technological	Distributive
Rhetorical Equity	Technological	Distributive	Readability	Preferences
Practices	Text/texts is/are technologically accessible: Alt-text for visual imagery, tabbed browsing, transcripts and closed-captioning, etc.	Text/texts is/are distributive accessible and are often kairotic: Text is easily copy/pasted, options to share among social media platforms and email, etc.	Transtextuality communicates the gist or heart of a concept in a variety of ways for understanding differently. These ways can range from less jargony texts to code-meshing to more “traditional” academicky texts	Transtextuality communicates the gist or heart of a concept in forms that meet a variety of audience preferences and/or needs (e.g., infographics, videos, comments, remixes, image macros, games, etc.)

Webtexts are more convenient and accessible for such transtextual practices; however, this doesn’t preclude print journals from making such moves, even when they are not open access. In other words, print journals are those repositories of academicky text, of white patriarchal presentations of meaning and they are online and digitized. There are distributive channels where other forms of content related to the print articles could be distributive and become part of a larger constellation of meaning. They could even produce such items alongside their print versions in their online databases and keep them inclusively “closed-off.”

Paul Muhlhauser & Tara Salvati / Journal of Multimodal Rhetorics (2021) 1-11

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Rhet/Comp Journals Practicing Rhetorical Equity

While there are a multitude of rhet/comp journals’ equitable practices that could be critiqued, we focus on three that are digitally savvy: Journal of Multimodal Rhetorics (JOMR), Present Tense: A Journal of Rhetoric in Society (PT), and Kairos : A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy (Kairos). These journals are open-access and leaders in the field of more kairotic or current trends in rhetoric. All three journals encourage multimedia submissions and, when considering the whole of the rhet/comp discipline, make equitable contributions to the larger field, a field still dominated by more traditional linguistic and non-web based texts. Aside from the overarching technophillia, each journal offers a unique perspective on publishing connected to equity and inclusion. JOMR’s mission as stated on their homepage, for instance, explicates on examining exclusive media practices:

We are especially interested in perspectives that complicate typical views of multimodality and that highlight those traditional multimodal practices and praxes that sustain our cultures and everyday lives. We welcome compositions that draw attention to the political dimensions of under/privileged modes and the ways that media perpetuate or contest dominant attitudes and hegemonic norms.

PT is more implicit about their overall inclusive practices with regards to hegemony in that they wish to “provide a forum for calls to action in academia, education and national policy,” which of course doesn’t necessarily have to be inclusive. However, they uniquely attempt to be kairotic and accessible through accommodating readers desiring shorter articles of scholarly and rhetorical weight as described on their “About” page: “Seeking to address current or presently unfolding issues, we publish short articles ranging from 2,000 to 2,500 words, the length of a conference paper.”

Kairos may not be explicit about inclusive practices, but like PT and JOMR publishes a variety of texts “that examines digital and multimodal composing practices, promoting work that enacts its scholarly argument through rhetorical and innovative uses of new media” (“About Kairos”). More specifically, Kairos can be considered equitable in the variety of texts it publishes. Besides webtexts, they publish the following, which may or may not come in a webtext form: “teaching-with-technology narratives, reviews of print and digital media, extended interviews with leading scholars, interactive exchanges, ‘letters’ to the editors, and news and announcements of interest.”

Our analysis focused on each journal’s approach to rhetorical equity through their websites and their Twitter uses. The websites are foundational parts of each journal’s web presence and act as the databases for all of their articles. The websites, furthermore, are often the “landing pad” for a variety of scholarly needs and desires (e.g., learning, researching, discovering how to submit an article.) And, though each journal uses a variety of social media, we focused on Twitter as this was the most widely used by the journals. While we did not conduct an extensive analysis of all the Tweets for each journal, we focused our attention on the last month of tweets for JOMR and Kairos to get a sense of their current practices. For PT, because they tweet less frequently (only 251 times total at the time of this writing after joining Twitter in 2014), we looked at the last few years (20 tweets and/or retweets and/or quote tweets from Jan. 20, 2020–July 2, 2018). For comparison, JOMR joined Twitter in 2017 and has tweeted 1,253 times and Kairos joined in 2010 and has 1,059 tweets. Both JOMR (61 tweets and/or retweets and/or quote tweets) and Kairos (43 tweets and/or retweets and/or quote tweets) have been active in the past month (from July 23, 2020–Jun 23, 2020).

Twitter and Equity

Though social media use is part of the distributive aspect of rhetorical equity, what’s posted—the content—is a valuable resource for scholars’ readability needs and preferences. When journals posted links to their own content and/or outside content, we were curious about how transtextual the journal’s practices were. Besides connecting to their own texts, did the journals link to a variety of texts communicating similar content in different ways? Were they curating a variety of texts making similar points, creating constellations of transtexts for their audiences?

Though PT has announced editors are on hiatus at the writing of this document from June 20th until July 22, 2020 and we do not know if this includes the social media editor, it was still valuable to examine PT’s equitable practices. The last tweet—a retweet from another journal—was quite kairotic and successfully distributive with regards to rhetorical equality. The retweet comes from @enculturation, announces the context, and connects to reader preferences for those who know they can access a shorter academic piece:

Today we honor the legacy of Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. As we reflect on how we can actively work toward a more just world, we recommend Dr Ersula J Ore's @PTJRhetor article, "They Call Me Dr. Ore"

Paul Muhlhauser & Tara Salvati / Journal of Multimodal Rhetorics (2021) 1-11

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PT also did a good job of announcing their last issue, providing a screenshot of the article titles and a link to the articles. Readers certainly could find articles related to their reading preferences and scholarly interest. PT even highlighted rhetorical equality, emphasizing technological access for its second to last issue: they tweeted out how to access PDFs of the articles for those who need such offline accessibility.

PT overall, however, does little with regards to transtextuality and practicing rhetorical equity. They rarely post content with multiple versions and, from what we found, links to issues were often not contextualized for readers beyond a title, which may not have provided much context for deciding whether or not to click. Because they did not tweet regularly, PT missed kairotic opportunities, opportunities to connect their rich content to prescient issues.

Many of PT’s retweets are from the authors of articles that are in the most current issues of PT. One of which comes from Jonathan Bradshaw (@jonLbradshaw), where he tweets, “Proud to be in this edition of @PTJRhetor! Check out my new article on the rhetorical/political work of ‘self-epideictic’ (alongside some other great scholarship).” While self-promotion is not a detriment to rhetorical equity, the links to issues were to mostly print based texts and PDF files. To be more equitable, PT could offer bundles of different but related texts. They could practice transtextuality by curating constellations that relate to their own content.

JOMR practices rhetorical equity on Twitter more effectively than PT. JOMR curates constellations of texts for its audience members, providing a number of ways to access similar types of information. Recently, for instance, they presented a variety of texts connected to Juneteenth. There were memes, links to articles, retweets, and tweets describing the history and significance of the day. JOMR’s curatorial moves allowed audience members a variety of choices for engaging with the text, to get the gist and/or more of the nuance about Juneteenth. And a few days prior to their Juneteenth constellation, JOMR made similar moves regarding #BlackInTheIvory, a hashtag bringing awareness to the different experiences in academics for Black scholars.

JOMR is adept at using hashtags, pushing content into channels of distribution where audiences can locate their constellations and make choices about engaging with texts. They are kairotic in pushing their content into prescient tags tweeted at the times they are peaking or being used: #Juneteenth, #BlackInTheIvory, #BlackLivesMatter, #NoBabyJails, #FreeTheKids, #nohumanbeingisillegal, and the less political, #SelfCareSaturday.

Finally, JOMR connects articles in their journal to current topics in the newscycle. For instance, JOMR tweeted a link addressing the growing ethical concerns about Ivanka Trump’s tweets supporting Goya Foods:

With news of a growing boycott against Goya Foods, we'd like to remind you of this prescient essay by Ana Roncero-Bellido which provides insight re the company's advertising practices. http://journalofmultimodalrhetorics.com/2-2-roncero-bellido

JOMR often practices rhetorical equity in their curations of information. They are kairotic in tapping into current issues and hashtags and they present constellations of texts communicating similar information in a variety of ways. And, while they have connected their publications to the current newscyle, they may be able to do more of this. For instance, Jackson and Bratta’s (2020) “Decolonial Directions: Rivers, Relationships, and Realities of Community Engagement on Indigenous Lands” could engage with current discussions and court rulings related to the Dakota Access Pipeline and Indigenous people’s experiences with the rhetoric of colonialism.

Kairos’s Twitter is unique for a rhet/comp journal in developing a very quirky and personal presence. They have created a culture of sharing pet pictures, which is quite fun and community enabling and engaging and retweet humorous posts and celebratory news regularly from their audience. However, the constellations of texts they curate for audience members is uneven and “misses the mark” for practicing rhetorical equity, at least during the time period we examined.

Kairos practiced a limited form of curatorial rhetorical equity with regards to the #StudentBan and the student deportation policy being enforced and later rescinded by the Trump administration. Though they offered their audience a variety of ways to engage and understand the issue, posting articles from The Hill, a guide to the issue, and a thread discussing what’s at stake, the mode of presentation was decidedly linguistic and limited reader preferences. Kairos rarely uses hashtags and did not connect to larger issues with their own content—they did not curate a transtextual constellation that might have connected to articles they’ve published. While their tweets utilize a variety of modes and styles of communication including tweets, retweets, quote tweets, memes, infographics, pictures, and links to less academicky articles, Kairos is narrow in curating rhetorical equity.

PT, JOMR, and Kairos all use Twitter in slightly different ways and we don’t mean to suggest they change what they are doing. After all, they have created a web persona connected to their journals and are making thoughtful choices in their practices. Furthermore, Twitter-work, and any social media editing and performance, is a lot of labor. Like writing an article or creating a webtext, being a social mediator is being a researcher, publisher, writer, and designer. What these journals do beyond vetting, editing, and reviewing is just as important and much appreciated. Our analysis of Twitter, though limited in scope, highlights ways to engage with audiences in rhetorically equitable ways and imagine how communication practices can be designed differently.

Paul Muhlhauser & Tara Salvati / Journal of Multimodal Rhetorics (2021) 1-11

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Journal Websites and Equity

PT, JOMR, and Kairos are all very successful in practicing rhetorical equality. In other words, they all make important rhetorical moves with regards to technological access and distributive access. The journals provide access to texts in multiple technological forms and, being that the journals are online and open-access, are easily distributed hyperlinks. And though we haven’t examined how the journals negotiate web accessibility as far as tabbed browsing and alt-text for their articles, they do make important general efforts to be web accessible for people with disabilities. Unfortunately, the websites, in general, are not very rhetorically equitable with regards to creating multiple versions of texts for reader preferences and readability.

PT practices rhetorical equality by providing PDF versions alongside their web articles, making access easier for those without an internet connection for reading offline. Unfortunately, it appears that not all articles have such access yet. While it is easy to hyperlink texts into social media, PT makes distribution difficult in not providing access to their social media (i.e., their accounts). And though many articles include tweets and photos and charts and graphs, they are used in texts as evidence to convey findings like in Sarah Austin’s (2019) “Sex Doesn’t Sell: Bitchmedia’s Schema for Effective Branding and Financial Viability;” they do not come in versions accessible for readability and/or reader preferences. Another article seemed set up to move into reader preferences and rhetorical equity. Janine Butler’s (2019) “Principles for Cultivating Rhetorics and Research Studies within Communities” discusses Deaf culture. If a PDF was provided alongside a video with a sign language interpreter, the article would move more towards rhetorical equity. Though it would still be the same communication, the different channel and mode are significant.

While there are ways to improve PT’s rhetorical equality and equity practices, they do provide an important and more rhetorically equitable move: PT provides bibliographies of topics. These curations, though mostly to other more academicky articles, provide readers a constellation of texts for locating articles that might be of more interest to them. Though not really that far on the rhetorically equitable/rhetorically equal spectrum, it does move towards equity.

JOMR practices rhetorical equality in similar ways to PT. They provide PDF documents for their articles alongside the web versions. Additionally, JOMR offers larger-text versions helping those with visual disability and a link to websites that will provide free dyslexic and ADD/ADHD font converters for texts—a great tool to better reach and include people with different technological accessibility needs. JOMR also makes distribution difficult in not providing links to their social media, which would have enabled sharing more easily.

Though JOMR does present arguments in a variety of ways (e.g., sonic essays and comics), these presentations are placed alongside transcripts, which act as translations of the texts, not necessarily articulations in the rhetorically equitable sense. Still, these moves from different modes do move more towards the rhetorically equitable side of the equality/equity spectrum.

Kairos does the most with regards to rhetorical equity, though they, like PT and JOMR, have issues with distribution and rhetorical equality in making it difficult to discover how to share the texts. Kairos, also, is not as explicitly rhetorically equal in offering PDF versions and/or font converters like the other journals. However, Kairos is equitable in unique ways. Kairos’s “KairosCast” is a podcast-esque interview with authors discussing their work like the Karl Stolley cast (2018) where ze/she/he talks about zer/her/his “Low-Fi Manifesto” along with a more recent version of the piece. And though there is an assumption audience members have read the previous text, it isn’t necessary. Readers get an alternate and a more gisty version of the ideas they can choose to explore in more detail or take as it is. Furthermore, the cast is conversational, not a monograph with a different and relaxed “readability.” Kairos includes a full transcript of the talk and the Twitter handles of the people who are in the episode, both the interviewer and interviewee, helping readers navigate a constellation of authors and references for more information. In a similar manner, Kairos also provides interviews on current topics with scholars in the field. Though not necessarily focused on a particular work, the interviews engage topics in the field that connect directly to scholarship either in process or completed. Readers, as with the “KairosCast,” are provided articulations of texts and ideas through conversations, creating pockets of rhetorical equity. If these stood alongside the texts mentioned and/or with other texts, they would be truly rhetorically equitable moves, rather than hints or isolations of equity, which just doesn’t work.

For the most part, PT, JOMR, and Kairos practice rhetorical equality rather than rhetorical equity, though there are certainly moves they are making towards equity. In order to make such moves, the journals might encourage authors to compose in different registers and/or language varieties.

Authors might compose in different genres and for different lengths: long form and for gist, acknowledging TL;DR (Too Long; Didn’t Read) culture and TS;DR culture (Too Short; Didn’t Read)². For rhetorical equity to really work, authors and journal editors should work together to compose constellations of transtexts that stand alongside each other, assisting readers in accessing a text with a broader understanding of what access means.

Paul Muhlhauser & Tara Salvati / Journal of Multimodal Rhetorics (2021) 1-11

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Un-Rapunzeling, Posthuman Rhetoric, and Un-Shaming Readers

Practicing rhetorical equity and un-Rapunzeling communication is a posthuman form of audience-ship, a kind of posthuman rhetorical move in how audiences have decision-making capacities. N. Katherine Hayles (1999) in her foundational text on posthumanism observes the importance of decision-making in posthuman thought: “Decisions are important not because they produce material goods but because they produce information. Control information, and power follows” (p. 52). But it is not so much that audience-ship means agency because they have decision-making power in selecting how to experience a text. It means, rather, they have access to decision-making. Borrowing from Nathan Stormer and Bridie McGreavy’s (2017) work criticizing the use of agency as a commonplace in rhetorical studies, Casey Boyle (2018) expands on this idea noting a common refrain: “When we mention agency, it is difficult to ascertain whether one is referring to volition, experience, or the ability to enact change” (p. 5). For Boyle, “it is not that agency is necessarily a negative concept to be avoided, but it is one loaded with far too many qualities. When we mention agency, it is difficult to ascertain whether one is referring to volition, experience, or the ability to enact change” (p. 5). Instead Boyle suggests “emphasizing capacity—and its etymological connections of potentials for taking hold—would connect practice with recent findings in distributed cognition… and work in ways not beholden to agency’s muddle of volition, experience, and ability to enact change.”

When imagining transtextuality and a constellation of texts, one might think of audience members as capacitators, of having the capacity to possibilities, not possibility. Again, it’s the idea of rhetorical situations, not rhetorical situation. As capacity, Boyle’s ideas echo Lev Manovich’s (2001) regarding database cinema and narrative: how the database of information has eclipsed the narrative as a form of communication in new media. The paradigm—the importance of having the pieces and knowing where to find them—has eclipsed or become privileged over the syntagm—the order, narrative, or combination (p. 231). The paradigm, database, or collection becomes explicit and the syntagm becomes implicit. In summarizing posthuman rhetoric, Boyle describes this shift: “Rhetoric as a posthuman practice is, through and through, an empirical and pluralistic art of asking, over and over, ‘which one?’” Constellations of transtexts emphasize the database nature of authorship.

Of course, in a truly Posthuman rhetoric, designing transtextually would mean designing an infinite number of ways, catering to all the heterogenous audience members’ preferences and knowledges. Such composition practices are pretty impossible (at least right now though automated practices like bots composing texts and algorithmic customized interface experiences may be heading in that direction), so think about transtextuality as a best judgement call—as a way for authors to examine their text and think:

I bet if I designed my meaning and purpose in a variety of ways, I could help more readers get it. I could even expand my readership. What ways could I articulate this idea across multiple texts for readers?

It’s for readers to read a text and think:

I wish the meaning and purpose had some rhetorical equity because I am having trouble understanding. OR I really like this meaning and purpose because it has rhetorical equity. That one iteration helps me get it.

We’ve had those thoughts on reading when engaging with some rhet/comp scholarship. A major feature of rhetorical equity is to help limit such readerly feelings of shame. For us an important facet of understanding and taking time to experience a text is enjoying a text and “getting it” or understanding its meaning. Reading texts we didn’t get and/or felt really frustrated with was shaming. In reading such texts we wanted to give up trying and couldn’t help blaming ourselves: What was wrong with us for not knowing?

One thing to be wary of with regards to rhetorical equity is its inherent workload. After all, practicing rhetorical equity takes a lot more time and effort. Though the concept implicitly values collaboration in authorship, since different formats and genres encourage different expertises to come together, composing meanings and purposes in multiple texts does not operate from the position “less is more.” Even with more authors, coordinating and creating the constellations of texts is daunting and exhausting.

Practicing rhetorical equity is worth it though. And to be very explicit, practicing rhetorical equity is anti-privilege. It’s anti-racist, anti-classist, and anti-sexist in approach, acknowledging diversity in experience and understanding. Un-Rapunzeling communication is an empathetic move where authors and journals let more than their hair down, helping readers access meaning and purpose through transtextuality. There is no single recipe for “surefire” rhetorical equity. It depends on the author’s meanings and purposes.

Rhetorical equity asks authors to think differently about their audience’s knowledges and expertises and consider their different rhetorical situations. Rhetorical equity asks authors, editors, and readers to think differently about the empathetic moves being made when they design, compose, edit, and experience a text.

Paul Muhlhauser & Tara Salvati / Journal of Multimodal Rhetorics (2021) 1-11

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Endnotes

1. Articulation, in this case, refers to Slack, Doak, and Miller’s (1993) article describing differences in power when technical communicators are considered translators, transmitters, or articulators. They point out how “that different articulations empower different possibilities and disempower others” (p. 31). An author practicing rhetorical equity empowers a lot of possibilities in an effort to defuse and disempower marginalized ways of knowing.

2. In Internet slang this means “Too Stupid; Didn’t Read,” but we prefer “Too Short; Didn’t Read” as this contrasts better with audience members desiring more discussion and analysis of a particular meaning.

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