Second, Queen claims, “Feminist rhetorical studies must extend their analyses to examine how the modes of digital circulation matter in the mediation of relations among groups, communities, and nations” (472). She uses the metaphor of global fields of rhetorical action, which “refers to the cyberspaces through which an element (images, words, texts, websites, etc.) passes as it circulations. She uses “the concept of fields [because it] described the complex rhetorical actions that emerge from encounters among multiple ideologies and practices that are historically, geopolitically, and culturally specific and that are inscribed in global relations among various communities” (474). This is important in electronic texts because , while “oral- and print-based rhetorical analysis stables a speech/text…electronic texts, in contrast, change not only because they are ephemeral – forming and dissolving simultaneously – but also because they are mobile: they circulate and, in the process of circulation, they encounter and are transformed by other forces” (485). In her use of links, she does not necessarily mean hyperlink. Instead, she is interested in how various texts are circulated, where and by whom they are posted, how they are accessed and by whom, and how they are reinscribed by the poster. “As the [text] circulations in cyberspace…its kairotic moment, its intent, its readers, its meaning, its effects, and even…its author all undergo change” (482).
Key Term
- Rhetorical genealogy: “a process of examining digital texts not as artifacts of rhetorical productions, but, rather, as continually evolving rhetorical actions that are materially bound, actions whose transformations can be traced through the links embedded within multiple fields of circulation” (475)