Applied Rhetoric for the Civic Good: A Community-Engaged Project in Flint, Michigan

Mindy Myers

Scholars in technical and professional communication have increasingly promoted citizens’ meaningful participation in technical decision-making. Michele Simmons (2008) develops a heuristic that requires institutions and experts to acknowledge that citizens can participate in technical discussions and have valuable information to contribute. Jeff Grabill (2014) suggests professional writing researchers facilitate public work and Blythe et al. (2000) argue for a citizen action research model in which academic scholars conduct research on behalf of citizens. The goal of much of this work is to enact rhetoric as a force for genuine and pragmatic change in the world. My presentation will report on an action, the development of a community engaged research project, “Citizen Stories: Voices from the Flint Water Crisis,” that uses rhetoric to be a force for good in the world.

“Citizen Voices” was developed as a response to the Flint water crisis, a tragic example of environmental racism. The residents of Flint, a black-majority city with one of the nation’shighest levels of poverty, repeatedly expressed their concern that the brown water flowing from their taps was causing a wide range of unexplained health problems. Officials, however, assured them that their water was safe to drink. It took eighteen months for officials to acknowledge that the city’swater supply was contaminated with lead and to issue an alert to residents to not drink the water. Though it has been four years since the water crisis began, residents continue to feel silenced. “Citizen Voices” responds to officials’ ongoing failure to listen to the residents of Flint. This project will collect and archive the stories of as many Flint residents as possible and to make this growing repository of citizen stories publicly accessible. In addition, we will partner with community members to sponsor an annual symposium with the intention of using the archive as a basis for discussion of the politics of water infrastructure and policy.

This presentation will discuss the development and implementation of this project. The project’smethodology, rooted in user experience design to maximize community involvement and determination of the project, will be examined. The presentation, as well, will discuss collaboration with the Community Ethics Review Board (CERB), a community-driven review board comprised of Flint-area volunteers. The presentation concludes by showcasing the website that serves as the publicly accessible archive for the residents’ stories.

Must Love Dogs (and Cats and Guinea Pigs and…): A Rhetorical Analysis of Animal Rescue Documentation

Ashley Patriarca

According to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, nearly 6.5 million animals enter shelters each year; however, the organization notes, this number is imprecise because no one organization or agency is tasked with tracking the number of rescued animals (ASPCA, 2018). The sheer number of animals needing rescue means a corresponding high number of shelters and rescues to manage their care and adoption. In one mid-Atlantic state alone, nearly 180 rescues oversee adoptions for dogs, cats, rabbits, horses, and other companion animals (Myers, 2018). Many of these organizations are small nonprofits, some even being run from an individual’s home. All of them are linked by a common goal: ensuring the well-being of the animals within their care.

Instructors and students alike may view animal rescues as “safe” partners in service-learning projects for the professional writing classroom (Bush-Bacelis, 1998). After all, what could be political about saving the lives of dogs, cats, and other domesticated animals? Yet, the controversy surrounding the activism of international animal rights’ groups such as PETA suggests that this vision of a “safe” organization is somewhat misguided.

Even at the local level, rescues can engage in politics: lobbying for restrictions on puppy mills, fighting back against breed restrictions, and more. More subtly, though, rescues engage in political activism through their own organizational communication: The language that they employ in their official documents, including policies and websites, can include or exclude potential adopters based on their location, income, access to technology, and more.

In this presentation, I analyze the communication of animal rescue nonprofits in a large, metropolitan area of the mid-Atlantic United States. I argue that, despite these nonprofits’ claims to work for the greater public good, many use language that excludes working- and middle-class people who would otherwise be an excellent fit for pet adoption. I conclude with strategies for creating more inclusive language in animal rescue policies, adoption contracts, and marketing materials.

Life among the Virtuous in Academic Twitter

Paula Lentz

I follow many academics on Twitter, mostly those who teach in writing disciplines (composition, business, technical, and professional) and business disciplines. By association, I also follow or (by association) see tweets from academics who use pseudonyms (e.g., College Professor). As I read these tweets, it strikes me that as academics, we’re expected to share our thoughts and share them widely to make our work visible and applicable in academic and public life. It’s part of what defines us as scholars‚ that ability to share our ideas in arguments grounded in logic, reason, and evidence. But lately I have become intrigued by the amount of virtue signaling among participants in academic Twitter that seems to represent a shift in what it means to be participant as an academic in the public sphere or part of an academic community virtually or otherwise.

Though the term has existed since the 1960s, British author/banker James Bartholomew coined the term “virtue signaling” to describe people who “[indicate] that [they] are kind, decent, and virtuous.” Key to Bartholomew’s definition are (1) that people do not actually have to do anything to demonstrate their virtue and that (2) the signals detract from the “humble brag” of how virtuous one really is by highlighting how unvirtuous others are. One example would be the academic who tweets “Require proof from students to attend a funeral? Never. I trust and respect my students.” The tweet signals that trust and respect are virtues and that an instructor who requires proof neither trusts nor respects students and is therefore not virtuous. The instructor does not have to prove she engages in the behavior of not requiring proof or provide evidence that her assertion is true.

Because virtue signaling does not require people to do anything to prove their virtue seems to conflict with common assumptions that visibility of virtue is required for proof thereof. Aristotle’s virtue ethics, for example, requires virtuous actions as proof of one’s character. Doing the right thing because it’s the right thing to do is the very heart of Kant’s categorical imperative. And one’s virtue is evidenced only in its observable contribution to the common good in John Stuart Mill’s utilitarian ethics.

Virtue signaling has been researched particularly in areas such as marketing and politics and is thus not confined to the field of academics. But examining virtue signaling in the context of academics leads me to these questions: What does virtue signaling accomplish? What constitutes an act of virtue? Does virtue signaling require us to contest traditional notions of virtue as an act, or is the idea of an act or the advocacy for an act sufficient? Does social media/computer-mediated communication require us to rethink virtue in the public sphere? What are the implications of virtual signaling for academics on Twitter? Currently, these questions and topic are simply an idea. I would welcome the opportunity to share the idea at the symposium.

(1) James Bartholomew (15 Apr. 2015). “The awful rise of 'virtue signaling.” The Spectator. https://www.spectator.co.uk/2015/04/hating-the-daily-mail-is-a-substitute-for-doing-good/