Rice.+The+Rhetoric+of+Cool

=**Rice, Jeff. //The Rhetoric of Cool: Composition Studies and New Media.//**= Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2007. Print.

= Abstract = No abstract. Foreword: "Elementary Cool" by Gregory L. Ulmer.

=**Argument**=

Comparing rhetorical studies from the 1960's, Rice takes the reader on a historical journey to compare and further understand rhetorical composition studies of the twenty-first century. Returning to the rebirth of rhetoric allows Rice to challenge traditional paradigms of study. Incorporating technology, cultural studies, and visual writing, Rice seeks to prove that new responses to new media rhetoric can be extremely beneficial to intellectuals in the field.

=**Key Passages**=

"We expect a specific word to refer back to a specific idea, activity, or thing, so that understanding may be achieved easily (as writer and receiver of a given message). In many ways, print upholds expectation by creating fixed 'places' of argumentation; paragraphs, lists, tables, and other print-based writing features locate ideas spatially (and, thus, conceptually) apart from one another."

"Appropriation, as Burroughs demonstrates, is based on the rhetorical premise of parataxis, that items can be arranged and positioned in a variety of ways and each time generate meaning even if the organization is not clear. Consequently, structure and organizational principles that emphasize logic and order are challenged as ideological positions and not as given rules of writing."

"DJ created compositions work from the same kind of logic that hypertextual writing does: They strive to forge connections among disparate material through various types of appropriations and juxtapositions. Like all the elements of the rhetoric of cool, appropriation and juxtaposition overlap in their usage; they are not distinct but complementary moves. One does not necessarily juxtapose or appropriate but rather does both (while making other gestures as well) simultaneously."

= = =**Selected Works Cited**=

Davis, Diane D. Breaking Up (at) Totality: A Rhetoric of Laughter. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2000. Faigley, Lester. //Fragments of Rationality: Postmodernity and the Subject of Composition//. Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 1992. Light, Alan, ed. //The Vibe History of Hip Hop//. New York: Three Rivers, 1999. Liu, Alan. //The Laws of Cool: Knowledge Work and the Culture of Information//. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2004.