Emm's Digital Library

While I was reading Nathan Johnson’s piece, it occured to me that I didn’t actually know what it meant to have rhetorical agency. I figured it was something broad and simple like having free will in your composing process, but I guess it can be understood in many different ways; depending on things like the situation we are in and the tools that we have available.

The reading that I chose individually to look at was, “What Can Automation Tell Us About Agency” by Carolyn Miller. The big thing that she seems to be arguing is that automation (spell check, machine scoring, other AI systems) generally complicates the ways that we think about rhetorical agency. She’s asking questions about what happens to agency if we, as a society, are using machines to help us write, instead of making our own creative and rhetorical choices. What I think that she’s trying to say throughout the paper is that the real agency comes from between people and not the actual machines. It was people still who created the technology and tools that she’s referring to.

A small example of how I see this play out in my daily life would probably be the auto-correct on my text messages. Many times throughout the day, I catch myself texting and accidentally misspelling words, which my phone then goes on to auto-correct. Most of the time, the auto-correct is right and I just allow it to go through, but other times, I have to go in and change it back to what I originally meant to type. It’s a small thing but I think that semi-aligns with what Miller is trying to convey. The biggest thing that I got from these readings is that what I initially thought of rhetorical agency—total free will—is more along the lines of navigating different options that are shaped by the tools, people, and technologies that we interact with each day.