SophEthics

Understanding transmediation could be a crucial step in improving education systems and encouraging deeper learning. There are a number of ways that one may learn something, but in schools, too often students are left to rely on language only. In reality, there are numerous ways to gain understanding about things. This includes learning through music, visual arts, theatre, dancing etc. In the text from the Percy (1982) quote on page 456, it is emphasized that language is often thought to be a core human trait, but creating and using symbols may be even more human. Essentially, that is how transmediation works. You take your understanding of one artifact and translate it across mediums such as dance where you may bring an idea to life, creating a dance to demonstrate a pivotal scene or theme in the book. Verbocentrism (having a bias towards language and devaluing different forms of vocalization) limits students. They become passive learners in verbocentrist environments, but by using tr...

 The idea of invitational rhetoric is very important to understand. Invitational rhetoric stems from the idea that there is value in building relationships that are "rooted in equality, imminent value, and self-determination" (5).  Invitational rhetoric allows for a variety of answers to be valid and heard by seeing things from the speaker's/rhetor's point of view. There is so much gray area in the world, and using invitational rhetoric will allow for greater understanding of the gray spaces to be understood. Although there is so much gray area, our society tends to push and favor rhetoric that is persuasive and focused on pushing one narrative. Persuasive rhetoric ignores the fact that not everyone is going to have the same perspective to understand or agree with the speaker/rhetor. If invitational rhetoric is at play, then one is being invited to explore the speaker's/rhetor's point of view and opinion. It is not a demand that the listener or reader agree wi...

The idea of codes, procedures and standards in the context of communication ethics is important to discuss. This concept is one of the six total theoretical ways of understanding communication ethics as listed in the beginning of chapter three- Approaches to Communication Ethics: The Pragmatic Good of Theory. Standards are difficult to set because everyone has a slightly different set of experiences or views about something which may lead them to find certain topics or behaviors more or less sensitive, respectful, offensive, etc. than others.  When talking on the corporate scale, for example, how do you begin to set equal and representative standards of ethical communication? Codes, procedures and standards aim to set the criteria for a corporation, creating a guideline for what is considered ethical, measuring each individual situation against a controlled model of conduct. When codes, procedures and standards are in place, they regulate the expectations for moral and appropriate ...