Key Concepts

In Writing and Rhetoric

Columbia College Chicago

Our ten key concepts are interrelated strategies for navigating the world as writers and readers. Learn to recognize these concepts in the work of others and to explain your own rhetorical choices in the texts you compose.

Affordanceswhat one thing can do that other things can’t 

Alphabetic Textthe letters and words we use to communicate  

Arrangementthe deliberate placement of pieces of a project in time or space  

Circulationwhat happens to a text once it is produced  

Ethoswho other people think we are based on what and how we write and speak  

Fielda group of people, the texts they write and the things they do in order to generate and circulate knowledge related to a particular idea or question  

Genrea category or classification of something  

Imagea visual representation of something or someone  

Kairosa qualitative sense of time, a sense of opportunity  

Remixthe manipulation and rearrangement of “original” materials modes, genres, and stories into something new  

This video was written and produced by Eddie Seitz in Jennifer Ailles Fall 2014 Writing and Rhetoric I class. It provides an introduction to the key concepts and begins to provides a tentative answer to one of the central questions of our course: What does it mean to write in the 21st century?