Students in Dr. Nicole Pfannenstiel’s summer 2025 writing seminar crafted blog posts exploring Rhetoric & Composition. Over the next several weeks, we will share their work in this space to bring visibility to their posts and offer a variety of perspectives on pertinent topics within Rhetoric & Composition. These posts are written by graduate students currently in the MA and M.Ed. English programs.
Kairos as Power in Ecological Rhetoric
By: John Leininger
Rhetoric is the study of language’s power within interactions, traditionally focusing on the creation of this power by the author, fueled by their knowledge of audience, topic, and language. Ecological rhetoric, however, explores how this power is shaped by the system in which the language is created and circulated. An ‘ecology,’ in this context, is an “assemblage” of “writers, readers, objects, ideologies, discourses, and other material factors that operate without the direction of a given person” (LeCourt 64). The internet provides many such ecologies, where readers and writers post, read, and interact with content in many ways on their own time and based on their own preferences, impacted by, but not always consciously aware of, the other interactions happening around them, the “ambiance” as Thomas Rickert labels it (902). Consequently, a single author’s work would hardly stand out unless large portions of the ecology’s members choose, on their own accord, to share it. Circulation, then, is the primary power generator in ecologies, and while the traditional appeals of ethos, pathos, and logos remain important in encouraging circulation, ecological rhetoric expands the demand for Kairos, a traditionally underemphasized rhetorical strategy.
Circulation, as Donna LeCourt describes in, Social Mediations: Writing for Digital Public Spheres, is “how information counts” (55) in the digital realm. It is not sufficient, she argues, to make information accessible, or even distribute it to many people; those people must choose to engage with it and then to circulate it further (176). All other rhetorical appeals, however well used within the text, are useless if the ecology in which they are shared does not naturally and intentionally circulate the information to its constituent parts.
It is Kairos, the timing of language, that becomes key. For millennia, Kairos represented an author/orator’s understanding of the ‘times’ – what was on the minds of their audience? What issues were pertinent? These times could be the current decade, year, month, and maybe, during certain pivotal events, the current day – but timing was about large-scale issues, and about large groups of people. In this modern world of information circulation, however, Kairos has been rethought. Circulation can depend on the day, hour, minute, and even second of publication, not because of pertinence or issues on society’s mind, but because of audience attention. When will they see this? Will they have time to view, like, and share, or will they ignore it?
Kairos is no longer about the masses, but the individual. Posting during lunch breaks, or in the evening, is better than 2:00 in the afternoon, or midnight, because the individual is more likely to pay attention and circulate the work if it fits their schedule, as in Sara West’s example of posting “a late-night photo of their adorable cat only to wake up the next day to a disheartening like count of zero” (1). Only when content is viewed may other appeals take effect – does it relate, do they trust it, does it provide workable information – but these pale in comparison to the all-important ‘is it worth their time?’
Further Reading
Edwards, Paul N., et al. “AHR Conversation: Historical Perspectives on the Circulation of Information.” American Historical Review, vol. 116, no. 5, Dec. 2011, pp. 1393–435. EBSCOhost, research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=e8c6b9ef-fc6b-3db1-85d0-b9d1c14202e9.
Gries, Laurie, and Collin Gifford Brooke, editors. Circulation, Writing, and Rhetoric. Utah State University Press, 2018.
LeCourt, Donna. Social Mediations: Writing for Digital Public Spheres. United States, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2024.
Rickert, Thomas. “In the House of Doing: Rhetoric and The Kairos of Ambiance.” JAC, vol. 24, no. 4, 2004.
West, Sara, and Adam R. Pope. “Corporate Kairos and the Impossibility of the Anonymous, Ephemeral Messaging Dream.” Rhetoric of Platforms, special issue of Present Tense: A Journal of Rhetoric in Society vol. 6, no. 3, 2018. chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.presenttensejournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/West_Pope.pdf