Rhetorical Perspectivism and Its Implication on Society
Mehnoosh Hosseinion
University of Southern California
James W. Hikins and Richard A. Cherwitz shed light on rhetorical perspectivism in their piece “The Engaged University: Where Rhetorical Theory Matters,” and its influence on productively integrating academia with creating solutions to real-world challenges. Because of its premise that meaning is relational and is embedded in our dynamic interaction with the things around us (Hikins & Cherwitz 120), rhetorical perspectivism serves as a productive contribution to successfully achieving engagement by explaining how rhetoric generates knowledge. The University of Southern California has always strived to achieve engagement…show more content… Successful engagement requires the work of intellectual entrepreneurs, leaders who implement convergence and collaboration to discover unity and amelioration in a world of diversity. According to Hikins and Cherwitz, intellectual entrepreneurs are individuals that “take risks and seize opportunities, discover and create knowledge, innovate, collaborate, and solve problems in any number of social realms: corporate, nonprofit, government, and education” (Hikins & Cherwitz 117). Integrating academia into the process of solving real-world issues requires more than just regurgitating knowledge to the public. In the words of Hikins and Cherwitz, it “demands mutual humility and respect, joint ownership of learning, and cocreation of innovation—qualities that move universities well beyond the typical elitist sense of ‘service,’ and far beyond the paternalistic notion of ‘outreach’” (Hikins & Cherwitz 117). Contemporary challenges in the real world are multidimensional and transcend the boundaries of traditional communicative practices. In order to solve local and global challenges, one must aspire to understand these challenges from multidisciplinary perspectives, which is exactly what rhetorical perspectivism sets out to do. Hikins and…show more content… One specific reform I believe would move my current educational experiences closer to their goals is being able to work with students in other disciples to solve issues in the real world. My educational goal is to have a comprehensive understanding of marketing and communication. However, because I am a communication major, I do not get to study a lot of marketing or business disciples. Communication is such a broad and multidisciplinary major that I would love to work with students or professors in other programs and gain a larger understanding of communication and marketing. However, the culture of academy has created an obstacle for me. Hikins & Cherwitz address this obstacle as the obstacle largest to engagement and write, “Institutions of higher learning are still organized on the model of the independent academic unit, headed by a department chair, a model rooted in the history and evolution of discrete, insulated disciplines” (Hikins & Cherwitz 116). Because of USC’s traditional model, it is difficult for different disciples to cross over and interact with one another. If students studying different disciples were able to interact with one another more often, I believe that we would be able to solve a complex set of issues in the real