Engaging Ambience

Book excerpt: Engaging Ambience is an in-depth exploration of contemporary rhetorical theory, drawing from rich traditions of visual and sensory research. It is the first book to develop comprehensive empirical approaches to ambient rhetoric and the first to offer systematic approaches to visual research in studies of rhetoric and writing. These approaches address the complexities of everyday life and offer practical advice for understanding the factors that shape individuals and communities, how they understand one another, and the kind of world they envision. By articulating theoretically sound methodologies and methods for the empirical study of rhetoric conceived as originary, immanent, and enveloping, Brian McNely contributes a methodological perspective that furthers new materialist theories of rhetoric. McNely demonstrates how scholars’ emergent theories of rhetoric call for new methodologies that can extend their reach, and in the process, he proposes a new conception of visual rhetoric. Engaging Ambience delineates methodologies and methods that help researchers in rhetoric and writing studies discover the ambient environments that condition and support everyday communication in all its forms. Engaging Ambiencedetails and demonstrates visual and multisensory methodologies and methods for exploring the wondrous complexity of everyday communication. It will appeal to scholars and students of rhetorical theory, visual and multisensory rhetorics, and composition and writing studies.