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Introduction to Community - Anthony Midura

This research essay will examine the use of rhetorical ecology in the text of a youtube

professional who participates in cooking, from the discourse community of a youtube

professional. Many people enter the discourse community of youtube to entertain, inform, or

inspire others to be involved and do something. It is very difficult to become a part of this

discourse community because its very hard to gain loyal subscribers who actively view your

content, and it takes a lot of time to create and edit videos.

In Johns writing Discourse Communities and Communities of Practice she describes

six defining characteristics of a discourse community, and the Binging with Babish channel

follows all six of these characteristics. The first being a common set of goals. As I stated earlier

the goals in this community are to entertain, inform, and inspire. The next characteristic is

intercommunication among its members. This is accomplished through the comments section of

videos in that it lets other members of the community communicate what they want to see next

and if they enjoyed the video. The third characteristic is that it posses multiple genres, and in this

case with each video there are new topics being presented so there are multiple genres. The

fourth characteristic is that it uses its platform to provide information. This channel provides

information on how people at home can cook their favorite meals from various movies and TV

shows. The fifth characteristic is that it has its own lexis, or in other words its own stock of

language. In his channel Babish uses specific terms a cook or chef would know. The last

characteristic is that there is a level of expertise in the discourse. This is shown with his

knowledge on cooking and his professional youtube license, which he acquired from gaining

over 1 million subscribers.

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Introduction to Text - Anthony Midura

A youtube video lets people watch an entertaining, informative, or inspiring short video

or recording of multiple texts and genres. They can range anywhere from a cooking show to

video games, or vlogs. In this particular text we looked at a channel who focuses on informing

his audience on how to cook certain foods from peoples favorite movies and TV shows. Being a

professional youtube artist is a very difficult career to get into because it takes a lot of time and

requires you to be either tech savvy or have certain skills necessary for your videos. For

example, a vlogger as to have a good personality and be outgoing, because they are constantly in

public recording everything they do in their daily lives.

In the case of the channel Binging with Babish he has to be knowledgable about the food

he cooks, how to prepare the food, what tools he needs to use to cook the food and also be able

to communicate with the audience with step by step directions on how to prepare the food. The

specific video I looked at was the Binging with Babish: Ratatouille (Confit Byaldi) from

Ratatouille video. In this video he starts out by showing a clip from the Ratatouille so that the

audience remembers and knows what it looks like. This is also showing his rhetor because this is

where he got the idea from and how he knows how to cook it. The exigence he is filling is the

want of this specific food to be made from his viewers. They comment after each video, which

foods they would like to see be made and this where he gets ideas to do certain foods as well. So

in this case the comments section serves both rhetorical situation elements of exigence and

audience. The constraints he encounters are time, and money because he has to take the time to

make the video which on his videos is on average about 5 minutes, but then he has to edit them

which can take up to 30 minutes to even an hour depending on much he needs to edit. The
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money constraint come into effect because he has to buy all the foods ad materials he need to

cook each dish and a lot of the dishes require unique foods and spices so this causes him more

money.
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Methods - Anthony Midura

I started off by listening to all of the groups presentations and tried to see which one

would be the best fit for me to choose to go along with my text, and the one I chose was

rhetorical ecology. I didnt really understand what rhetorical ecology was at first, but I looked up

definitions and other articles from google scholar to see if those pieces of writings could clear

things up for me. I learned that rhetorical ecology recontextualizes rhetorics in their temporal,

historical, and livid fluxes. (Trucsello pp. 345-351)

The analytics that the group that presented rhetorical ecology found were values, routine,

resources, and inspired texts. When looking for these analytics I found a lot of the same things

during my own research. The one that stood out to me the most was routine. It seems that the

rhetor in my specific text goes through a normal routine in his videos. He always starts off with a

clip of the movie or TV show that he is using to remind the audience what he is making, and then

proceeds with step by step directions on how to make the dish. In his video description he also

ask what dish his audience wants to see next so that he can get more ideas for his next videos. An

article The Rhetorical Ecology of the Technical Effect by Michael Truscello helped me to

understand how routine is used through an authors work.

The difficult part of researching this topic was the amount of time I had to do the

research. Although we had around 4 days to research time is always a constraint and I feel that if

I had more time I wouldve been able to find even more about the topic of rhetorical ecology and

how it is incorporated into by text. It was also a little difficult to adapt to a new topic so quickly

and have to come up with good research, but with systems such as google scholar it helped to

find credible resources to find information on rhetorical ecology.

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Analysis and Findings - Anthony Midura

The fist analytic I looked at was audience. The audience in my specific texts has a huge

role in what the creator does in his videos. The comment section provides many choices of what

the rhetor can do in his next videos. This is also effective for the rhetor because when he sees

these comments see knows that when he does his next videos people are going to watch, because

they are the ones who asked for that specific dish to be done.

The next analytics I looked at were values and exigence. I put these two together because

in this certain text the values of the rhetor and the exigence he is trying to fill are the same thing.

The Binging with Babish channel values professional work and having a fun time when working.

This goes with the exigence of entertaining, informing, and inspiring others to do something, in

that when he goes through his step by step directions of cooking a certain dish he informs the

audience how to make the dish, he entertains them with clips of the movie or TV show of where

the dish is coming from and he inspires his audience to go and make the dish, but to have fun

while making the dish.

Routine was another analytic I looked at in this piece. The routine the rhetor goes through

is the same routine for every video. The first part of the video is the clip of the movie or TV

scene and in this text he shoes the parts when the boy is eating the Ratatouille. He then goes into

the step by step directions and then has the final product created and gives his thoughts on the

dish. This showed me that when looking at rhetorical ecology there is a process of which the

rhetor goes through when creating their literary piece.

I also looked at the resources that are relevant in this text. He uses all parts of the youtube

webpage to connect with his audience. From the title of the video which as the movie title, the
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comments section where he gets ideas from his audience, and the bio of the video to describe the

dish and how it was presented in the movie or TV show. This showed me that rhetors use many

resources when creating their literary piece.

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Discussion and Meaning - Anthony Midura

In this text I found that rhetorical ecology is present in every text because this rhetoric is

a complex relationship between the rhetor and their audience. This is relevant in the text of the

Ratatouille video in the comments section of the webpage. This was seen from a comment by

someone who requested that he do Krabby Patties. Sure enough later that year he did a Krabby

Pattie dish from the TV show SpongeBob. This was just one example of how the rhetor is

connecting to the audience through their work.

Rhetorical ecology helps this text accomplish a meaning of entertainment and

information. The rhetor is connecting with his audience through the use of the video. For

example, at the beginning of the Ratatouille video he starts off with the clip of the boy eating

Ratatouille from the movie. This entertains the audience because they get that feeling of

remembering the time of when they saw the movie. It is also informing them how to cook the

specific dish so that they can do it themselves and have a fun time while doing it.

This is important because it shows that every literature piece is using rhetorical ecology

by connecting to its audience. If a literary piece is not connecting to its intended audience then

the piece serves no purpose and would be a waste. This is also how you can tell if a writing is

successful or not. If the writing is not fitting its intentions for its audience then the writing is

unsuccessful, but if it does fit its intended audience then it was a good writing. The purpose of

writing a piece of literature is to fit the needs of its audience and if a writing isnt connecting to

the audience then its simply not doing its job and has no purpose. This is why rhetorical ecology

is and essential rhetoric to have in any piece of literature.

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Works Cited

Johns, A. (1997). Discourse communities and communities of practice. In E. Wardle & D.

Downs (Eds.) Writing about Writing: A college reader (pp.319-321). Boston: Bedford/St.

Martins.

Rea, A. (2017, March 2). Binging with Babish: Ratatouille (Confit Byaldi) from Ratatouille

[video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roCX0AfBseQ

Michael Truscello (2005) describes what rhetorical ecology does: recontextualizes rhetorics in

their temporal, historical, and livid fluxes. (pp. 345-351)