The Expressive Power of Video Games

The Expressive Power of video Games? What a provocative title! More importantly, what a well written treasure....!

Spanning from the very foundations of rhetoric; from Gorgias' description of rhetoric to validating the need for rhetoric as practiced by the Greeks--useful for self-defense, Bogost takes us on a refresher journey of rhetoric that resonates with my 801 course in so many ways.
What I find interesting, however, is not simply the review of rhetoric but how he weaves that conception of rhetoric into what he calls procedural rhetoric--which is what he wanted to arrive at in the first place.

Interesting points:
Sophistry
Dialectic--Socrates/Plato, who debase rhetoric as more pleasurable than substantial
Causality--Aristotle: how rhetoric is practiced through four aspects:

• material--substance from which to make
  
• formal--structure
• efficient--process
• final --purpose (telos) to persuade

An enlightening take on the purpose of rhetoric as being to correct judgment (15). Perhaps Aristotle wasn't so opposed to philosophical rhetoric after all given that rhetoric equaled knowledge and that philosophical rhetoric called to use all the mental capacities to find, to craft, to argue, to persuade.
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Ways of performing rhetoric

• induction; e.g using examples
• deduction; as in syllogism (18) -----See also the enthymeme
  

Rhetoric has pervaded literary and artistic modes manifesting itself in such forms as writing, painting, sculpture; This trajectory has seen it morph from persuasion to effective expression engaging the audience while accomplishing the rhetors' goal. To Aristotle, where there is persuasion there is rhetoric and where there is meaning there is persuasion (21).

Bogost references Kenneth Burke, who posited that rhetoric is more than persuasion; it is, in a word, identification. The necessary component for rhetoric to accomplish identification is language; a symbolic system necessary to achieve identification (20). Along with identification is the notion of consubstantiality, which is a process resulting from identification. In other words, identification is a supplement to persuasion. Therefore, a rhetor begins with identification, which, once achieved, replaces persuasion in the form of consubstantiality. Following Burke, even more forms or variations of rhetoric have evolved, or perhaps been revealed; these include visual, digital, and one I'd never heard of till now, procedural rhetoric.

Visual rhetoric, ostensibly emerged from shortcomings perceived in oral and written forms of rhetoric. Reason: images evoke visceral responses (Helms and Hill [50]), which do not capitalize on conscious decision-making.
Visual rhetoric is at work in video games but how does it operate procedurally in representation?
At any rate, VR links to digital rhetoric

Digital Rhetoric: Procedural media is video games--process takes over image through construction, sequencing necessary to show how traditional modes of persuasion are being configured in a digital context (25). It involves interaction and it involves feedback. Rather than work with the old to fit in the news, the digital process of procedurality makes room for that interaction. The computer then should be seen as the executor of processes that underscores procedure.. So what is procedural rhetoric then?

Procedural Rhetoric: uses process persuasively (28).
The argument; the procedural argument is authored through a process effectively. Procedural rhetoric involves rules and codes through programming. At issue is how things work. How does procedure plus vividness work?
In this case procedure represents dialectic. Procedural involves moving images, sound is interactive (users get involved) all vivid aspects of rhetoric.
Dialectically, procedural rhetoric mounts propositions, they make claims about function. Question is: can players change the rules?
Also emerging from Derrida: is speech central to language because it is (presumably) closer to thought?