So, I have to worry about tomorrow today?

In Maggie Ryan's rhetorical situation, there appeared to be four (4) key factors that weigh her case down. These factors are: rhetorical velocity, delivery, appropriation and recomposition. Though completely different terms, they prove to be closely intertwined. The Maggie Ryan case makes it easier to decipher and tell the difference between the terms and how they are connected. 

Rhetorical velocity according to Ridolfo and Rife "...is a strategic concept of delivery in which a rhetor theorizes the possibilities for the recomposition of a text based on how s/he anticipates how the text might later be used” (229). This definition already has "delivery" and "recomposition" in it. It shows therefore, that, there is indeed a connection among the terms. It suggests also that rhetorical velocity is impossible if delivery and recomposition isn't considered. Rhetorical velocity simply means that in the delivery of a discourse the rhetor is prepared for the re-appropriation of his text, or put simply, the "remixing" of his text. 

In Maggie Ryan's case, the delivery of her protest didn't have any rhetorical velocity. She didn't anticipate that the university was going to recompose her work and appropriate it in a manner that didn’t' support her campaign. So, though delivery has to be considered in a rhetorical situation, the delivery doesn't have to have rhetorical velocity. 

In a similar sense, the university appropriated the text of Maggie Ryan to make the university look like good, to promote the school. Though they appropriated her image to their liking, they didn't recompose it, it remained the same but was just seen in a different light. To recompose a text however, such as a song, it automatically has to be re-appropriated because it is not the same. The literature behind the text that has been recomposed is completely different, so it cannot possibly be appropriated the way it was before. The recomposed text will be delivered and appropriated differently because the rhetoric behind it has been changed. However, though the appropriation and recomposition of a text changes the delivery of a text, a text that is just delivered in the same original form wasn't necessarily recomposed, but has been appropriated. To appropriate a text is not to change it in any way, but to deliver it on a different platform, to a different audience, with different intentions. To recompose it on the other hand, is to completely alter the text.

Above all these terms: rhetorical velocity, delivery, appropriate and recomposition, the most important is the "appropriation" of the image of Maggie Ryan. The main issue with her case is not that she didn't anticipate the recomposition of her image, nor the way she delivered her protest, but the way in which the university had appropriated her image. They typified her image to make it seem as if what she had done held no political significance, but just a happy student playing in the snow. They didn't violate any infringement laws, so Maggie couldn't retaliate. She made herself a target to be appropriated by the university. Maggie's case brought to light, Miller's theory as genre as a social action. 

Miller expects ""genre" be limited to a particular type of discourse classification, a classification based in rhetorical practice and consequently open rather than closed and organized around situated actions" (155). Therefore, it should be open to different rhetorical practices. In reading Miller, I think now that the appropriation of Maggie Ryan shouldn't have been as big a problem as it was. The appropriation of her image was just the university’s discourse, the universities rhetorical attempt to promote itself. The appropriated image of Maggie Ryan shouldn't be confined as just a genre of appropriation; it should be seen as an open discourse, a discourse that is not closed to just Maggie and her protest. 

-Kellion 

Works Cited:

Ridolfo, Jim, and Martine Courant Rife. “Rhetorical Velocity and Copyright: A Case Study on Strategies of Rhetorical Delivery.” Copy(write): Intellectual Property in the Writing Classroom. Ed. Martine Courant Rife, Shaun Slattery, and Dànielle Nicole De Voss. Fort Collins, CO: WAC Clearinghouse and Parlor P, 2011.