Symbol Analysts
- engage in literacy practices: they use symbols and texts (e.g., an alphabet, sign language, computer code) “to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate and compute” (UNESCO 2006).
- use media and rhetorical reasoning to communicate.
- engage in a variety of composing efforts, including Invention, Writing with Sources, Collaboration, Design, Organization, Revision, Editing.
Alternative Article Titles: Writer, Speaker, Student, Knowledge Worker, Author, Researcher, Investigator, Rhetor, Sender
Symbol Analysts are people who manipulate symbols (language, images, quantitative data) in order to communicate.
Depending on context, Symbol Analysts go by a variety of names, including:
| Artist | Computer Programmer/Engineer | Investigator |
| Knowledge Worker | Researcher | Rhetor |
| Speaker | Sender | Writer |
| A Plug for the the Terms Rhetor, Rhetors Rhetors are rhetoricians. They conduct rhetorical reasoning as they contemplate the best way to respond to rhetorical situation. In ancient Greece, the term rhetor referred to a rhetorician–i.e. someone who taught rhetoric. Since then, the term rhetor or rhetorician or technorhetorician (someone with expertise in both rhetoric and technology) has fallen a bit out of favor, a bit archaic in terms of diction. The advantage to using the term Rhetor to writers, speakers, artists, and so on, is that it’s a broader term that encompasses these roles. Plus, the term privileges rhetoric, especially the rhetorical situation and rhetorical reasoning. |