Engaging Ambience

Brian McNely's Engaging Ambience examines current rhetorical theory by building on research into images and the senses. The author presents it as the first book to set out thorough empirical methods for studying ambient rhetoric, and the first to offer organized approaches to visual research within rhetoric and writing studies. These methods are meant to help scholars and practitioners make sense of everyday life, including the forces that shape people and communities, the ways they come to understand one another, and the futures they imagine.

McNely grounds his approach in a set of theoretically sound methodologies for studying rhetoric as originary, immanent, and enveloping. Drawing on new materialist theories of rhetoric, he argues that current theoretical ideas require new research methods to reach their full scope, and from that argument he proposes a fresh understanding of visual rhetoric. The book describes the methods and methodologies that allow researchers in rhetoric and writing to identify the ambient surroundings that shape and sustain everyday communication in all its forms.

The book lays out visual and multisensory methods for investigating the intricate character of ordinary communication. It is written for scholars and students of rhetorical theory, visual and multisensory rhetorics, and composition and writing studies.