Get ready cuz this is a really looong and pretty trad. conclusion with the major realignments: Rhetorical Justice!Oh, there will be citation💅.

Rhetorical justice goes beyond just making things accessible by rethinking the systems that decide what knowledge is produced, who produces it, and how it’s shared. At its core, rhetorical justice challenges the systems that create inequities in communication. It’s not just about giving everyone access to information; it’s about asking why some groups must fight for that access in the first place. Rhetorical justice calls for a fundamental change in communication systems to ensure equitable access is built in from the beginning.

After equity comes the harder question and some intertextuality or, rather, intratextuality from Equity: how do we rearrange the menu?

Right now, we kinda think Taylor Swift might sing: Justice is a tease, and we chase it. It's something that's kinda teased around, talked about, conversed about, but we wanna make it an “end game” with interface design and thinking.

Reading not your thing? How about math?

Rhetorical Justice = Rhetorical Equity + Systemic Change − Structural Barriers

And here's a table🤯!

At the heart of rhetorical justice is the belief that there isn’t one “right” way to communicate or understand truth. It challenges the idea of a neutral, universal way of writing, which often reflects the dominant culture’s perspective. Rhetorical justice asks us to move beyond the simple idea of offering access and start questioning the deeper structures of power that control how knowledge is created and shared.

It challenges the idea that authorship and knowledge creation are privileges for authors and instead calls for shared opportunities, opportunities between authors and audiences.

Rhetorical justice sees knowledge creation as a collective process shaped by the contributions of many, not just an individual task. It emphasizes that author and audience voices should be actively included, not just as tokens, but as essential players in shaping ideas.

Ok, here we go “bookending” our ideas. Do you remember in “Hell” where we talked about “The Gulf of America”? We know it’s been a while, or maybe you just read it and it’s fresh in your mind. Either way, most people would not consider that act to be rhetorical justice. We mean, the Gulf of America had been named the Gulf of Mexico for our whole lives (well, up until now), so for us it’s hard to think of it having any other name than the Gulf of Mexico. We know when President Trump renamed it, he was trying to “reclaim” what is rightfully America’s, but the Gulf does technically touch Mexico, so then it could be argued that the Gulf is equally a part of America as it is Mexico. Why rename it at all if that is the case? And is it rhetorical justice to let one man have so much power? We mean, what’s to stop him from renaming everything? Canada, for example, could be renamed Cold America. We could change it on the maps and teach our kids about it in school. Would that be rhetorical justice then if all of America agrees that Canada is now Cold America?

Ok-here's what we think about justice and “he-who-has-now-been named.” Texts should not just be adapted to fit the mainstream audience’s expectations. Instead, they should be created with a variety of audiences in mind from the start. This requires writers to abandon the assumption that there’s a “neutral” or “correct” way of communicating and instead embrace the complexity of different identities, experiences, and languages. Kenneth Goldsmith in his motivating and thought-provoking work-Uncreative Writing:Managing Language in the Digital Age on how writing, mainly creative writing, can radically change in the digital era observes, “the writer today is challenged by having to 'go up' against a proliferation of words and compete for attention, she can use this proliferation in unexpected ways to create works that are as expressive and meaningful as works constructed in more traditional ways” (Goldsmith 15). Furthermore, by doing so, an author and an audience can be said to be practicing in rhetorical justice allowing for the creation of knowledge that better reflects human diversity, rather than conforming to a narrow, dominant standard.

At the same time we acknowledge that scale is important in understanding with regards to rhetorical justice. In her response to José Luis Cano Jr.'s observation about political rhetoric-“At the end of the day, all rhetorical acts are about power on sometimes large and sometimes small scales”-Jen Wingard notes, “This is a great point. Scaling is certainly needed. Because not all power is circulated or understood in the same ways.” Justice can be thought of in a similar manner, where scales of power should be considered.

Rhetorical justice is not easy. It requires writers, creators, designers, and thinkers to go beyond traditional ways of communicating and resist the pressure to fit in with the dominant culture’s norms. It calls for embracing contradiction, complexity, and the messiness of identity, things often seen as disruptive to clear, consistent narratives. Many academic and professional spaces prefer simple, clear, and consistent communication. But rhetorical justice insists that we make space for the contradictions and fluidity that reflect real life. It demands that we stop assuming there’s one “correct” way to write or speak and instead recognize the full complexity of identity and experience in communication.

In his discussion of realisim and framing data and everyday documents as narrative, Goldsmith observes a shift in reading, one he argues is populist at its core, where texts announce their intentions: “By relinquishing the burden of reading—and thereby a readership—we can begin to think of uncreative writing as having the potential to be a body of literature able to be understood by anyone. If you get the concept (and the concepts are simple)—regardless of your geographic location, income level, education, or social status—you can engage with this writing. It’s open to all” (100). Of course that is quite a statement about a text; however, we do like the idea of a “thinkership” as a way to think about how to author and audience texts-how the concepts is inclusive.

Though he was writing in 2011, we feel like Kenneth Goldsmith's work Uncreative Writing still captures our current techno-rhetorical moment: “faced with an unprecedented amount of available text, the problem is not needing to write more of it; instead, we must learn to negotiate the vast quantity that exists. How I make my way through this thicket of information—how I manage it, how I parse it, how I organize and distribute it—is what distinguishes my writing from yours” (1). We'll just leave that there.

Wouldn't ya say our Interfacials do that? Or at least they try to!

Ultimately, rhetorical justice is more than just creating inclusive texts or offering access. It calls for a fundamental change in how we understand communication and knowledge production between those authoring and those audiencing. Rhetorical justice requires a radical shift in communication systems to make them more just and inclusive. Goldsmith writes, “In today’s digital world, language has become a provisional space, temporary and debased, mere material to be shoveled, reshaped, hoarded, and molded into whatever form is convenient, only to be discarded just as quickly” (217). This involves embracing the diversity of voices and experiences, ensuring these voices are not just included but also have the power to shape the knowledge and narratives that are created. Rhetorical justice is not just about making space for marginalized voices and, well, using interfaces to do it. Goldsmith notes that digital culture has transformed “the writer’s role is being significantly challenged, expanded, and updated” (24). And, of course, we add that audience's role is, also, being significanlty challenged, expanded and updated.

Rhetorical justice about transforming the very systems that have excluded them. It’s a process and a goal, an ongoing effort to create a more equitable and inclusive framework for communication, knowledge creation, and sharing. Rhetorical justice asks us to reconsider what knowledge is, who gets to create it, and how it’s shared, making sure all voices, especially those historically silenced, are part of the conversation. And a major part of working towards inclusion are interface designs and thinking about how author and audience compose them together and should be acknowledged together in new ways and should experience meaning in new ways.

Again, Goldsmith is guiding our thoughts here: “Words very well might not only be written to be read but rather to be shared, moved, and manipulated, sometimes by humans, more often by machines, providing us with an extraordinary opportunity to reconsider what writing is and to define new roles for the writer” (15).

In the context of rhetorical justice, temptations and teasing reveal the ways language, power, and social norms shape participation in discourse.

Temptations in rhetorical justice refer to the subtle and overt pressures that encourage marginalized voices to conform to dominant modes of communication. These temptations appear in academic, professional, and public spaces where certain rhetorical styles are rewarded while others are dismissed as unprofessional, emotional, or unclear. The temptation to assimilate often comes with material benefits such as acceptance, credibility, and access to power, creating an unfair burden on those whose natural modes of communication are undervalued. Rhetorical justice calls for resisting these temptations by challenging the assumption that dominant discourses are inherently superior and instead advocating for the validation of diverse ways of knowing and speaking.

Teasing, on the other hand, functions as both a barrier and a strategy for rhetorical justice. It can be used as a tool of exclusion, where non-dominant rhetorical styles are mocked or ridiculed to reinforce existing hierarchies. This kind of teasing marginalizes those who do not conform to expected speech patterns, dialects, or knowledge-making practices. However, teasing can also be reclaimed as a method of resistance. Through satire, irony, and linguistic play, marginalized voices can tease out contradictions in dominant discourse, exposing its inconsistencies and biases. This form of rhetorical teasing disrupts established norms, creating space for alternative ways of meaning-making.

Please understand we aren't sure if any of our interfaces reach rhetorical justice status (Identify might be close). We think, however, all of our interfacial chaos has provided some opportunities to reflect on what interfaces would/could/should/dare do to/for/about/around/beside authors and audiences.

By understanding temptations and teasing in this way, rhetorical justice pushes us to critically examine the forces that shape discourse and to actively resist pressures that uphold exclusionary communication practices. Rather than simply seeking inclusion in dominant discourse, rhetorical justice demands a transformation of the systems that create these temptations and barriers in the first place.

This is where equity meets structure, where teasing turns to tension. [Return to Equity→ and our interfacials to think about where rhetorical justice might exist in interfaces.]