Invitational Rhetoric and Comm. Ethics

    I found Lozano & Cloud's thoughts on invitation rhetoric and power to be very compelling. They explain the power dynamic behind invitation and ways that it is not always a form of ethical communication. One of their examples was that of a child being "invited" to the principal's office (221). As most people know, being invited to the principal's office is more of an order than it is an offer. In this scenario, it is not necessarily ethical for a person in power to use an invitation as a pathway to punishment. I also enjoyed their point when they explained the idea of "invitation only." In this case, when an event or discussion is only for those who have been invited, it puts an unnecessary power on those who get to decide who receives the invite for the event or conversation. The people in power get an upper hand and have the ability to exclude the people they choose which leaves a lot of space for biased and unethical reasoning for excluding those people. 

    When reading the section on "invite only," I thought of the movie, The Duff, which I saw recently. The movie follows a girl in high school who is kind of an outcast, Bianca. She is often overshadowed by her two close friends, Jess and Casey. In this movie, there is a scene in which the antagonist is throwing a big  party at her house and claims it is "invite only." She hands an invite to Jess and Casey, but chooses to leave Bianca out, ostracizing her even more from her peers. Luckily in this case, Bianca's friends see this attempt at leaving her out and take her to the party anyways. I think that this scene, although a mild example of oppression by lack of invitation, it gives a good example to relate to the material. The idea of invitational rhetoric is important when trying to understand communication ethics because the person in power needs to be aware of their position and able to understand how their decisions can affect those in positions below them.