So some people are sending around this interview with Berkeley grad students in their Rhetoric program as they largely avoid the question of what rhetoric is. I agree that it is not very helpful to someone trying to understand what rhetoric is and why people would study it. I would just point out that Berkeley’s Rhetoric department is wholly and entirely separate from the field of Rhetoric and Composition. This division is intentional on the part of that program and, as I understand it, an important part of their self-conception as a department. (And very, very Berkeley). I have no opinion on these students, their work, or their program, none of which is any of my business. The rhetoric stuff they do there has very little at all to do with what people do in my broader field. And I’ll leave it at that.
I will also say, once again, that though I am in a rhet/comp program, I do not do research in rhetoric myself, generally. Much in the way that a student in Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences might only study hearing, for example. There’s lots of cool work being done on that side of the field, but it is not my work. I do largely quantitative work in writing assessment and pedagogy.