The act of inventing relates to the process of inquiry, to creativity, to poetic and aesthetic invention.
Building on the work of rhetoricians, philosophers, linguists, and theorists in other disÂciplines, Karen Burke LeFevre challenges a widely-held view of rhetorical invention as the act of an atomistic individual. She proposes that invention be viewed as a social act, in which individuals inÂteract dialectically with society and culture in disÂtinctive ways.
Even when the primary agent of invention is an individual, invention is pervasively affected by relaÂtionships of that individual to others through lanÂguage and other socially shared symbol systems. LeFevre draws implications of a view of invention as a social act for writers, researchers, and teachers of writing.