For a simplistic example of emergent properties we can think of paint. Say you wanted to make light blue paint. One way you could make light blue paint would be to mix together dark blue paint and white. In this case, the blueness of the paint is not an emergent property because it clearly comes from the dark blue paint. Another way you could make light blue paint would be to mix together yellow, green, and white paint. In this case, the blueness of the paint would be an emergent property because it is not a property held by yellow, green, or white individually. 

Example of an Emergent Property

Emergent Property is a term that means that a property comes about not from one of the parts of a being but from the interaction of those parts to create a whole.

This definition is built on by Marilyn Cooper who posits that agency is a property of embodied beings interacting with each other, and that thus agency is shaped by consciousness in the way that individuals have goals, hopes, and can reflect on their own actions, but that the individual actions honed in on by rhetorical agency are still not intended. Additionally, since agency happens in our interactions with each other all actions have rhetorical and agentive rhetorical consequences. 

Marilyn Cooper's Theory of Rhetorical Agency as Emergent Property

Cooper, M. M. (2011). Rhetorical Agency as Emergent and Enacted. College Composition and Communication, 62(3), 420–449. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27917907

Rhetorical Agency as Emergent and Enacted

Kerschbaum suggests that in considering agency we have to not just look at the actions of the speaker and the audience in terms of communicating and receiving communication, but also how agency should be considered in how audiences are or are not ready to interact with a concept based on social scripts around a concept. 

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