The Little Lecture That Could

Little Lecture on Rhetorical Analysis: How do we say what we say?

Let’s begin at the beginning. How do we define rhetoric? For our purposes, simply: communication (written, oral, and otherwise, with a clear purpose and audience (usually persuasive). Rhetoric is most often stylized, self-conscious communication – its creator has thought through the intended message and the ways in which that message might best be communicated. Rhetoric can be found in a short story, a news story, a piece of art, an advertisement. Regardless of the artifact (text) under review, the student of rhetoric usually examines – big picture – the following (these are generals, and a beginning)

1. Rhetor: (speaker/writer) Questions about the relationship between rhetor and their rhetoric such as the rhetor's motivation and worldview, and how the rhetoric functions for the rhetor.

2. Audience: Relationship between audience and artifact (text). How the artifact promote certain values and beliefs in the audience(s)? How deoes the artifact demonstrate the audience the rhetor addresses?

3. Rhetorical Situation: Relationship between an artifact and the situation/context in which that artifact is created, released, promoted, etc. What is the impact of a specific situation on the artifact, the rhetor's definition of a situation within the artifact, whether the artifact addresses and exigence for a situation

4. Message: Focus on specific features of an artifact and what allows it function in particular ways (terms, metaphors, word choice, etc) (this is a big focus for us in the paper)

The function of rhetorical analysis, for our purposes, involves analyzing a text not to find out what it says (though we would clearly bring purpose in through summary) but how it says it. Rhetorical analysis involves breaking down a whole (text) into various points (parts) and examining how they work together to produce a wholistic message.

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Why do we do this kind of analysis? For so many reasons. According to your text, the things we read “convey information, but [they] also influence how and what we think” (39). If we can all agree to agree that this premise is true, than it’s quite clear why strong, critical reading skills are necessary. We need to get beyond the surface level and be able to ascertain the subtleties of what we read, the difference between a writer’s intentions and his/her effect on audience, and we need to learn, as writers ourselves, how to use tools (strategies) to say what wish to say in a manner that’s both clear and convincing. In this course, we are concentrating on written texts, of course, and they will be the source of our analytical musings. But we will cover a few visual texts as well (though this is somewhat difficult online.)

Here’s a sample that provides a face for the four categories above. Jean Kilbourne, creator of the video series of advertising analyses called Killing Us Softly, has long argued that “Ads sell a great deal more than products. They sell values, images, and concepts of success and worth, love and sexuality, popularity and normalcy. They tell us who we are and who we should be. Sometimes they sell addictions.”

As the face-to-face (FTF) class will be watching Killing Us Softly tomorrow, I thought it would be an apt place for us to start. I will put the video on reserve on OCN in case any of you are interested in watching it; it’s quite interesting, and Kilbourne critiques a number of ads with which you are probably already familiar.

Consider the Kilbourne sample above as it relates to the four categories above. Jean Kilbourne is the rhetor, her visual text the rhetoric she espouses to communicate the message above (ads sell a hell of a lot more than products, and they influence us more than we think). Going back to what big-picture questions about the rhetor – what’s the relationship between rhetor and their rhetoric? How does the rhetor’s motivation and worldview influence the rhetoric and how does the rhetoric function for the rhetor?

Well, we could start by examining Kilbourne’s motivation for espousing the rhetoric. What does she hope to get out of it? If we consider an advertiser a rhetor who hopes to make money by selling a product via an ad (the rhetoric), we see that advertiser has a clear purpose, and one that’s both clear-cut and self-motivated. But what about Kilbourne? Why is it important to her to communicate this message? What does she get out of it? Anything? Or does she hope to give something back? What does she hope to achieve? How does the content and organization of the artifact clue us in to Kilbourne’s purpose and worldview? I’m not going to answer all these questions for you, because I want YOU to think about them. I can tell you that Kilbourne holds a doctorate, works with the Media Education Foundation (which produces her series), and is a feminist, an author, a lecturer (unbelievably, she’s lectured at over 50% of the U.S.’s colleges and universities). Consider how these characteristics and identities must influence her message and the way she chooses to communicate it, our focus as we begin to tackle rhetorical analysis.

Which values does she hope to promote? Well, she tells us quite literally, near the end of the film, that we must stop polarizing human qualities, and dividing them up as “masculine” or “feminine”, if we are to become part of an aware, educated, and thoughtful public. We can assume she’s promoting active (aware, responsive, critical) consumption of media images rather than passive (disinterested, unaware, accepting). As such, she hopes her own audience can learn to analyze the media images it encounters and make claims about their effects – and their rhetorical effectiveness.

So, next time, let’s take a quick look at an ad similar to one she analyzes in her video.