I Need to Look Into

buying a more alarming alarm clock.

Anyways, here are my notes for the reading for last night. One thing I want to say before I post it is that, I really appreciated the fact that there weren't a million references to other scholars work, yes, the article was packed with information (as always) but it didn't cite a million different people's concepts every paragraph. Okay, here are my notes, sorry they are a little jumpy...it was late:

Rhetorical Analysis (Rhetorical Criticism) – Can be understood as an effort to understand how people within specific social situations attempt to influence others through language.

Rhetoric – highly ornamental or deceptive or even manipulative speech or writing.

Rhetoric textbooks are usually how-to books / advice manuals for how to produce effective pieces of communication.

Rhetoric can be understood as both a productive and interpretive enterprise – The study of language -  and the study of how to use it.

Through rhetorical analysis, people strive to understand better how particular rhetorical episodes are persuasive.

        ·      Better sense of values and beliefs and attitudes that are conveyed in specific rhetorical moments.

             Normal (aka “uncritical” or “reactive”) reading  involves experiencing first hand a speech or
             text or advertisement, etc., and then reacting (or not).

       ·      Critical reading – rhetorical analysis – involves studying carefully some kind of symbolic action.

Rhetorical analysts are basically eavesdropping on what someone is saying or writing to someone else, with the purpose of understanding better how it is said or written

Rhetorical situation – circumstances of the subject, audience, occasion, and purpose.

Normal reading – people usually read critically (to some degree) as well as for content; Rhetorical analysis is an effort to read interpretively, with an eye toward understanding the message fully and how the message is crafted to earn a particular response.

Methods of Rhetorical Analysis – And Some Examples

·      Many approaches to rhetorical analysis and no one correct way to do it

·      Approaches can be placed between two broad extremes

                                *Textual Analysis - Analyses that concentrate more on texts than contexts.

                      -  Typically use one or another kind of rhetorical terminology as a means of careful
                                analysis of a single symbolic act considered on its own discrete terms

        * Contextual Analysis – Regard particular rhetorical acts as parts of larger communicative
                  chains or conversations.

                        -  By understanding larger conversations that surround a particular symbolic
                                  performance, an analyst can appreciate better what is going on within that
                                   performance.

Textual Rhetorical Analysis

·      Experts in rhetoric have developed sophisticated terminologies to help them teach their lessons

      o   Audience – Fundamental concept in rhetoric. Term used to denote any one of three general
                     ideas

                  1. The actual listeners or readers of a rhetorical act

                       - Aristotle was at pains to describe audience in this sense in his Rhetoric

                                    *He detailed kinds of strategies likely to compel particular types of readers

                                    * Most common and vital rhetorical occasions faced by rhetors in ancient    
                                       Athens:

o   Forensic Rhetoric – characteristic of courtrooms (past actions)

o   Deliberative Rhetoric – Characteristic of legislative forums (future course of action)

o   Epideictic Rhetoric – Ceremonial

                   2. Images of those readers in the mind of one developing an argument

                  3. More recently, the presence of an audience within the text itself.