 Hi everyone, welcome to this video discussion of rhetorical analysis which is part of our larger discussion of critical media studies and let me tell you this is one of the big ones. Rhetorical analysis is one of the most used and most well known critical lenses through which we view all kinds of media artifacts and so rhetorical analysis has been around for a long time. It's very well regarded and very well researched and very well looked at. So anyway, this is one of the big ones for us in our study. So let's jump in and take a look at rhetorical analysis. First of all rhetorical analysis examines artifacts in relation to the effort to use symbols to influence and move the audience. So symbols is the key there. Rhetorical analysis is all about symbols and signs. It doesn't matter what kind of media we're looking at. Originally this was used to examine literature and speeches and things like that. It still is very widely used to do those things, but we can also apply it to all kinds of different media because all communication involves symbols. So that's what we're going to be looking at. Rhetorical analysis involves the effort to use symbols to influence and move the audience. As the author Philip Pullman put it one time, everything has a meaning if only we could read it. That's the essence really of rhetorical analysis that everything has meaning. All communication is made up of symbols. All symbols have meaning. So everything we see in any kind of artifact really has meaning. We just have to be able to read it. Now that we're reading sometimes involves interpretation and trying to understand a little deeper, a little more deeply what the author is trying to indicate to us, but it all involves those symbols and understanding the meaning of those symbols. So let's take a look at the major premises for rhetorical analysis. First of all, as I just mentioned, rhetorical analysis posits that all communication is symbolic, which we know. All communication is symbolic. Every word that we use, everything that we say, everything that we do is made up of symbols. Language is made up of symbols and our numberable communication is symbolic. Everything about communication is symbolic. So all communication is symbolic. And that meaning, though, is going to be specific to an individual. Again, here's where interpretation comes in because we all have a different frame of reference. That meaning of a particular symbol is going to be different for each person. We're talking about connotative and denotative meaning of words, the denotative meaning like the dictionary type definition of a word, whereas the connotative is more specific to that person. It's more interpretive, really. So the meaning is specific to that specific individual. Symbols are oftentimes grouped together, though, for use in different ways. So we group symbols together to create certain impressions or to deliver a particular message. We'll sometimes group them together. And there are a variety of ways that they're grouped together. The first way is what we call clusters, which is kind of a loose gathering of a few different symbols to make a certain impression. This ad is a cluster type example of that. This is a car ad. And so it just brings together different symbols. You get the animals, you get the vehicle, you got the people in the city, and it combines all of those to send the message that if you have this vehicle, you're prepared for everything, first of all, right? You're prepared to live in the city and have the fancy life there, but you're also prepared to go out in the wild and be, you know, more in nature and things. This vehicle can do it all. That's what this cluster of symbols is indicating to us. So this is what we would call a cluster example of cluster of symbols in rhetorical analysis. We can also look at things that we call form, where a certain media will have a certain form that they take on. So one example is we look at procedural television shows, for example. When you watch CSI, you watch NCIS, you watch them. There's going to be a crime at the beginning, right? Then the people are going to work to solve that crime. And at the end, they're usually going to wrap it up. There's a certain form that those things take on. You can also look at things like if you've noticed that if you've been in different areas, you see these commercials, especially for it seems for attorneys, they all have the same kind of form of television commercial in essence, their own. We're wielding a hammer or a club or something. They're beaten down. The people who'd want to do you harm and they're fighting for you. But they all have this kind of a similar feel to them, a similar style to them. So those kinds of commercials can take a certain form as well. So you see this in all different kinds of media, this form that follows a particular pattern or formula. We also have genres of things. We see things happen in genres when we come to expect certain things of a certain genre in film, for example, you have you see horror films and they'll fall into that specific kind of genre and we can make certain predictions and expectations about those movies based on the genre that they're in or, you know, comedies or romantic comedies, dramas, they all have their own kind of genre. And I would argue that that, you know, hallmark movies have their own, own particular drama or genre as well. Sorry. Because they all do kind of they all are following a particular form, but they're they're part of a genre. They're part of a specific style of movie that people really enjoyed these hallmark movies that are incredibly popular, right, within a certain subset. So they are kind of their own genre of movies, we have any genres of all kinds of things genres of books, genres of, of even news magazines and things that are classified by by genre in that way. Then you also just the classic narrative that we have in rhetorical analysis where involves, you know, the story, the discourse, the narration, and, and it creates a certain style of rhetoric and and presents itself for rhetorical analysis in that way. So anyway, symbols are grouped together in different ways. But in the end, again, all communication is symbolic. So rhetorical analysis is about recognizing those symbols, identifying what the purpose is and what the history is and things like that we'll get to. But it's really all about those symbols. As far as contemporary perspectives on rhetorical analysis and things we need to keep in mind, first of all, we deal a lot with affect, affect, meaning, to a certain extent, meaning emotion or how the, the, the artifact, whether it's again, whether it's an advertisement, whether it's a movie, whether it's a song, whatever it is. How does that, that artifact impact the audience, almost in a physical sense, not just in an emotional sense, but but also in a, in a really almost a physical sense. So we think, you know, we watch horror movies and things and we have this aspect that you kind of expect when you watch a horror movie that is going to make your hair stand up at some point, right? You're going to get these, you know, the, the, the murder is going to come creeping into where you're going to get goosebumps, you're going to get the hair on your arms and the back of your neck is going to stand up a little bit, right? And just going to get those chills. That's, that's an affect that those, those artifacts can have those particular kinds of movies and mystery movies and things like that can really have on us when they build that suspense in such a certain way that it can have that kind of affect on us. We see it also sometimes in, in music, for example, there's a classic example is from Woodstock 99. In 1999, there was a, there was kind of a Woodstock Revival concert or whatever. And it got a lot of hand in a lot of different ways, but, but the kind of the pinnacle, the real tipping point was when the band Limp Biscuit was playing, and they played their song Break Stuff and people just went nuts. People were were literally breaking stuff. They were, they were, they were rioting. They were harming other people. There were a lot of assaults, a lot of sexual assault, a lot of just physical assault in general. People went nuts, right? People, I mean, and it had that, that effect that presented as an affect that they played that song. People were already kind of riled up, but that song really just pushed them over the edge. I didn't tell you, you know, as an athlete in high school, you still listen to particular music to get kind of riled up for a football game or basketball game or whatever, get us in the right moon because of that affect. Media has that, that impact on us and has that kind of physiological and emotional affect that it can present as well. We also consider aesthetic when we're looking at rhetorical analysis. As I said, rhetorical analysis traditionally had been a style of looking at literature and even, even oration, examining speeches and things. But now it's really applied to any kind of media which has caused us to kind of broaden our scope of, of, of vision here and using this critical lens to include aesthetic and it is because we're dealing with more visual mediums now. So aesthetic becomes very important about it. We mean things like color, lighting, editing, movement and framing, sounds. There's a particular combination of these things that works for particular styles of movie, particular genres, for example, of a movie. So for example, you're going to get one aesthetic when you watch an Adam Sandler movie. You're going to look for certain things. There's going to be, you know, a certain way that it's, that it's lit, certain way that it's shot, certain way that they frame things. That's going to be very different from the way that they shoot like a Batman movie or something like that. It's going to, Batman movie is going to be darker. It's going to be shot in a way that, that just feels different, right? It has a different aesthetic overall. TV shows are the same way. They're, they're, they're presented differently through this aesthetic and that though has meaning. The, the choices that they make in terms of these things, in terms of the aesthetic, in terms of color, lighting, editing, movement and framing and sound certainly have an impact on the way we relate to that movie, the way we view that movie and the way that they send their messages across. All of that impacts the symbolism within the movie or within the television show, within the song, even in music. You may not have color and lighting and things, but, but you certainly have a lot of different ways that, that people present their aesthetic. Another way to think about this is in music, for example, I grew up in the 90s and that was my, you know, primary music coming to, coming of age, right? This is right in the middle of grunge and grunge had a certain aesthetic, right? When you, when you were a fan of bands like Nirvana and Soundgarden and Allison Chains and Pearl Jam and, you know, I was in the Screaming Trees and all these grunge bands coming out of Seattle and other places, but I, you know, I certainly followed into that aesthetic. I wore the torn jeans, torn jeans, plaid shirts. You don't really see plaid shirts too, but that was a big deal too for grunge, right? These baggy plaid shirts for whatever reason. There was an aesthetic that came along with that and really just, grunge was just kind of a mishmash too, just kind of, you know, wear whatever you find on the bottom of your closet was grunge, right? Because you were supposed to not care. That was a grunge. That was the grunge aesthetic, but there was a certain look, a certain vibe, and we can think about that too in terms of music, in terms of, like, goth music or country music. We expect these artists and the people that follow them really, they're major fans, to look a certain way, right? To dress a certain way. They have this aesthetic about them and that surrounds that medium. So aesthetic becomes very important in contemporary rhetorical analysis as well, becomes an important part of that equation. So some common questions. These are, I mean, there are a lot of questions we could get into for rhetorical analysis. There are, I mean, all kinds of stuff here. So I just picked a few of the broader, more common questions that we look at maybe in rhetorical analysis. Things like, first of all, what symbols are used? What symbols are utilized in this in this artifact? What are the symbols themselves? And once we identify, you know, what the different symbols are, what do they represent? What do we think they're supposed to, what message are they trying to convey here? What are they, what, what do these symbols represent? You know, if we go back to that car ad, for example, what did those symbols represent? That's the symbols of the animals on one side and the city on the other really represent kind of the freedom, right? The freedom to be all of ourselves, not just, you know, to be the button up people who look in the city, but also to be the wild people who go out in the wilderness and do things. So I mean, they represent a variety of different things that could, I mean, that's just one quick interpretation here. But what do those symbols represent? What do they intend to do? Why were those chosen? And for part of that, we're going to get, we've got to get back into who created this and for what purpose. And so then we can look at why were these symbols chosen over other symbols, right? Why were these specific symbols chosen? Why those people in that car ad? Why those animals in that car ad? Why those buildings in that car ad? Why, you know, we know why the car is there. I mean, it was a car ad, so we know why that was there. But why everything else? What was the intention there? They were chosen for a specific reason. So we're trying to identify what those are. And then what's the desire to factor outcome? Again, all of these have a million questions behind it. But what's the purpose here? What is the eventual ideal outcome for the person who put this, put this piece together, this artifact together? There's probably some reason most people don't create something for no reason whatsoever. So so we can ask these questions. These are some common questions along a bunch of others that we could throw out there for rhetorical analysis, which is one of the things that makes it so fun. There's so much depth that we can get into here. So if we apply these things just real quickly to a couple of different examples, one that came to mind for me when I think about this is back in I guess in the 2000s or whatever. And I wasn't really I mean, I was aware of this debate, but it wasn't really something that affected me. So there was a huge debate over these teletubbies, right? This was a children's program that was on television. I'm not even sure where PBS, maybe, but but it was a children's television show. And as you can see, I mean, it's clearly kind of silly, but these characters and it was for young, young children, right? Toddlers really. And so it's but there was a big uproar about the symbolism in teletubbies. People read a lot into this. There was some discussion just to name a few. There was some discussion about the symbol on the top on one of their heads. I can't even remember which one. I think that the purple one had a triangle and did that represent that he was gay because that that was a symbol of the, you know, LGBTQ community, right? I did that symbolized that he was was that was representing that there were other people that saw different symbols in there that indicated that they were Nazis or communists. I mean, all kinds of stuff people read into the teletubbies for pizza. So but they they saw these symbols, they looked at symbols, they chose what I mean, they tried to identify what they represented. They were basically doing rhetorical analysis. Another movie that may be more familiar to those of us of a certain age that we can get away from the teletubbies and look at this movie, The Dark Knight Rises, my personal symbolism there. And this was a big deal at the time. I remember when it came out, there's this one scene as you see here where Batman is using some of the technology from Wayne industry to try and pinpoint where the bad guys are. He's trying to identify where this person is at. But in doing so, he's implementing he's employing surveillance equipment that he has. And it's actually spying on everybody in Gotham City. And Morgan Freeman's character actually objects and says it's not right. There were some people who looked at this and said, OK, this was during the Bush administration. This was not too long after 9 11. So we had the the Patriot Act, which gave the government pretty broad powers to to spy on people, essentially to read people's emails and listen in on their phone calls and so forth. So some people looked at this and said, OK, this is representative of the Bush administration. This is an objection. They're they're making a point about the Patriot Act are making a point about this this the way that this is being portrayed here. And so what symbols are used? They use these symbols of these these little televisions and the little squiggly lines where where people were communicating their tracking on this. What do they represent? People said it represented the NSA, the National Security Agency and their efforts to kind of listen in on everything that we're doing and track everything that we're doing. Why were they chosen? Well, some people said it was chosen because they wanted to bring this to light for people who thought that what the Bush administration was doing was was wrong. They there's some people who said, well, this is clearly a statement on or against the Bush administration's use of the Patriot Act to kind of, you know, under the cover of preventing terrorism. They're they're really just spying on individuals and taking away individual freedoms and so forth. And what was the desired effect or outcome? Well, if you if you're one of those people who read it that way, then the desired effect or outcome was that people would be upset about this and maybe object to the use of the Patriot Act for those those purposes and things and maybe to overturn or at least revamp some of those procedures and guidelines and policies. So anyway, there are ways to I mean, again, symbology that could be present in any kind of media, but that's just one that came to mind for me. I hope you've gained from this brief look at rhetorical analysis. There's so much here and there's so much information available. I hope you take advantage of it. Really, though, I would encourage you to apply this to any kind of media. I love listening to political speeches and really applying it to that. That's a fascinating area to to look at just famous speeches in general, whether it's presidents, whether it's whoever apply, you can apply it there, but you can also apply it again. When we when we watch TV, I'm always looking at this now because my mind can't shout it off. I'm always looking at what does that represent? What are they trying to say here? What is that symbol? Why did they choose this instead of something else? What, you know, what what are they trying to get across here? So I hope that that will come across your mind as we move forward here and you'll begin to to use rhetorical analysis just on a regular basis. It's something that's so valuable to us in developing that critical mindset. If you have any questions about this or anything else related to critical media studies, please give me a call. Please don't hesitate to contact me. I would be happy to discuss with you anything related to this. So please feel free to shoot me an email, reach out in that way and I'd be happy to communicate with you. In the meantime, I hope that you will begin to employ and enjoy rhetorical analysis, as much as the other ways we're looking at critical media studies. Have a great week.