Today’s Plan:
- Rhetorical Analysis
- Lanham Write Ups
- Homework
Rhetorical Analysis
Today I want to return a bit to our conversation of logos, ethos, and pathos from Tuesday’s class. I want to use those terms to ground a rhetorical analysis of a contemporary news story. In this case we will be examining 3 short news articles on the same event. I don’t want to name the event for reasons that I might clarify (if I remember to) after the event is complete.
First, a bit of set up. My ENG 231 Analyzing Video Games class read an essay by Ian Bogost on procedural rhetoric for today. In short, procedural rhetoric is persuasion via experiencing computer-enacted rules and/or value systems. It thinks about how actions and systems persuade us rather than words or symbols. In the article Bogost explicates Kenneth Burke’s idea of ethos, what Burke terms “identification”:
20th century rhetorician Kenneth Burke identifies the need to identify with others as the ancestor of the practice of rhetoric. He extends rhetoric beyond persuasion, instead suggesting “identification” as a key term for the practice. We use symbolic systems like language, says Burke, as a way to achieve this identification.
What I like about this passage, why I use it to frame today’s activity, is that it sets us out paying particular attention to the language that underwrites an identity. It is a claim that no language can be identity-free. Let’s test that claim.
I have distributed three news stories. Working in groups of three, you will read each story and identify a moment within it that speaks to logos, ethos, and pathos. You are free to identify more than one moment for each rhetorical element. As you are doing this, you should also mark off words that sting or sing to you. What words stick out, call to you, indicate that something rhetorical is going on? What words reinforce an already existing identity? For whom or to whom does this particular text speak and what words tell you that?
Write-Ups
Any first week volunteers?
Homework
We have two readings for next Tuesday, and another reading for next Thursday. The Write-Up, due before Thursday’s class, should focus on one reading but find a way to put the other two in contact with it in some way.
For Tuesday:
- Kenneth Burke, 1939, “The Rhetoric of Hitler’s Battle”
- Trish Roberts-Miller, 2017, excerpt from Democracy and Demogoguery. This is a really accessible version of Miller’s lifework book, called Rhetoric and Demagoguery, which took her nearly 20 years to research and write.
. The essay really picks up at page 199, so feel free to start there.
For next Thursday:
- Jennifer R. Mercieca, 2019, “Dangerous Demagogues and Weaponized
Communication”
