cct110 Flashcards
what is rhetoric?
Using language effectively to persuade, inform, educate, or entertain
- the study of how knowledge is created and shared through communication practices that include reading, writing, and speaking
- study of persuasion
rhetoric of media
- Media literacy
- Critical thinking and writing skills
- Thinking about media forms, tools, and how to effectively use them (i.e. “media affordances”)
- Thinking about how information circulates
media
- plural of medium
- the means by which content is communicated between an
origin and a destination
society
- The whole social world in which we exist “the body of institutions and relationships within which a relatively large group of people live”
emphasis
social relations, everyday interactions, operation of
broader social grouping
Lasswell’s Communication Model
- brand?
- who?
- says what?
- in which channel?
- to whom?
- with what effect?
Critiques of Lasswell’s Model
*Useful for seeing components of communication process
*But: oversimplified
*Linear process: senderàreceiver
*One-way flow of information
*Passive receiver
*Doesn’t tell us how information can be meaningful
Encoding/Decoding
Reality exists outside language, but is constantly mediated by and through language: and what we can know and say has to be produced in and through discourse
- Stuart Hall
3 ways to decode a message
- Dominant Reading
- Negotiated Reading
- Oppositional Reading
Dominant Reading
- Viewer or reader shares meanings that are encoded in a text
- accepts the preferred reading,
- generally naturalizes and reinforces dominant ideologies.
Negotiated Reading
- Viewer generally shares the codes and preferred meaning of the text
- also may resist and modify the encoded meaning based on her social location, interests, history and experiences.
- Results in a contradictory reading of the text
Oppositional Reading
- Social position of the reader (gender, race, class, ideology)
places them in opposition to the dominant code and preferred reading of the text. - Reader understands the dominant code but brings a different look, leading them to resist the encoded
message
putting text into content
Major part of critical thinking, reading, analysis
*When you make media you have power
*When you critically consume media and understand rhetoric you gain access to power
*When you use this in service of producing content you become powerful
Every rhetorical situation includes choices
about:
*Genre: what type of text you are writing
*Purpose: what are you trying to accomplish
*Audience: whom you are writing for
*Voice: how you want to sound
*Media and Design: how you want your writing to look
writing to persuade
*To think something
*To buy something
*To feel something
*To do something
*To click something
*To “like” something
Logos
rational appeal
Strategies of logic:
*Appeal to reason
*Ex: facts, statistics, arguments, concrete evidence
Pathos
Emotional appeal
*Persuasion by moving audience to feel something
*Attempt to appeal to an audience’s sense of identity, self-interest, and emotions
*Ex: interviews, imagery, individual stories
Ethos
Ethical appeal
credibility
*Appeal to a source’s credibility
*“What does this person know about this topic?” and “Why should I trust this person?”
*Convey trustworthiness in style and tone
*Establish credentials
public relations
activities aimed at favorably
influencing the public
Political Spin
&
Spin
The attempt to control or influence communication on order to deliver ones preferred message
spin:
Spin is a pejorative term often used in the context of public relations practitioners and political communicators
the leak
politicians prided a story to journalists in exchanged for the story not to be scrutinized
pivoting
not answering the questions you’ve been asked
the vomit principle
if you convey a message so many times you have to “throw up” the public might finally get it
playing dead bat
staying quiet answering nothing
playing dead bat
staying quiet answering nothing
The truth, but not the whole truth
exactly what the sentence means
throwing bodies out like garbage
days when the news cycle is full, gets less coverage (often happens with bad news)
Fire Breaking
country staring war by deflecting their economy is a mess
Kite Flying
float an idea on Thursday or Friday, if its popular it becomes a policy at the end of the week
flying under the radar
place unwanted legislation into a bill to hide
dog whistling
use a certain term or expression that certain people can understand
wedding
issue or point is raised that makes issues between groups and wedges them apart
propoganda
intentional influence of attitudes and opinions
propoganda model: filters
- Ownership
- Advertising
- Sourcing
- Flak
- Anti-communism and fear
Edward Bernays
- Thought of advertising as art applied to science
- Manipulate masses
- First to use celebrities as advertising
hard sell
persuasive techniques and “reason why” philosophy
soft sell
enticing and entertaining image; appeal to paths (emotions)
advertising
communication that is paid for and is usually persuasive in nature
ideology
- a coherent set of social values, beliefs, meanings
- Taken-for-granted value commitments, assumptions that are naturalized
- Consumer ideology: promote consumer culture
Commodity Fetishism
- The symbolic separation of commodities from the social conditions in which they were produced
- Masks material relations
- Hides the production of goods (e.g.. premised on human exploitation)
symbolic value
advertising & ideology
associates things (products) with particular values
connotation
advertising & ideology
the range of subjective meanings that may be drawn from a representation
history of seeing
if you see it you believe it
Phrenology
pseudo-science
cataloguing body parts more specifically the brain and measuring parts to determine different traits, e.g. psychological
Physiognomy
pseudo-science
- interpreting the outward appearance and configuration of the body and the face in particular.
- Can learn about “types” by doing this.
E.g. Sherlock Homes: you have less frontal development than I should have expected
Eugenics
pseudo-science
- practice of stymying and controlling human reproduction as a means of improving the human race.
- Founded by Sir Francis Galton
- Linked to race, later used by Nazis and Hitler in WWII
Subject of a picture
points to consider
(seeing)
What about the person taking the picture? How they choose to shoot the image
Ideologies inform our image
points to consider
(seeing)
Shared set of values and beliefs that exist within a given society where we live
Ideologies change over time
points to consider
(seeing)
Women’s roles, sex, gender
culture
What is culture?
Why is it so important?
What roles does it play in the rhetoric of the visual?
- Tim Hortons and hockey
culture codes
- We rely on culture codes (e.g. to make judgments of aesthetic)
- Taste is informed by experiences relating to ones class, culture, education
- What “codes” are at work here to help us distinguish beauty from ugliness
culture
cultivation of nature
- culture denoted civilization of nature
(e.g. cultivating plants and animals) - overtime cultivation becomes culture as a spiritual and social cultivation of social groups
Material
2 aspects of culture
the outcome of this cultivations: artwork, poems, philosophical texts, literature
Mental
2 aspects of culture
the idea of culture as process of cultivation
“evaluative concept”
Culture becomes an “evaluative concept,” when culture and value are linked together, and one that impacts what we see and how we see
The Myth of Photographic Truth, 1992
- Sometimes in courtrooms use science to convince viewers of the “accuracy of the imaging-system
(e.g. Rodney King video, 1992) - Used by Kings lawyers showing irrefutable evidence of the event. Police was found not guilty for excessive force
- Sewing down or stoping moving images we can see things missed at regular speed, the use of reverse effect can eliminate time-dependent aspects
- The use of speeding, slowing, and reversing speed can alter actual actions
- “Scientific” techniques used w/ videos: freeze framing, slowed projection, blowups of portions of the full frame, digitized markings on the frame, computerized still frames
(all used to falsify Kings videos)
Rhetoric and Deciding what we are “seeing”
Making meaning of images: meanings are produced though a complex social relationship involving:
- How viewers internet or experience the image
- The context in which an image is seen
