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
