Chapter 1 Review

Question 1

Rhetoric

Answer 1

The use of language and other symbolic systems to make sense of our experiences, construct our personal and collective identities, produce meaning, and prompt action in the world.

Question 2

Symbols

Answer 2

A letter, image, or gesture that represents something else.

Question 3

Rosteck’s Definition of Rhetoric

Answer 3

The use of language and other symbolic systems to make sense of our experiences, construct our personal and collective identities, produce meaning, and prompt action in the world.

Question 4

Rosteck’s TWO simultaneous understandings of influence

Answer 4

STRATEGIC—in that it can accomplish some kind of action and CONSTITUTIVE of our experiences, culture, and identities

Question 5

Rhetorical theories have emphasized….

Answer 5

both guidelines (strategies) for effective communication (i.e., persuasion) and ways of understanding how communication constructs meaning and ways of being in the world (e.g., as a socializing process)

Question 6

Common Characteristics: 4 Features: FEATURE 1
in terms of Strategic and Constitutive influence (Each is influenced by culture and technology)

Answer 6

Symbols
A) Means to persuade: Letters, words, pictures, font, music, architecture, nonverbal gestures, etc.
B) Indirect means for expressing (and learning) values/experience/etc.

Question 7

Feature 2

Answer 7

Audiences
A) Efforts to persuade people, via practical, communal decision-making
B) Broader influence: how people “form…collective identities”

Question 8

Feature 3

Answer 8

Contingency
A) Decision-making is sought on issues of probability: what’s to be done?
B) These rhetorical processes helps create our (evolving) senses of truth, right and wrong, etc.

Question 9

Feature 4

Answer 9

Inventive and analytic theories
A) Inventive: Theories used to help create effective forms of communication
B) Analytic: Theories used to examine implications of rhetoric’s use

Question 10

Rhetorical Theory

Answer 10

Guides that help explain instances/patterns of public symbol use. How rhetoric works and what it does.

*primarily inductive, prediction is not a primary focus

Question 11

Rhetorical Criticism

Answer 11

the process of using rhetorical theory to understand and evaluate rhetorical practice and generate future rhetorical theory

Question 12

Pragmatic-dominant (200 B.C.E.-5 C.E.)

Answer 12

Ancient theorists from Greece and Rome who asked and answered very pragmatic questions about rhetoric and who saw the speaker as influencing the events of the world through rhetoric.

Question 13

Pragmatic-subordinate

Answer 13

The world, as discovered through science, would be the dominant element and the speaker would receive secondary emphasis during this time.

Rhetoric would be used to communicate what scientists found

Question 14

Aesthetic/stylistic (Middles ages and Renaissance)

Answer 14

Rhetoric was used during this period to embellish the truth or ingratiate the rhetor to a very small audience. (1400-1700s)

Attention was paid to the aesthetic qualities of rhetoric, which is a way of referring to rhetoric’s style. Rhetoric during this period consisted of sermon-making and the art of letter writing

Question 15

Social Focus

Answer 15

Impact (on audiences) > Intent (of speakers)
(1900s-present)

Question 16

Epistemology

Answer 16

The study of knowledge and what is considered to be true or false

What’s the role of public symbol use in knowledge/understandings of truth?

Question 17

Ontology

Answer 17

The study of the nature of human existence and how humans perceive themselves to be.

How does public symbol use influence ways of being (i.e., individual and collective identity and experience)?

Question 18

Ethics

Answer 18

The study of how people make and justify decisions about what is right and wrong.

How do we make judgments, construct moral action, and/or define community and values through public symbol use?

Question 19

Name two functions of rhetoric

Answer 19

Persuasion and influence