Chapter 5: Rhetorical Analysis Flashcards
What is rhetoric?
Rhetoric – use of symbols by humans to influence & move other humans
Rhetoric ➔ attempts to shape & influence its viewers’ attitudes & actions
Media products are rhetorical
Def sign
Sign – something that invites someone to think of something other than itself
Who is Ferdinard de saussure?
founder of modern linguistics ➔ study of language as strcutured system
Def semiology
semiology – science which studies the role of signs as part of social life, investigates nature of signs & laws governing them
Def signifier and signified
all linguistic signs were a combination of SIGNIFIER (significant) and SIGNIFIED (signifié)
signifier – sound-image, material form of a sign as perceived by the senses
signified – mental concept, idea evoked by signifier
What are the 2 defining traits of a linguistic sign?
Signs are arbitrary – no natural correspondence, no necessary relationship b/n signifier & signified
- is no fixed universal concepts or fixed universal signifiers
Linguistic sign is linearity – impossible to utter two distinct linguistic signs simultaneously
- operate in a temporal chain, if recorded changes meaning of what’s being said
- not true with images because more than one dimension
What is Langue vs Parole
linguistic system vs. individual speech acts/utterances
La langue: study the rules and conventions that organize the system
Parole - study specific uses or performances of language
Saussure believed la langue was the proper goal of linguistics
What is synchronic vs diachronic?
Synchronic analysis: concerns the state of language in general, linguistic system in a static state – aims to illuminate conditions for the existence of any language by examining the rules of combination & substitutability w/in a system
Diachronic analysis/evolutionary linguistics: concerns origins of languages & changes in sound or pronunciation over time (phonology)
Saussure thought synchronic was the way to study la langue
what is difference according to Saussure?
Recognize that signs signify by virtue of their difference from other signs
specific character of such differences is unimportant – as long as meaning is socially agreed upon
Def semiotic
quasi-necessary or formal doctrine of signs
expands category of signs to include all modes of human communication, not just languages (unlike Saussure’s semiology)
What 3 things does semiotic depend on (Peirce)?
sign/representamen – something which stands to somebody for something in respect or capacity
equivalent sign – creates in person’s mind = interpretant
object – something that sign stands for
What were the 3 categories of signs according to Pierce?
Iconic signs – operate according to logic of similarity or likeness, representamen that structurally resemble objects they stand for
Indexical signs – linked by cause or association to objects they represent
Symbols – linked to their corresponding objects purely by social convention or agreement, learned vs. intuited
Who is Roland Barthes?
French thinker that emerged for refining and expanding upon ideas of others
Def signifying system
Signifying system – grew out of Barthe’s fascination w/ how “cultural” practices & beliefs are “naturalized”
signifying system—Roland Barthes’s approach to the study of signs.
Def denotation
denotation—The literal meaning of a text; first-order signification.
Involves literal or explicit meaning of words and other phenomena
Def connotation
Connotation – second-order signification & operates at lvl of ideology & myth
Def anchorage
Anchorage limits (potentially infinite) meanings an image can have by “directing” the reading through the visual signifiers
Def texts
Texts – set of signs related to each other insofar as their meanings all contribute to the same set of effects or functions
Def cluster
Cluster – the way individual signs are associated w/ and dissociated from one another
Def form
form—(1) The overall structure or configuration of a message; (2) the creation and satisfaction of desire.
What are the 4 general varieties of form? List them
progressive form, repetitive form, conventional form, minor/incidental forms
Def progressive form
Progressive form – describes the way a story advances step by step, each step following logically from previous step
Def repritive form
Repetitive form – consistent maintaining of a principle under new guises, restatement of the same thing in diff ways
Def conventional form
Conventional form – not so much an appeal within the text (as progressive & repetitive forms are) appeal OF the text
we select media texts b/c we desire particular set of conventions at particular moment in time
Def minor/incidental forms
Minor/incidental forms – brief, frequently literary devices that may appear w/in a text such as metaphor, paradox, reversal, contraction, expansion etc. ➔ allows us to take pleasure in segments, sections or pieces of larger texts
Def genre
Genre – class or constellation of mssgs that share discernible stylistic or formal (syntactic), substantive (semantic) & situational (pragmatic) characteristics
What are the two ways genre is studied?
Inductively or deductively
Inductively: created by drawing general conclusion based upon the analysis of specfiic instances ➔ corresponds to historical genres
Deductively: working from a set of general proposition to specific conclusions ➔ generates and testts theoretical genres (defined by critics)
Def historical genre
Historical genres – rooted in observation of shared traits across media texts, well known to most ppl (popular television genres ➔ soap operas, game shows, reality TV, sitcoms & dramas)
accepted by culture
What are the 3 key genres for Diomedes’ classification of lit works?
- Those in which only narrator speaks
- Only characters speak
- Those in which BOTH speak
Def narrative
Narrative – series of real or fictitious events that occur in (often chronological) succession
What are the three levels of narrative?
Story (histoire) – what happens to who in a narrative ➔ comprised of events and existents
Discourse (récit) – describes the actual words, written/spoken used to tell a story (+images or pictures)
Narrating (narration) – actual act of recounting – situation WITHIN which discourse is uttered
Def events
Events – particular events that occur within a story are further dived according to function they perform
- Kernels ➔ key notes/hinges that actively contribute to the story’s progression
- Satellites/catalyzers ➔ minor plot events that fill in the narrative
Def existents
Existents – includes characters (actants) & indices (informants and setting)
Characters – classified w/ respect to actions they perform w/in a story
Def tense/temporal relations of the narrative
divided into 3 categories
Order: how time unfolds for the narrator ➔ reach: how far back or ahead the events the narrator recalls or anticipates lie
Duration/speed: relation b/n period of time described (story-time) & period of time required for the telling (discourse-time)
Frequency; number of times a single event/incident is recounted by narraotry
What are hte 5 possible relations b/n story time and discourse time?
Scene – discourse-time & story-time roughly equal
Summary – discourse-time SHORTER than story-time
Ellipsis – discourse-time is 0
Stretch – discourse-time is LONGER than story-time
Pause – discourse-time is LONGER than story-time, which is ZERO
Def mood
Mood – describes narrative temporality ➔ employs term mood to describe “regulation of narrative information”
Def voice
Voice – entails the position, type & relation of the narrator
narrative voices FRAMES how audiences understand & relate to narrative mood
Def affect
affect—An intensity registered directly by the body that operates on a non-representational or asignifying register.
Def aesthetic
Aesthetic – qualities of an artwork that, while asignifying, generates sensual experiences & evokes affective responses from audiences
presence effects – effects that prime our bodies, essentially predisposing us to experience an event and its attendant symbols in a particular way
Def colour
Color – emotional quality, derives partly from personal associations – partly from experience in nature
Def lighting
Lighting – strong symbolic dimension, operates on material lvl & have profound effects on emotional states
Def editing
Editing – sequencing & length of individual shots w/in film & television + type (cuts, fades, dissolves, wipes, etc.) & frequency of transitions or shifts b/m shots
Def movement & framing
Movement & framing – camera mvmt along w/ framing techniques ➔ powerfully shape the way audiences feel about a person/event they see on screen
Def sound
sound – omnipresent, noises can generate sense of verisimilitude by actualizing time & space vs. music – establishing mood
Def structuralism
structuralism – idea that each element in cultural system derives its meaning in relation to other elements in the system, tend to regard such systems as relatively closed & independent
