exam 1 Flashcards
Rhetoric
The way in which signs influence people
“Rhetoric of Everyday Life”
We are almost constantly shown and influenced by signs around us (commercials, newspapers, news, tv, etc.) What’s discussed around the coffeepot at work, what are women and men expected to wear, etc. Signs are organized into indexical (makes you think of something else), iconic (resembles something else), symbolic (signs that make you think of something based on agreement. everyone agrees that Book means pages between a front and a back. if everyone decided glorpus meant pages between a front and a back, it would replace book. also exists in other things. patterns like red white and blue make you think of america, cigarettes can mean cool or low class or tough.)
Power in relation to popular culture
if popular culture is shifted in such a way to prefer a certain group of people or to disparage other groups, this is one example of power in rhetoric.
Privilege in relation to popular culture
privilege can be changed in popular culture by showing certain groups as better or disparaging other groups. by defining ‘culture’ as operas and events typically only for the rich, this creates a disparity between the rich and the poor in relation to popular culture.
Tensions in the study of popular culture
tensions in popular culture exist where the definition of things is less than sure. For example, while the meaning of a word like carrot is undisputed because it is unimportant, the meaning of words like race, gender, culture, and other similar disputed topics are more tense.
neo-Aristotelian Criticism
more interested in examining arguments represented in persuasive public speeches, such as those performed by the greeks. Interested in the situation (context, exigency (the event that causes the speech), audience), the speaker (their background + intentions), the speech (invention : logos, pathos, ethos. Arrangement, style, delivery, memory (technology)), and the evaluation (effects and effectiveness, ethical assessment).
Rhetoric for the 20th/21st centuries
rhetoric is part of almost everything. conversation, food, clothing, common entertainment, etc. population increased and people became increasingly close, particularly city populations. Technology has also developed and means that a person can almost constantly be connected to communication, exposing people to more messages as well as global / mass culture messages. pluralism means that people are exposed to more world cultures, perspectives, etc. Knowledge developed as well, as in more exists in general, making it difficult to organize and understand, as well as specialized.
Critical Studies
critical in attitude and in method, concerned with power, and interventionist. the critical attitude (dissecting another’s words and actions to show true meanings, refusing to take things at face value.), method (asking certain questions about meaning, complexity, and evaluation to find what a text means to different people, what the suggested meanings in the text are and their influences, and evaluating whether the object / experience’s meanings or influences are good or bad, desirable or undesirable, overall qualitative, meaning more concerned with qualities rather than quantities), concern over power (what power is, how it’s created, maintained, shared, lost, and acquired), critical interventionism (specifically concerned with intervening on the problems of the world to change it for the better)
The struggle over meaning
because meanings are where rhetorical power lies, people struggle over them in order to suit their own interests. these specific texts are called sites of struggle.
Frankfurt School and Birmingham School (and implications)
Interventionism
Seeking to intervene and change the world for the better through rhetorical criticism.
Type of text : Discrete to Diffuse
Discrete texts are ones with clear boundaries in time and space, while a diffuse text is one with a perimeter less clear, mixed up with other signs. For a wedding, solely the ceremony and reception would be discrete, but the entire process (preparing, the aftermath, the honeymoon) would be diffuse.
Sources of meanings: Broad to Narrow
Some meanings are held by many people, broad meanings. Other meanings are only held by certain people or held in certain circumstances, which are narrow meanings.
Choice of Context: Original to New
An original context could be the original time something took place (the original Gettysburg address), or just the first time you pick up something. An original reading of Scythe happens when you first pick it up in the context of the library, with contexts defined by the intentions of those who make or use texts. New context texts are often just moved or appropriated into new contexts. A soda bottle falling from a plane into an indigenous tribe who think it’s a sign from the gods about something. Critics must place context to position the text.
Text-Context relationship: reactive to proactive
If a text is reacting to a challenge, possibility, or context that exists, then it leans more towards reactive. Proactive texts create their own contexts, products like cooking gadgets or hot plates aren’t needed, but create contexts that they’re needed. This happens in politics as well (trump).
Surface to deep reading: direct tactics/implied strategies/structures
This is in order. Regards how far a critic wants to go beyond the study of explicit and straightforward appeals that a text makes into an analysis of more indirect and less obvious appeals. Explicit appeals are direct tactics. Implied strategies the implications of some of the direct tactics that are used. Finally, any text is put together in certain ways, and its parts have relationships among themselves. People experiencing the text may not be aware of these deep patterns. These parts and relationships make up the text’s structure. Direct tactics are any straightforward request. Implied is more tricky; if your friend who works at the bank keeps bringing up embezzling in conversation (not saying he’s doing anything, just referencing it fairly directly.) you might assume he’s embezzling. Pattern is bare bones; patterns, form, or organization of a text.
Intertextuality
When one text references or makes use of, or includes part or all of another text. New songs with a familiar hook from an older song, a t-shirt with an old recognizable picture of a person on it, or something that just alludes to a different thing (bellbottoms alluding to the hippie culture of the 60s, etc.)
Preferred/oppositional readings
Preferred readings is when the creator picks and chooses how the consumer of something sees meaning. Oppositional is when the viewer creates their own meaning for a text.
Cultural Hegemony
How the ruling class rule through ideological or through cultural means. Feudal Japan having the emperor be ‘god’s chosen’ is a fine example; if everyone suddenly decided he wasn’t, they could reasonably enough fight back and take over.
Standpoint Theory
Feminist theory that knowledge stems from social position (race, gender, wealth).
Marxist Criticism
Concerned with ideology, class, and the distribution of power in society. Many ideas originated from Karl Marx, labeling this approach as Marxist.
Visual Rhetorical Criticsm
The study of the visual, how it’s are perceived by others, and how it’s are interpreted.
Psychoanalytic Criticism
Used in reference to a theory about how the individual mind, personality, or psyche is constructed and then enters social contexts. Assumes that all artifacts of popular culture have something “behind” it.
Desire/Repression
Psychoanalytic critics would urge us to examine to examine texts in why they make us desire things. An advertisement tells us that we can be more famous / macho / cool if we buy this thing; why does this appeal work? Repression is the fact that we must control our desires. When we are infants we can defecate, eat, grasp whatever we desire. But as we grow up we understand some things must be repressed, so we do.
Pleasure principle
The fact that toddlers do whatever they desire whenever they want. (They eat when they’re hungry, defecate and urinate when they feel the need, etc.
Feminist Criticism
Wide-ranging group of approaches. Begins from assumption that there’s gender inequality between men and women, particularly in today’s industrialized economies, and thus power differentials. Tries explaining how such inequality is created and perpetuated.
Queer theory
What’s key to queer theory is exploration of the violation of tidy, established categories of social thinking.
Dramatistic/Narrative
Broad, loosely connected school of thought. Shared understanding of basic human reality and motivation. Believe that language and other sign systems are the grounding for human reality and motivation.
Media-centered Criticism
Argues that texts of popular culture should be analyzed using concepts that take into consideration the medium in which the component signs of the text appear.
Media Logic
Concerns how media logic shapes stories and which stories do better in certain media because of their logics. Ex, if you spend an entire day downloading a song to your Ipod, and you hear something on the radio you like, you reach to press a button to hear it again, even though the radio has no such button. You’ve internalized the iPod logic, so much that you come to expect to find replay buttons everywhere.
TV as a medium: commodification, realism, intimacy
TV : Commodification (as TV is a commercial enterprise, constantly selling commodities to the public via ads, blending into the regular programming, creating an intense concern for commodities in the minds of those who use televisions a great deal.) Realism (TV cultivates a sense of reality in its viewers, because of its status as a visual technology in a society where seeing is believing, making people think the reality of TV is truth.) Intimacy (small, personal, person-oriented. TVs do well at showing people, so they do. They turn towards the personal in general.)
Computer/internet as a medium: fluidity, speed/control, dispersal
Fluidity (Usually you’re only a couple clicks away from wildly different sites, or links will directly send you to other sites. Compare this to reading a book where you wouldn’t really want to go from a novel to a math textbook to a book of poems; it would feel odd.) Speed / Control (Keyboards as an example grant us a vast deal of control and speed, and ease of access over sites and information and knowledge. If you wanted to know sheriffs in the state of Idaho, you’d have to go to a library and sift to find that knowledge. Now, almost anyone can find that info in five minutes using a computer.) Dispersal (It disperses people away from physical social contact into social contact done online. Virtual communities are dispersed communities, situating the individual in connection to others through technology. Wandering around talking to people on your phone surrounded by strangers, as an example.)
