Exam 1 Flashcards
Artifact
- Charged with a widely shared meaning, 2. Perceived as a whole
- Manifesting a group
Sign
Something that induces you to think about something other than itself.
Text
A set of signs relating to each other in so far as the meanings of all contribute to the same effects or functions
Culture
Make up a group of artifacts anchored in group identifications.
Popular Culture
System of artifacts people share and that most people know about
Relationship between group identity and artifacts including objects
Artifacts are the material signs of abstract groups. The final clause in the definition of a cultural artifact identifies all artifacts as signs of group identification
Rhetoric
How the meanings that we would find in or assign to the text are being managed so as to influence people
Discreet Text
Text with clear boundaries and clear separate context
Diffuse Text
A collection of signs working for the same or related rhetorical influence that is not discretely separated from its context
Centrality of Metonymy
When you think about something by reducing it to a smaller, simpler, more manageable image that leaves out certain details of the larger whole
What Brummett means by texts of popular culture as “sites of struggle”
People struggle over how to construct these different texts in ways that suit their own interests. Texts wield rhetorical influence because of the meanings they support. Because texts mean different things, they are sites of struggle over meaning.
What does this concern have to do with meaning? with power?
Meanings are where rhetorical power lies, Struggles over power occur in the creation and reception of texts
What is the critical Method
A way of asking certain kinds of questions about whatever is being studies. Doesn’t break texts up, deals with the complexity of them
Criticism as concerned with power
Suspicion that power is seized and maintained in other less obnoxious ways, in all the experiences of pop culture
Text as Discrete
Clear boundaries in time and space
Texts as diffuse
Perimeter of boundary that is not clear and may be mixed up with other signs
Texts as Broad
Widely held meaning
Texts as original or new
Must do historical work to find original context,,,New context = think the bible
Transformation
The standing in of one sign for another
Keystone
Implied throughout the text, assumes centrality in a text
Syntagmatic Structure of a Narrative
A chain, something that extends itself in a line, moving horizontally, like a story line
Paradigmatic Structure of a Narriative
Vertical, second type of pattern
Structure of News Story- Horizontal
Broadcast to reporter to news story
Structure of News Story - Vertical
Compare newscast to other stations
Subject Position- Preferred
The missing perspective, the point of view required for the text to make sense. ex watching Cops from a cops perspective
Subject Position - Subversive
Positions taken deliberately by the reader in opposition to the preferred subject
Definition and Goals of Rhetorical Criticism According to Foss
A qualitative research method that is designed for the systematic investigation and explanation of symbolic acts and arrtifacts for the purpose of understanding the rhetorical process
Act/Artifact Distinction
Act= Executed to a live audience, fleeting, difficult to analyze Artifact= Transcribed or printed, accessible to wider audience, preserved, recorded, Artifact = object of study
Symbol According to Foss
Something that stands for or represents something else by virtue of relationship, associaion, or connection to the object represented
Definition of rhetoric
The human use of symbols to communicate
Coherence
findings do not contradict each other and are internally consistent and that all the major dimensions of the artifact are included in the schema or theory you present of your findings—nothing is left hanging, unable to be explained.
Units of Analysis
units of analysis are things like strategies, types of evidence, values, word choice and metaphors. They focus attention on certain dimensions of an artifact and not others. If you use a narrative method you must have a narrative artifact, like a story.
Coding
analyzing an artifact, measuring, perceiving certain figures.
Agon Analysis
Examination of opposing terms
Identification and Consubstantiality
As two entities are united in substance through common ideas, attitudes, material possessions, or other properties.
Terministic Screens
The terms we select to describe the world constitute a kind of screen that directs attention to particular aspects of reality than others.
