Language and Rhetoric Flashcards
Register
The kind of language we use is affected by the context in which we use it.
Three aspects that affect register
Medium, tone/tenor and field/role
Semantic-fields
field-specific vocabulary e.g. metaphor, tort, off-side
What to look at when analyzing register
Vocabulary, syntax and typography
Describe Derrida’s performatives
A performative works because it’s formulation ‘codifies’ an iterable and repeatable form. In order for something to be a sign, it must be able to be cited/repeated in all kinds of circumstances.
Also related performative to political and literary acts that create/inaugurate e.g. Declaration of Independence
Describe Derrida’s performatives
A performative works because it’s formulation ‘codifies’ an iterable and repeatable form. In order for something to be a sign, it must be able to be cited/repeated in all kinds of circumstances.
Also related performative to political and literary acts that create/inaugurate e.g. Declaration of Independence
Describe Butler’s performatives
Gender performative - your gender is created by the way one acts, in the same way a promise is created by the act of promising. We become a man or woman by repeated acts.
Eg “it’s a girl’ isn’t constative (true-false), but first in a series of performatives that create the subject whose arrival they announce. The ‘making’ of a girl through an assignment of compulsory repetition of gender norms.
Whereas as Austin believes a performative is the repetition of a formula on a single occasion that makes something happen, Butler believes that obligatory repetition produces historical and social realities.
What is the basic problem of the performative?
There may be an inevitable tension that governs all language as a result of the conflict between what language says (constative) and what language does (performative).
Modernist aesthetic theory
Individual poet’s mind should be subservient to literary tradition.
Post-structuralist views on authorship
Get rid of notion of author/authorial intention, meaning generated by creative process of reading, not writing.
What three things does an effective rhetoric include?
Invention (finding arguments/proofs)
Disposition (arrangement of these materials)
Style (Choice of words, verbal patterns)
What are the three main classes of oratory rhetoric?
Deliberative (Persuade audience to approve/disapprove matter of public policy and act accordingly)
Forensic (Achieve condemnation/approval of someone’s actions)
Epideictic (‘display rhetoric’, to praise or put blame on a person/group, while displaying ow oratorical skills)
