Video: Rhetorical Analysis – Transcript

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.10 Welcome to an Introduction to Rhetorical Analysis, a lecture from Miami University’s Composition and Rhetoric course.

.19 Now that you have some familiarity with rhetorical appeals and how they work to persuade, we can start to examine artifacts that we see in everyday life from a rhetorical perspective. Images and texts can be analyzed rhetorically by asking questions about audience, purpose, the types of appeals being used, the culture and context in which the object arises, the message that is being conveyed, and who or what is projecting or speaking this message.

.46 Examining the rhetorical situation, or the context in which this object or event arises, can give valuable information about who is speaking, to whom, and the purpose of the message. Though often represented as a static triangle, these relationships are dynamic and in motion – the rhetor (or speaker) has a purpose and an audience that is being addressed, but the way that this address manifests or is designed may change based upon audience expectations, desires, values, or other factors. Examining this rhetorical situation….

1.21 …can add new meaning to familiar texts and give you valuable tools with which to analyze the purpose and message of objects that you encounter everyday. By being aware of how these texts and images work, you may be able to step back from their persuasive appeals to ask yourself questions about the validity of the argument they are making or if the action they are attempting to persuade you to take is really in your best interest.

1.47 Though advertisements are often a rich – and obvious – place where rhetorical appeals are working to persuade an audience to action, ads are certainly not the only place where rhetorical analysis can help us dissect the purpose, meaning, and intention of an argument.

2.03 Politicians….

2.07 Causes….

2.11 Movements

2.25 Images

2.18 Texts

2.22 Songs

2.25 Films

2.28 Architecture

2.32 Art

2.34 Or space can all be rhetorically analyzed.

2.41 You may ask – is EVERYthing rhetorical? This is a fair question, and one that is not easily answered. You might argue that a tree by itself is not rhetorical….

2.51 … but in context, and used for particular purposes, it becomes so.

2.59 So what is rhetorical analysis and how does it work?

3.02 And even more to the point, WHY bother to engage in this type of analysis in the first place?

3.08 In its simplest form, you could say that looking at a text – where text is defined VERY broadly – plus its context is the beginning of rhetorical analysis. Once you are examining this text within its context, you can ask questions about the intended audience, purpose, the types of appeals that are being used, the culture, time, and context in which the text arises, the message that is being conveyed, and the speaker who is presenting this message.

3.37 By analyzing all of the pieces of the rhetorical puzzle, you can come to a deeper comprehension about how a text works to persuade – what it is trying to DO in the world – in order to make more informed choices. Remember: rhetorical appeals are used because they WORK. By understanding HOW and WHY they work, we may gain more autonomy and awareness in our everyday lives to more fully understand the messages we encounter. By seeing the appeals at work and within context, we may be able to make clearer decisions rather than to be blindly persuaded by the power of rhetorical appeals alone.