Backpacks vs. Briefcases: Steps toward Rhetorical Analysis

We are constantly “judging a book by its cover”. We use Rhetoric for everything even when we are not comprehending we are exploiting it. We constantly find ourselves in multiple different situations every day and every day we have thought processes that occur outside of our own consciousness. The example that is given in this article is: media. Americans consume traditional and digital media approximately 15 and half hours per day. Media has become the center of rhetoric and a platform that is recognizable to quick analysis. They use the example of a men’s deodorant commercial. The rhetoric behind the message is that you’ll be irresistible to women if you use our product. By the impression of the message we judge a book by its cover and start to understand the rhetoric behind the message. Decoding the message behind media is rhetorical analysis. Using rhetorical analysis we can get a feel of ethos, logos, and pathos of the media and ask ourselves questions instead of our automatic “judgments”.  “According to rhetorician Kenneth Burke rhetoric is everywhere: wherever there is persuasion, there is rhetoric and wherever there is meaning there is persuasion”. Context is the beginning of understand rhetoric, it all has to do with the audience. President Obama has to write the appropriate context into his speech about economic policies for the correct audience. When writing his speech he wouldn’t direct it to a class of middle school levels he is going to address the context that a room full of politicians will understand.

Week 3 Post

There are compound factors about rhetoric that are often dismissed in writing that become unnoticed. What I grasped from reading these articles are that rhetoric directly ties into genres. When writing certain pieces when assigned you automatically know what tone, structure, dialogue, content etc. to be used based on what the article needs to be responded to without even knowing that what you are thinking and writing is rhetoric. For example in Murder! (Rhetorically speaking) the writing assignments were based on different genres. When the questions were being presented to “the class” I could already imagine the type of language that would be used based on the type of genre. In this type of scenario when asked to write from the detective point of view to the eulogy for the deceased I could already assume what type of tone would be used for each of the different genre setting. It is an instinct to assume the type of tone, for example when asked the five questions it was harder to hit all of the five questions for the students because they wanted to write what they know. Writing the responses to each one was based off of each students experience with topic, generally speaking. One of the students parents were attorneys, many of the students have seen crime shows and knew what was being asked from the based off of what they have seen. This piece of writing was a great way to distinguish and recognize the style of rhetoric we use and how it is embedded in our writing skills without even knowing it.

In the Reading of Rhetoric piece the best example that made sense to me was when they were talking about how rhetoric is about saying something at the right time and the identity of rhetoric. You wouldn’t throw out a random sentence that has nothing to do with murder for example in middle of a testimony to the jury such as “the victim was wearing red”. Rhetoric is about defining the identity of the writing piece and saying the right thing to the piece at the right time.

Navigating Genres

I really enjoyed this essay, as it opened my mind to a lot of things I already knew but now I feel are much more recognizable. The theme of this essay was genres and recognizing the different type of genres that are ostensible when writing. Genres can dictate the tone of different writings such as, as mentioned in the reading; Facebook statuses, job interviews, jokes, essays, etc. Genres are forms of different type of communication styles. You wouldn’t write a letter addressing the board of admissions in a friendly laid back manor saying “hey what’s up guys” you would write the letter from a professional stand point and giving yourself back up and credit on to why you should be accepted into their institutions. A part of the article that really stuck out to me was when Dirk says, “Miller is saying that all genres matter because they shape our everyday lives”. I find this quotation to be utterly true and I really like the example given about the website “The Onion”. I as well think The Onion is hilarious but if someone didn’t know the meaning and goal behind the newspaper there would obviously be some type of confusion.  Being a communication major tying in genres to our daily communication and how we are interpreting certain scenarios based on genres goes to show that we need to more competent in our way of communicating. 

About Me

Hi everyone!

My name is Sammi Beach and I am from Clovis California. This is my first quarter at Antioch University. I attended Santa Barbara City College for three years before transferring. I have lived in Isla Vista since I moved here and have fell absolutely in love with Santa Barbara and all of the people. Living in such an environmental awareness place I have developed a strong love and connection with the ocean. I would love to work for a non-profit organization guided towards specifically environmental awareness within the community. I feel so lucky that I have been able to attend school in such a beautiful place with a ton of opportunity. I am extremely excited to be attending Antioch University and I can't wait explore more of myself through this journey!