Hold That Thought!

Dear 201 Bloggers---

I, your humble and imperfect instructor, have committed a fatal rhetorical error: I have given you a blog prompt that ignores kairos! Shame on me. Mea culpa. I would like to remedy that error now*.

I asked you, for this week, to consider form and genre and its inherent rhetorical power---

DURING AN ELECTION?!

Stop, please. Hold that thought. Genre will still be there for us to consider next week (week 11).

For THIS week (week 10), please blog about your response to and thoughts about the election. All are welcome to post, but all are also encouraged to read and respond.

All best,
Christine


*Kudos for revision!

On Form and Genre

In class on Thursday, I briefly introduced George Campbell’s definition of rhetoric, which we will discuss in greater detail next week:

Rhetoric is that art or talent by which discourse is adapted to its end. The four ends of discourse are to enlighten the understanding, please the imagination, move the passion, and influence the will.

~The Philosophy of Rhetoric, 1776

Campbell’s definition, like understanding the full extent of Aristotle’s ‘available means,’ points to the complexity of crafting an effective rhetorical appeal. We’ve already discussed the value of atechnic and entechnic pistis (support, or proof); the centrality of ethics in manipulating language to achieve a desired outcome; the value of rhetorical figure (tropes and schemes) in the marriage of sound and sense; the importance of audience and maintaining clarity of purpose; and the ‘situatedness,’ including awareness of expectations and conventions, of any rhetorical act. Now is the time to take that analysis one step further: now is the time to consider genre and form.

While it is not entirely correct to use the terms genre and form synonymously, form and genre are related in that both give shape to a text and are, themselves, rhetorical.

The important thing to understand about genre and form is that they are expressions of thought rather than impositions on thought; they are organized systems of conventions, and in this may be considered cultural artifacts, and each performs a unique function. They are not, as is often presumed, prescriptive, but tools at your disposal; in other words, once you understand a form, or genre, you—as author/composer—engage it. You harness its rhetorical power as an 'available means.'

Still—and this is where it gets tricky—you must consider kairos when considering form and genre: what is the most appropriate expression, relative to your purpose, for your audience at a particular moment? In this, we begin to see that form is not imposed on thought but, in Edward Hirsch’s words, a significant “technical accomplishment.” As the poet mark Strand explains, forms are not comprised of “cold and arbitrary rules, imposed to close out readers rather than include them [. . .] form is not abstract, but human.” This is an idea we will spend more time with in the coming weeks.

For now, it is useful enough to think about form and genre as we’ve seen it thus far this semester: the candidates’ uses of rhetorical tropes and schemes to affect their appeals; the evolution (devolution?) of presidential campaign ads from 1952 to those associated with the present election cycle; and Ellison’s brilliant use of symbolism and surrealism available to him through the genre of fiction to make cogent arguments about identity, race, freedom, and democracy.

Taking the time to consider genre as an important rhetorical element revisits the idea presented by Samuel Johnson, channeling the poet Horace, in his 1765 Preface to The Plays of William Shakespeare that the writer’s purpose is to “instruct and delight” to “combine education (especially moral instruction) with pleasure.”

Week 10: Consider This . . .

Consider FORM and GENRE

Vis-à-vis our recent class discussions and the above class notes, this week’s blog asks that you think critically about form and genre as a rhetorical ‘means.’* Specifically, I would like you to choose any text in any form that has moved you and consider its form or genre from a rhetorical perspective. What does the form/genre lend to its impact or appeal? How does genre affect its rhetorical efficacy, its meaning? Why is the form an appropriate expression of its meaning?

Please note that in the selection of your example, ‘text’ may be considered broadly to include any form that makes a rhetorical statement, i.e. movies, music, poetry, photography, painting, sculpture, speeches, ads, a work of fiction, drama, a skit, a nonfiction essay . . . an animated series or short?—

In brief, please select a favorite or memorable movie, song, poem, book, painting, etc. and examine its form or genre in relation to its rhetorical appeal.

For example, in Invisible Man^ Ellison uses surrealism, flashback, and symbolism—available to him through the genre of fiction—to present and lend strength to his arguments. It allows him to 'play' with his argument, present it through an artistic medium and make a powerful, pathetic appeal. His argument would look very different if it were a speech or an academic argument and would probably favor a more explicitly logical approach. In other words, genre itself makes an argument and works in tandem with content to achieve a particular rhetorical objective.

So think about a time when you have been, in George Campbell’s language, enlightened, pleased, moved, or influenced by a text . . . and then consider what form or genre had to do with your reaction.

NOTES:

*This is, by any measure, a challenging assignment. I am willing to allow additional time, beyond our usual Tuesday-by-midnight deadline, for its completion; this will also give us the opportunity to discuss it in class on Tuesday, should you so desire.

^I have—with apologies—been delinquent in posting our class notes from our discussion of Invisible Man, so please refer to your notes from class to remind you of our collective observations and the arguments we teased out of the novel.

A little something extra . . .

Given the context of yesterday's discussion of Jones and his (and our) arguments about the convergence of popular culture and politics, I thought you might be interested in the following Jill Serjeant article (via Reuters):

Stone says no malice intended in "W."

Oliver Stone's film portrait of President George W. Bush was always going to be controversial given the director's liberal leanings.

So Stone decided to open "W." in U.S. theaters less than three weeks before Americans select their next president -- a calculated move aimed at prodding voters to think about the past eight years and the future. [More . . .]

The political becomes popular; the popular becomes political . . .
an interesting rhetorical dynamic, indeed.

Week 7: Consider This . . .

The convergence of popular culture and politics offers a new, compelling approach to understanding and advancing public arguments. For this week's blog, then, please reflect on the implications of Jones' observations, and our class discussion, regarding the convergence of these two public discursive spheres. Specifically,

What is gained or lost in merging politics and popular culture?

and/or

Does the convergence of politics and popular culture support or undermine democracy? How so?

Please don't feel limited by these questions: you may address them explicitly or implicitly, in whole or in part, in your post as you see fit. The questions are only provided to prompt, guide, and frame your thoughts.


Those who are posting this week, please complete your posts by midnight Tuesday, October 14th; all others have until midnight Saturday, October 18th to respond.

Politics and Pop Culture

As we discussed in class today, Jones' "Forums for Citizenship in Popular Culture" raises several interesting questions about the convergence of politics and popular culture, revealing, ultimately, that civic engagement largely depends on public trust; how that trust is established, or violated, is particularly intriguing when the notion of the informed citizen participant is complicated by competing assumptions, interests, and expectations. Jones argues, and you observed, that while popular culture provides an access point for engaging political discourse, the assumptions and types of appeals traditionally ascribed to each discursive realm may differ. For example, Aristotle notes in the Politics that "the law is reason unaffected by desire"(III.1287a32)--quoted in popular culture in the Reese Witherspoon film Legally Blonde as "The law is reason free from passion"; likewise, we observed (vis-a-vis Jones' argument) that politics is concerned with governance and governance ostensibly relies on logos/logical appeals in making and negotiating policy (text)and in advancing public arguments. By contrast, popular culture is comprised of and concerned with audience; it relies primarily on pathos and multifaceted pathetic appeals.

These distinctions often hold . . . until, that is, a scandal, a heated or evocative issue, or an election campaign emerges. Presidential campaigning, as we have seen in examining historical and current campaign ads, is one unique site where we see the explicit convergence of the political and the popular. This seems to suggest that the popular is more persuasive, keeping in mind the intellectual/rhetorical distinction between argument and persuasion we read in Lunsford, a notion worthy of further investigation.

In the vernacular of our class, this convergence of politics and popular culture shifts the rhetorical situation and reframes the way we experience and understand whatever it is at stake, whatever public argument is being advanced or challenged. Further, the assumptons that ground the political often differ from those which ground the popular, which Jones illustrates nicely through his contrastive examples from This Week with Sam Donaldson & Cokie Roberts and Bill Maher's Politically Incorrect and their respective analyses of the Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky scandal.

In understanding the rhetorical significance of the political and the popular, then, it is important to explore the implications for bringing together the popular and the political . . . for governance and for public trust, for civic participation and for democracy.

Week 6: Consider This . . .

We have spent the last several weeks immersing ourselves in rhetorical theory while examining a variety of texts for their rhetorical value and efficacy. As we now begin to shift from foundational or structural rhetoric, if you will, to the rhetorics of style and form, now is a good time to reflect on the process of rhetorical analysis. For this week's blogs, then, please answer this:

What, in your opinion and experience, is gained through rhetorical analysis? Why do it? Does it offer more than intellectual exercise or not?

Please try to offer a specific example or two to illustrate your point, as we have done in class when reviewing the different stump speeches, quotations, historical campaign ads, et al. texts.

Responders, please consider what our posters have to offer, and see if you agree, disagree, or can expand on their answers---or feel free to offer your own unique perspective.