Group One
Based on her study of the communications strategies of the Great Smoky Mountain Association, Elizabeth Giddens has developed a theory of the GSMA’s four rhetorical strategies for biodiversity receptiveness and awareness that she sees reflected in all of their publications:
- providing tools to ensure a good visit/read
- interpreting biodiversity
- balancing negative and positive messages
- linking cultural and natural history.
- http://www.thegreatsmokymountains.org/about_us
- http://www.nrdc.org
- http://www.nps.gov/index.htm
- http://www.wwf.org
- http://www.bp.com
Groups Two and Three
Let’s put Kinneavy or Ong into deeper conversation with film trailers. By their theories, how do these trailers persuade? Pick one trailer set to view and re-view.
Mary Poppins, Scary Mary, Titanic, Scary Titanic
Windfall, Crude
11th Hour, Food Inc.
- Try mapping for encoder, decoder, signal, reality, i.e., discursive aim.
- Differences between intended and implied audiences?
- What role(s) are we being called on to play in the original? In the recut?
- How can we determine the writer/creator's "voice" in the original? Recut?
- How are we being set up (or empowered) to respond?
- Are we a sympathetic audience, distant, intimate, something else? Does that change over the course of the trailer?
- Are the trailers artistic or realistic? Aesthetic or functional? Both at once? Is it possible to make these distinctions?
Group Four
Examine the BP cleanup advertisements that ran as the full back page of the Wall Street Journal in 2010. These occurred in a series. Examine them together and apart, looking especially for signs of a progression of ideas.
- Deliberative, epideictic, forensic?
- Discursive aim on Kinneavy’s scheme?
- How do the key elements work together, within ads and between ads?
- Implied and intended audiences?
- Possible claims or assumptions we may take for granted that another reader (or culture or group of readers) may not?
- Possible interpretations or misinterpretations of these claims? Terms or assumptions that need to be unpacked?
Groups Five and Six
Examine more closely “The Plan That Saved the Planet” article distributed in Tuesday’s class. Compare it to Adrienne Rich’s commencement speech introduction (Example One) in Killingsworth’s chapter on “Rhetorical Situation.”
- Deliberative, epideictic, forensic?
- Discursive aim on Kinneavy’s scheme?
- Implied and intended audiences?
- Distanced audience or intimate? Expert or nonexpert?
- Role of time?
- Possible claims or assumptions we may take for granted that another reader (or culture or group of readers) may not?
- Possible interpretations or misinterpretations of these claims? Terms or assumptions that need to be unpacked?
Here are the thoughts from our group (Lacey, Kae, Rebekah):
ReplyDeleteWe read the Newsweek article by Al Gore, and came to the conclusion that it was both deliberative and epideictic. It asks community to reconsider a long-held view and persuades the reader to take action. It has elements of being epideictic due to the emotional appeals and reinforcing a sense of community and communal responsibility. The audience is constructed as rather intimate and familiar - the rhetoric focuses on "we" rather than "you" or "I."
One thing that we noticed was the major point could easily be misinterpreted. It is possible to misinterpret this article as suggesting the solution is easy: in reality, Gore is not saying that the problem is easy to solve, rather that the decision to solve the problem is easy as the clearly moral solution.
We compared the article to Adrienne Rich's speech to a women's college in Killingsworth's article. Both Rich and Gore propose two parts in the rhetoric – they group the audience into two groups, and construct those groups so that they, as the author are a part of both groups.
The last quote (Kenneth Burke) clearly summarizes the rhetorical aims of Gore’s article. Gore identifies with his audience as he convinces the audience that they share responsibility for the problem. Gore’s most persuasive element is that he comes to his audience as a storyteller and moral guide, as someone who shares community values with his audience.
Megan, Kyla, Zayne
ReplyDeleteEncoder- 11th Hour—environmentalists who have spent immense time researching the future generations and the environment in which they will inhabit.
Decoder—current generation who has expected instant answers, recourses…
The audiences in which each of these documentaries is designed for (implied and intended) are aimed at people in our everyday society, as well as even being directed towards those who have the resources to change the problems being presented.
Each of the documentaries empowers all audiences to respond to a world in which our time is depleting due to the pollution that our habits have created. In 11th hour, the narrator boldly declares that [we] the current generation has the power to change minor everyday occurrences to increase a safe environment for future generations.
Due to the personal nature of the situations and issues—the direction in which the producer intends the audience is an extremely sympathetic and intimate people.
In each of the documentaries the value of the issues presented are existing problems society encounters throughout daily behavior. The ways in which the issues are presented reestablishes the relationship and position in which common people understand serious issues and uncertainty of the environment’s safety and more personally-- what we are consuming. The implied and distant audience is the future generations to come that will likely live with the problems today’s generations is currently creating. The intended audiences for both documentaries include present generations who are given the motivation to make a change.
Group 4.
ReplyDeleteWe were in charge of analyzing the BP ads found in the Wall Street Journal. We found the Ong quote on the first page which warns about the difference between what an author says they are trying to do with a text within the piece, and what the text actually accomplishes, most useful in understanding the ads.
The BP ads were in response to the massive oil spill in the gulf and the massive amount negative press they recieved. Throughout the ads BP's stated, "This should never have happened, We take full responsibility for the cleanup, We will make this right." So if we take BP's word, these ads are for showing the public how much how much BP is doing in order to clean up the spill. But, Ong would say that we shouldn't take their word.
Lets look at the things they aren't saying and what effect those might have on readers. Notice BP says, "This should never have happened," instead of, "We should never have let this happen." They write, "We take full responsibility for the cleanup," rather than, "We take full reponsibility for the spill." By never taking the blame for the spill itself, they attempt to paint themselves as the responsible boy who cleans up his classmates' mess even though he didn't make it. Their words paint the spill as if it was an unavoidable natural disaster rather than a mistake caused by human error.
Their hope is that people will eventually stop associating them with the spill, and eventually only think of them having to do with the cleanup. With these ads, they become a green, company which is taking on the Herculean task of cleaning the gulf of their own volition rather than a company doing what anyone would expect: cleaning up their own mess.
Group 3
ReplyDeleteElizabeth Masih, Kreigh Carlton, Tim Mattingly
In Kenneth Burke’s A Rhetoric of Motives, persuasion is presented as a rhetorical tool in which the audience can be persuaded through “share traditions, experiences, and values, all embodied in their shared language”. Even with the language barrier that is seen in the movie “Crude”, the audience can relate without the message being deliberate. “Crude” shows the audience sick families, destroyed homes, and visual evidence against the Texaco Oil Company. The intended audience feels sympathy as well as intimacy in “Crude” and “Windfall” through the families that are in despair and effected by disease. In these short movie trailers the creator wants the audience to see the strong aesthetics that are relatable. The living room that has the repeatedly flashing and the noise of the windmill through the window in “Windfall” shows an everyday part of the audience’s life, a living room. The invasion of one’s home could strike a chord in the values, such as privacy, in the audience. The implied and ideal audiences that are talked about in Killingsworth’s article must decide whether they will “accept the mask” that the creators of both movies are showing them. Using the analysis our group conducted, the trailers caused sympathy to causes and images that were not fully connected to us, except through the shared values. The ideal audiences are willing to accept the mask through the “identification” that Burke speaks about.
The power of persuasion does not lie in a deliberate voice or images, but in simply getting the audience to identify with what it means to have one’s way of life disrupted. The audience needs to understand how they, themselves, would feel if what was happening in the movie actually happened in their own lives. Burke and Killingsworth's ideas work off of each other. Burke explains that the viewer needs to be persuaded to identify with the characters, while Killingsworth says to accept a mask in which with to identify.
Kellin Miller, Dipti Patel, and Kimberly Cheung
ReplyDeleteOur group was asked to examine “The Plan That Saved The Planet” by Al Gore, as well as the speech by Adrienne Rich within Killingworth’s chapter on Rhetorical situations. After reading these and looking at them as a pair we were struck by how important audience is to these writers. In Gores article, he uses the aspect of time by putting his audience in the future in order to give them the choice as to how they wish to be several years from now. This makes his deliberative scheme clear in that he is attempting to persuade his audience to make a change by creating a choice, as well as hope for the future. In Rich’s speech, she uses audience as a way to bring those she is talking to together. She mentions several times who she is and who the students are. We found that the quote on page 28 of Killingsworth seems to fit well with Gore’s article, because it explains that an author uses imagery in order to attract the audience. This is done by Gore when he portrays his two different futures. The quote by Kenneth Burke from A Rhetoric of Motives seems to apply to Rich’s speech in that Rich attempts to draw her audience in by discussing their shared traditions, values, and experiences.