Jack Selzer Penn State University

CHAPTER

10

Rhetorical Analysis: Understanding How Texts Persuade Readers

jack Selzer

Penn State University

Suppose you want to understand better some piece of writing that you are interested in or find important. Maybe it is an environmental impact statement, or a piece of fiction set during World War II, or a magazine article about the death penalty, or a proposal under consideration by the local school board, or even a routine thing that you see on a daily basis, such as the comics or advertisements in your local newspaper. The previous cha~ ters in this book have given you several approaches for analyzing such documents. But especially if those pieces of writing have a persuasive intent, especially if (in other words) they have designs on your beliefs and attitudes (and nearly all writing does have that purpose, to some extent), the activity known as rhetorical analysis can offer you additional perspective and understanding. This chapter is designed to give you a good understanding of the key concepts involved in rhetorical analysis and to make you comfortable conducting instructive rhetorical analyses on your own.

SOME BASIC CONCEPTS

let's begin with some basic terms and concepts, beginning with the phrase rhetorical analysis itself.

There is no generally accepted definition of rhetorical analysis (or rhetorical criticism, as it is also called), probably because there is really no generally accepted definition of rhetoric. The various people who have written about rhetorical analysis (see the list of Further Readings at the end of

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this chapter) inevitably differ on its meaning because they hold to different ideas about the nature of their subject To the ge neral public rhetoric most commonly seems to denote highly ornamental or deceptive or even manipulative speech or writing: "That politician is just using a bunch of rhetoric,'' you hear people say; or, "the rhetoric of that advertisement is highly deceptive." But the term rhetoric ls also commonly used as a synonym for speaking or writing in general or for any other kind of communication: "Silent Spring is one of the most influential pieces of environmental rhetoric ever written," someone might say. As an academic subject (and that gets at another important meaning of the term, for rhetoric has a long association with education-Aristotle wrote an educational treatise On Rhetoric, for example), the word Is often associated with the means of producing effective discursive acts. Rhetoric textbooks are usually how?to books therefore-advice manuals for how to produce effective pieces of communication: "the art of discovering In any given case the available means of persuasion" (as Aristotle put it). But in recent years rhetoric has also taken on an interpretive function; rhetoric has come to be used not just as a means of producing effective communications, but also as a way of understanding communica? tion.1 In s hort, rhetoric can be understood u both a productive and inter? predve enterprise: "the study of language-and the study of how to use it.''

Aristotle's emphasis on pe rsuasion, evident In the quotation from him that I just offered, has been Influential in the history of rhetoric. And so it is now common to understand rhetoric as fundamentally Involved In the study of persuasion. But "persuasion" as used here must be persuasion very broadly defined, because recently the realm of rhetoric has come to include a great deal of territory-written and oral language used to persuade, to be sure. but also a great many other kinds of communications that have general designs on people's values and actions, attitudes and beliefs. Speeches and writing usually have such persuasive designs, and so rhetoricians attempt to unde rstand how to produce effective acts of verbal and written persuasion. By extension, rhetorical analyst. or rhetorical

'Jeffrey Walker of Emory University. responding to an earlier draft of thi~ essay, oflered thRJCAL ANALYSIS

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criticism can be understood as an effort to understand how people within specific social situations aUempt to lnftuence others through language.

But not Just through language: Rhetoricians today attempt to understand better every ~ind of important symboli c action-speeches and articles, yes. but also ardute(:ture (isn't it clea~ that the U.S. Ca pitol Building in Washing. tor.' ma.~es an argu~cnt?), movtes, and television shows (doesn't "Ally McBeal_offer an lmphc?t argument abo ut the appro priate conduct of young profess_tonal women? doesn't "Friend s'' have designs on viewers' values and attitudes?), memorials (don't the AIDS quilt and the Vie tnam Ve terans Memorial make arguments about AIDS and about our national understand? ing of the Vietnam war?), as well as visual art, Web sites, advertisements photos ~.nd other Ima ges, dance, popular songs, and so forth . (Anne franci; Wysocki s chapter In this book attends to visual rhetoric, and Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen ( 1996), Jo hn Berger ( 1972). Alan Trachtenberg (1989), Charles Kostelnick and David Ro berts (1998), and any number of oth? ers have also directed people on how to analyze visual images.) Rece ntly a grou~ of scholars together demonstrated that even physical bodies of vari? ous J..-mds make arguments too-through hair sty les, clothing, musculature. make up, prosthetics, and piercings of various kinds (see Selzer and Crowley's, 1999, Rhetorical Bodies). Doesn't a woman who undertakes cosmetic surgery in order to appear like a living Barbie doll (as a young wo man named Cindy Jackson has recently done2) embody arguments about the im? portance to our culture of a particular version of beauty?

Rhetorical analysis as it is discussed in this chapter is applicable to all these pers uasiv~ uses of symbolic words and acts (although 1 deal here mainly with w~ttten text~ in line with the central focus of this book). Through r~etonc~l analysis, people strive to unde rstand better how particular rhetoncal eptsodes are persuasive. They get a better sense of the values and beliefs and attitudes that are conveyed In specific rhetorical moments. It might be helpful to think of rhetorical analysis as a kind of c:rldcal reading: Whereas "normal" (i.e., "uncritical~ or "reactive") reading Involves experiencing first-hand a speech or text or TV show or advertise? ment ~nd the1_1 r~acting (or not reacting) to it, critical reading-rhetorical analys1s, that 1s-mvolvcs studying carefully some kind of symbolic action, o~en after the fact of Its delivery and irrespective of whether it was actually d11e~ted to you or not, so that you might understand it better and apprec iate Its_tactlcs. '!'he result is a heightened awareness of the message under ~hetoncal consideration, and a n appreciation for the ways people manipu? ate language and other symbols for persuasive purposes. Although norlhal~y people read as a member of a speaker's or writer's intended or actual audience and as a person very interested in the subject at hand when they read rhetorically they may or may not be a member of the a~dience and

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