Rhetorical Criticism with Dr. Elif Guler

Due by the class period on Friday, February 26th

Based on your reading and our class discussions of metaphor criticism, blog about the following two prompts.

1) Find an artifact that either…

-presents a metaphor (e.g., “Argument is War” presented through lines in a film dialogue, such as “He attacked my argument”, “I demolished her argument”, “She won the argument”, “I shot his argument down”);

-or serves entirely as a metaphor (e.g., the plot line of a sci-fi TV show actually serving as a metaphor for a certain group’s everyday life).

Demonstrate how this artifact either presents a certain metaphor (for example, equating argument to war or dance or something else–but you should find an artifact with a different metaphor) OR serves as a metaphor itself, by providing at least a few (3 or so) brief textual examples (from the verbal and visual details presented in the artifact).

2) What is the relationship between ideological criticism and metaphor criticism? Discuss at least in a few sentences.

Due by the class period on Friday, February 12th

Based on your reading and our class discussions of generic criticism, find at least two artifacts that you feel might comprise of a genre (generic description) or one particular artifact to assess whether it fits in an existing genre (generic participation) or one artifact that appears to be part of a genre but might digress from it in interesting ways, etc (generic application). In other words, the artifacts should be linked in such a way that you can make a case for an emerging genre or whether the artifact participates in an existing genre or not. Using the points from our class discussion, perform a short generic criticism of your artifact(s): generic description, generic participation, or generic application. Don’t forget to name the genre you’ve pinpointed for your artifact/s. An example is “wedding-themed comedies”; but you should produce a name of your own that may be fitting. You may want to use the observation sheet delivered in class to analyze each artifact and then identify the commonalities between the artifacts OR identify the qualities that make an artifact participate in a genre OR qualities that make it digress from an existing genre, etc (post some of your notes here). Finally make a list of the organizing principles for your analysis (see the sample essays in the textbook to get ideas for generating possible organizing principles in a generic analysis).

Due by the class period on Friday, February 5th

For your first formal critical essay in our class, you will use the rhetorical method of Neo-Aristotelian criticism to discover and write about the available means of persuasion in a speech of your choice. (Follow our class meetings on steps for writing a Neo-Aristotelian criticism.) Locate a speech for your analysis. You are free to locate a speech from any media, and the speech can be either a fiction or nonfiction one. For example, the speech can be an actual presidential address which can help you make a case about a certain type of leadership rhetoric and its possible effect on audiences. Or you can find a movie, a TV program, or another mediated text that features the delivery of a speech and analyze it in relation to a certain issue (identity, race, gender, morality, or another everyday exigency). Feel free to discuss your ideas with me inside or outside of the class period. In your Post #3, describe the rhetorical situation (rhetor, audience, topic, purpose, and context) of your selected artifact (2-3 paragraphs); the more details you can provide to inform us about your selected artifact, the better. We will build on this posting during our rhetoric lab on Friday (so your timely posting is essential).