Rhetoric and Interpretation

1
Rhetoric and Interpretation

• Advanced Rhetorical Writing
• Matt Barton

2
The Value of Interpretation

• Learning to interpret works of literature and art
  can help us interpret things like ads, speeches,
  and terrorism.
• Rhetoric can put literary criticism to work at
  understanding everyday things that matter to us.

3
Rhetorical Interpretation

• Rhetorically interpreting a poem requires a
  consideration of
• the world it depicts
• the world it reflects
• the word its audiences reside in.
• Rhetoricians consider the circumstances of an
  objects creation and its reception over
  timeHistory matters.

4
Genre Literary Movements

• Works that depart from tradition are really
  arguments for a new definition of art or
  literature.
• Who gets to decide what is art and what is not?

5
Effect of Art

• By reinforcing or challenging values and
  beliefs, symbolic acts can influence attitudes
  towards a variety of crucial matters.

6
Keatsian Imperative

• New Criticism emphasizes disinterested
  interest in art and criticism.
• Dont read things into works only read things
  out of them.
• Truth of a work is found strictly in the work
  itself context completely irrelevant.
• Leads to a sort of civic detachment and
  selfishness.
• Literature ought to be instead equipment for
  living.

7
Interpreting Symbolic Acts

• Stockhausen 9/11 was the greatest work of art
  imaginable for the whole cosmos.
• The journalist in Hamburg completely ripped my
  statements out of a context, which he had not
  recorded in its entirety, to use it as a vile
  attack against my person and the Hamburg Music
  Festival. --Stockhausen

8
Terrorist Rhetoric

• If military strikes are designed to maximize the
  destruction of enemy resources, terrorist attacks
  are designed to maximize news coverage.
• Terrorists use our own media against us (we
  terrorize ourselves).
• The terrorists of 9/11 didnt get to control how
  others interpreted their act.

9
PC

• Political Correctness concerns an ideological
  vocabulary.
• Substitutes euphemisms for traditional terms to
  avoid offending some people.
• Police Officer vs. Policeman
• Learning Disability vs. Slow
• 40 BCE (Before Common Era) rather than 40 BC
  (Before Christ)

10
Doublespeak

• Doublespeak is evasive language, language that
  gives every appearance of imparting information
  without actually doing so.
• Rightsizing vs. Laying People Off
• Strategic Withdrawal vs. Retreating

11
Neutral Language

• Taking a stance against PC usually takes as a
  given that theres a neutral language
  available.
• Burke argues that terminologies are lenses
  through which we see the world.
• These lenses (or screens) serve to express and
  shape our valuation of matters even if we dont
  intend them to.

12
Screens

• Pro-Choice vs. Pro-Abortion
• Pro-Life vs. Anti-Choice
• Estate Tax vs. Death Tax
• Liberating Iraq vs. Occupying Iraq
• Freedom Fighters vs. Terrorists
• Sexual Orientation vs. Sexual Lifestyle

13
Youre Being Politically Correct

• Challenging someone with being PC means doing the
  following
• Unmasking supposedly neutral terms and showing
  them to be persuasive claims
• Setting up an opposition between a PC term and
  what it really says
• Accusing the person of having an agenda.

14
Debunking

• Its easy to fall into the trap of seeing
  everyone else as having an ideology.
• We all engage in rhetoric and struggle with
  competing interpretations of the world, right and
  wrong, and identity.