Modern Rhetorical Criticism

Roderick P Hart, Suzanne M. Daughton, Rebecca Lavally

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351788458
• Edition: 4
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Communication Studies
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

A comprehensive and up-to-date introduction to the analysis of public rhetoric, Modern Rhetorical Criticism teaches readers how to examine and interpret rhetorical situations, ideas, arguments, structure, and style. The text covers a wide range of critical techniques, from cultural and dramatistic analysis to feminist and Marxist approaches. A wealth of original criticism demonstrates how to analyze such diverse forms as junk mail, campaign speeches, and popular entertainment, as well as literature. This long-awaited revision offers specific guidance on crafting analytic essays, and contains new coverage of legacy as well as new media, identity criticism, and post-colonial and decolonial criticism. The fourth edition also offers additional resources online for instructors and students.

Unit II
General Forms of Criticism

CHAPTER 3 Analyzing Situations

CHAPTER 4 Analyzing Ideas

CHAPTER 5 Analyzing Argument

CHAPTER 6 Analyzing Form

CHAPTER 7 Analyzing Syntax and Imagery

CHAPTER 8 Analyzing Word Choice

CHAPTER 9 Analyzing Media

Chapter 3
Analyzing Situations

I wish I could sing! I speak to you as an American Jew. As Americans we share the profound concern of millions of people about the shame and disgrace of inequality and injustice which make a mockery of the great American idea. As Jews we bring to [this] great demonstration, in which thousands of us proudly participate, a two-fold experience—one of the spirit and one of our history.

In the realm of the spirit, our fathers taught us thousands of years ago that when God created man, he created him as everybody’s neighbor. “Neighbor” is not a geographic term; it is a moral concept. It means our collective responsibility for the preservation of man’s dignity and integrity.

From our Jewish historic experience of three and a half thousand years we say: Our ancient history began with slavery and the yearning for freedom. During the Middle Ages my people lived for a thousand years in the ghettos of Europe. Our modern history begins with a proclamation of emancipation.

It is for these reasons that it is not merely sympathy and compassion for the black people of America that motivates us. It is above all and beyond all such sympathies and emotions a sense of complete identification and solidarity born of our own historic experience.

Friends, when I was […] in the Jewish community in Berlin under the Hitler regime, I learned many things. The most important thing that I learned in my life, and under those tragic circumstances, is that bigotry and hatred are not the most urgent problem. The most urgent, the most disgraceful, the most shameful, and the most tragic problem is silence. A great people which had created a great civilization had become a nation of silent onlookers. They remained silent in the face of hate, in the face of brutality, and in the face of mass murder.

America must not become a nation of onlookers. America must not remain silent—not merely black America, but all of America. It must speak up and act from the President down to the humblest of us, and not for the sake of the Negro, not for the sake of the black community, but for the sake of the image, [the dream], the idea, and the aspiration of America itself.

Our children, yours and mine, in every school across the land, every morning pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States and to the Republic for which it stands, and then they, the children, speak fervently and innocently of this land as the land of “liberty and justice for all.”

The time, I believe, has come for us to work together, for it is not enough to hope together—for it is not enough to pray together— to work together, that this children’s oath—pronounced every morning from Maine to California, from North and South—that this oath will become a glorious, unshakable reality in a morally renewed and united America. Thank you.

Who gave this speech? Was it a speech and not an essay? If a speech, when and where was it given? Was the audience wealthy, middle-class, or poor? Were they Jewish like the speaker or more diverse? How did they feel about the topic? What can we tell about the speaker’s education, age, gender, or occupation?

These questions may seem bizarre since we rarely deal with unknown messages. Most texts come to us already packaged and labeled. We confront them in their natural habitats, at specific times and places. If we ever did confront a mystery message, there is a decent chance we could find its facsimile on the Web.

This chapter invites you to become your own search engine. We will see that all messages emanate from unique situations and that they do something special. We will see that when a speaker, audience, and message come together somewhere, that unique configuration of factors makes its own statement.

Criticism can be thought of as a kind of guessing game, a search for a text’s rhetorical shadows. For example, how do we know that the text above was, in fact, a speech? There are several clues. It would have been presumptuous, after all, for a writer to type the first sentence since it implies a continuing dialogue with others. While writers sometimes start in the middle of things, they usually give readers a clue or two. But someone talking to a live audience might expect them to fill in the missing references, especially if they had just shared a musical experience (which seems to be the case here).

Also, the text’s language seems too staccato for written composition. The sentences are short—simple and declarative—with few embedded clauses. The speaker addresses the audience directly (“we share,” “our fathers taught us”) but also uses formal direct address (“Friends, …”), which would have been off-putting in private correspondence. The message could be a newspaper editorial, but the speaker thanks the audience for their attention, a hint that people are gathered together somewhere. And so we have a speech.

A contemporary speech? Possibly, although there is none of today’s fast-paced, hard-nosed talk here, no media personalities or recent legislation mentioned. Instead, the speech seems to be a beginning (“The time … has come”). We hear of plans being made, not victories savored. Individuals are turned into a collective (“our children, yours and mine”), a hint that speaker and audience shared certain experiences.

What else do we have? We have singing, Jews, Blacks, collective responsibility, repudiation of silence, World War II, and, interestingly, the Emancipation Proclamation. The speech seems to ignore local conditions, reaching out to a national constituency (“from Maine to California”). We hear, in short, the language of the 1960s, a time when even political talk sounded vaguely spiritual. We also hear the sound of gospel-singing (the famed Mahalia Jackson preceded our speaker to the podium) and of souls being saved (Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke just after). The place: Washington, D.C. The scene: The Lincoln Memorial. The audience: Some 200,000 civil rights marchers. The date: August 28, 1963.

And our speaker? A male, no doubt, for few women addressed such large crowds at that time. The act of speaking at a massive demonstration was an outward sign of power, a sign not accorded to women by the early civil rights establishment. We hear male forcefulness here (e.g., “I speak to you as an American Jew”) and a kind of gentle paternalism (“‘Neighbor’ is not a geographic term; it is a moral concept”). We are exposed to the long view (“During the Middle Ages my people …”), suggesting an older speaker.

Finally, even though the phrase “a rabbi” has been removed from the first line of the fifth paragraph, the speaker signals his occupation with his scholarly distinctions (“not for the sake of the black community, but for the sake of …”) and his spiritual exhortations (“a glorious, unshakable reality in a morally renewed and united America”). The speaker was Rabbi Joachim Prinz, then national president of the American Jewish Congress and one of several speakers who shared the platform with Dr. King on that historic day in 1963.¹

So our critical work is done. But was it worth it? Would it not have been easier simply to look up the required information? Perhaps, but then we would have missed the chance to explain how we knew the differences between today’s and yesterday’s speech, between male and female speech, between religious and secular speech, between private and public speech, between older and younger speech, between formal and informal speech, between speech and non-speech.

In this chapter, we will see that most messages bear the imprints of the social conditions producing them. Rhetoric is a situated art that can only be understood when text and context are considered simultaneously. Despite the attractions of the Internet, that is, we will see that the critic’s best reference source is his or her own library of textual knowledge. Rhetorical criticism helps us discover how we know what we know.

The Meanings of Speech-Acts

A basic fact about speaking often goes unnoticed: It is an activity. By addressing another, a speaker both says something and does something. Many critics miss this “doing” function but daily life highlights its importance: Despite his gift for storytelling, for example, a guest overstays his welcome at a party; despite her good intentions, a young executive is fired for sharing classified information with a colleague in a public restaurant; despite their affability, a married couple insults their new neighbors by greeting them with a wave instead of an extended conversation. In each of these cases, the messages exchanged were innocent enough, but matters of place, time, and relationship undid them.

Philosopher J. L. Austin was intrigued by these speech-acts, noting that this “extra” dimension of persuasion (what he calls its “performative” character) can be especially powerful.² If said in the right context, for example, “I do” both communicates a loving sentiment and gets one married! The critic is therefore wise to examine what a text is doing before attempting any textual analysis.

Consider, for example, the furor aroused when a physician published a brief column in the illustrious Journal of the American Medical Association. The piece was titled “It’s Over, Debbie” and vividly detailed a case of euthanasia performed by the author-doctor. Michael Hyde has analyzed this letter, arguing that its importance lay not in what was said but in its having been published.³ Many doctors have performed mercy killings but few acknowledged doing so and fewer still did so in print. As a result, “It’s Over, Debbie” inflamed the medical community, including physicians who had never read the article.

Because rhetoric “acts” as well as “says,” it always contains implicit understandings.⁴ Deciding to communicate with someone else means at least these things:

1. The speaker feels something is wrong. This wrong thing may not be a calamity but even a friendly greeting to a passerby ...