Nichols 1 Ashley Nichols ENC1102-12 Mrs. Pilcher 30 January 2012 The Dummy’s Guide to Correctly Using the Exciting Concepts of Rhetorical Analysis! When it comes to rhetorical analysis, there are many things involved in creating the bigger picture. There is an audience, genre, rhetoric, and rhetorical situation; each has their own sole purpose, while simultaneously being intertwined to serve another purpose as well. A rhetorical situation is best described by Lloyd F. Bitzer: “Rhetorical situation may be defined as a complex of persons, events, objects and relations presenting an actual or potential exigence…” (Bitzer 6). A rhetorical situation must have three factors in order to truly work as a ‘rhetorical’ situation. It needs an exigence, which is an issue that can be fixed or altered positively through speech. The second contributing factor to a rhetorical situation is the audience. The audience can’t just be a randomly chosen group of people; it must be people who will understand the exigence and be willing to be part of the change. “The rhetorical audience must be capable of serving as mediator of the change which the discourse functions to produce,” (Bitzer 8). The final piece to the rhetorical situation puzzle is the constraints, “made up of persons, events, objects, and relations which …have the power to constrain decision and action needed to modify the exigence,” (Bitzer 8). Separately each of these three crucial contributors serve different functions than they do in a rhetorical situation, where they are intertwined to specifically help modify the exigence of whatever situation is happening. Other important rays of the rhetorical analysis sun include things such as genre and rhetoric. A genre is different ways of expressing an idea; for example some genres of writing
Nichols 2 include fiction, poetry, research, websites, blogs, etc. When presenting a rhetorical analysis, it is important to understand how to utilize the genre. If the rhetorical analysis venue is an ad, the maker of this ad might need to know who they want to speak to, how they plan to portray whatever it is they are advertising, and the genre of media being used. Genres are very useful at reaching multiple audiences with the same ideas. Rhetoric has two main ingredients: everything is a text and every text has an argument. It is the art of using language correctly to persuade, entertain or argue a point to a specific audience. It also appeals to ethos, pathos, and logos, Aristotle’s definition of rhetoric. Ethos is author credibility, whether that person speaking or presenting information is trustworthy and legitimate. Pathos is the emotional appeal; it is something that will bring people into a presentation on a personal and understanding level. Logos is the logical appeal, the thing that makes you say “duh, of course that makes total sense.” Rhetoric also “alters reality through the creation of discourse” (Bitzer 3). Rhetoric is “situational…” and “always persuasive” (Bitzer 4). Rhetoric consists of the words being used to persuade some sort of audience of anything, but in the case of rhetorical analysis, it would be persuading them to modify and help change a certain exigence. An article, titled “‘Real Beauty’- Or Really Smart Marketing?” written by Rebecca Traister argues against Dove’s Real Beauty campaign, its validity, and their cellulite-reducing soap. The Real Beauty campaign was launched as an “effort to make beauty a source of confidence, not anxiety” (Dove). Dove made it their mission to go against the mainstream flow of the beauty market by telling women to be comfortable in their own skin as opposed to chiseling it away in order to look like a model. Traister is a staff writer for top publishers, such as Elle, the New York Times, and Vogue; so, it would seem that aside from her experience as a writer, she has also obtained a vast
Nichols 3 knowledge of the beauty market. It would seem that since she has written for both Elle and Vogue that she is in support of their companies and the messages they are sending to their women readers. Because of her vast knowledge and experience, her ethos allows readers to trust her. In her “‘Real Beauty’- Or Really Smart Marketing?” article, Traister makes it seem as if the message, or at least the method, of Doves Real Beauty campaign is just a ploy for money. Traister combats Dove by questioning: “why ask those [shapely] models to flog a cream that has zero health value and is just an expensive and temporary Band-Aid for a “problem” that the media has told us we have with our bodies” (Traister). Traister, although agreeing that Dove’s campaign is “refreshingly non-self-loathing,” she also agrees that “just like Doves’ ‘love your ass but not the fat on it’ campaign, much of this stuff prompts grim questions about whether it’s even possible to break the feel-bad cycle of the beauty industry” (Traister). Traister’s ability to empathize with the women to whom she is speaking to gives her both a strong pathos and logos edge to her article. Unfortunately the beauty industry today will always have an astronomical effect on women and their self-image, and Traister makes a very good observation that Dove isn’t entirely encouraging women to be comfortable in their own skin, “because no one wants to look at a cottage-cheesy ass.” Traister’s audience includes women and young girls that can understand her message about the beauty industry. She uses the internet blog as her medium, which is a way of quickly reaching people all over the internet community. She seems very opinionated and adamant about her take on Dove’s campaign, therefore the fact that she chose to use a blog as her source of writing will allow her to spread her message that much quicker.
Nichols 4 Traister’s article includes all of the aspects that make up a piece of rhetoric. It is a text, although online, and contains an argument against the validity of Dove’s campaign. She is using her credibility as a writer and member of the beauty industry to sway readers into seeing and potentially agreeing with her point of view that Dove is primarily out for money. The exigence of the article is whether or not Dove had pure intentions with using different sized women to encourage all women to feel more comfortable with who they are or whether this campaign was tainted as a smart marketing technique for self-conscious ladies. In the article “Barhopping with the Bud Girls,” by James Hibberd, a similar take on campaigning methods is used. In Dove’s campaign it was all about appealing to women of different sizes and telling them they are all beautiful in their own skin; in the barhopping article, Hibberd writes about how beer companies use sexy females and ‘cool’ guys to elicit their cheap alcohol to underage drinkers. Although each method of advertisement is different, they are both manipulating people to believe in their campaign and essentially purchase their product. James Hibberd is a staff writer at the Westword Weekly in Denver. He has an appeal to ethos in a sense that he is clearly a talented and experienced writer and that he was once a college student too, so he understands the exigence at hand. The emotional appeal, pathos, of his article is his adamancy of the dangers of underage and binge drinking. He uses MADD as an outside source to side with his argument and further prove how dangerous this is; he portrays the irresponsibility of beer companies and their selfishly sole desire to just sell more beer to anyone as opposed to preventing underage drinking. The logos, logical appeal, is quite plain to see. Underage drinking is extremely dangerous and well, obviously very illegal. Hibberd uses these appeals to not just get readers to side with him in a random argument, but to further portray the wrong-doings of beer companies against young college students.
Nichols 5 Hibberd does a great job of adequately presenting the rhetorical situation, according to Bitzer’s definition. He displays the exigence, the dangers and unethical acts of beer companies and their methods of advertisement, through his statement of: “That’s right, real people targeting real college beer drinkers at that crucial moment in their lives when they establish brand loyalty, using no other sales technique than old-fashioned peer pressure” (Hibberd). Hibberd couldn’t have more accurately stated how impressionable young college drinkers are, which further pushes the logical side of his case against beer companies. He is speaking to a very large audience with this article; he’s targeting parents, educating them on how real the dangers of college drinking is, he’s targeting beer companies and their unethical tactics at trying to make money no matter who may lose their lives, and mainly he’s targeting the college-age students and urging them to realize the traps that beer companies have set up for them. Hibberd uses the medium of online, and possibly print, article to reach more than the typical newspaper readers. His style of writing is rather informal, simply because he is very aware of whom he intends to be his audience; he wants the message to be as easy to digest as possible, therefore he uses a simple and understandable language. He uses Anheuser-Busch as his main company and basically goes in depth on their advertising techniques. The Bud Girls may “give away some free key chains and beers to the rowdy crowd, [but] they mostly distribute charm” (Hibberd). The AB company uses sexy and age-relatable women to provocatively elicit their beer, which to the men it would seem logical. The drunken and sex driven men see the women in their tight ‘uniforms’ and are basically willing to bend over backwards to get their attention; they would do anything, even drink the women’s brand of beer. AB knows the college market only too well and they play up any end, even the curves of women, to get their product to sell. Going further outside of just bars to sell
Nichols 6 more cheap beer is the cool faux frat boy. He doesn’t use his body as a walking billboard; he uses something much more deceptive: his charm. Frat boys can basically get any guy or girl to follow their lead, and in AB’s case, that is selling in bulk. Every frat party is looking for large quantities of beer for the cheapest price available, and that’s where the men sellers come in, they manipulate the buyer into a ‘better’ deal. I suppose the worst part of AB’s method is that they told Hibberd they make sure all buyers understand the importance of drinking responsibly, but as Hibberd puts it, “it doesn’t click, it doesn’t work” (Hibberd). He means that not many people would buy 100 cases of beer from a company lecturing them on the importance of safe drinking; they do what they need to sell more. In Hibberd’s “Barhopping with the Bud Girls” article, he uses the power of rhetoric to appeal to his audience in order to promote his message against beer companies and their unethical advertising methods. He manipulates ethos pathos and logos to strongly appeal to readers, not necessarily to convince them of the dangers, but simply to educate them of traps they most likely will fall into with beer companies. He uses specific examples to prove his point. The MADD advertisement displays pathos and logos in the exact way that Hibberd is trying to display them. Hibberd best and most effective example of pathos is the one used in his ending; a young frat member died from alcohol poisoning. Hibberd’s message is portrayed in this singular example: binge drinking, underage drinking, and any form of irresponsible drinking is dangerous and potentially fatal. Continuing on with the commercial-based theme, the Old Spice commercial presents the same rhetoric features as both the Traister and Hibberd articles. This commercial is a cunning medium that is trying to sell men’s body wash. The actor Isaiah Mustafa uses his sex appeal to
Nichols 7 directly speak to women about what a ‘real man’ should smell like; he uses the weapon of jealousy to speak to men about being a better man for their women. The exigence of this Old Spice commercial is whether or not it is important for a man to smell like a ‘real man,’ one who wears Old Spice, or not. The exigence and argument are presented in a silly informal presentation that gets the message across in a sarcastically passive-aggressive manner; the commercial is practically challenging the men to smell like a sexy Mustafa-type man. The Old Spice commercial’s argument is clearly displayed: smelling like an Old Spice man is much more desirable than the average smell. They appeal to ethos with using Mustafa, a famous athlete that clearly has experience with what women truly want in a man, or at least which smell they prefer. The emotional appeal of pathos exists in an undertone of whether or not the man is secure in his relationship with his women; Mustafa is comically challenging the women to seek out the better smelling man. Logos, the final rhetoric device, is used in the similar manner of pathos; logically women strive for what they want, and according to the Old Spice commercial if he doesn’t smell like Mustafa then he’s not the ‘real man’ ladies want. All three of these rhetorical situations deal with much more than just selling their products. They deal with how people will react to their commercials and whether or not those same people with want to buy whatever it is they are selling. Most commercials do deal with the rhetorical devices of ethos, pathos, and logos, but most of them are manipulating these instruments to get what they want. The three examples I used show how easily companies can beguile people into believing whatever it is they want, just by using a few simple rhetoric devices and knowing their audiences. The real exigence that is present in all commercials is the eagerness of people to quickly believe the companies without questioning why. Companies, such as the AB beer producers, are
Nichols 8 willing to spin lies and portray their products as harmless just sell a few cases of beer even if the buyers are underage drinkers. The same goes for Dove; they tell women that their product can transform cellulite into perfect skin when their soap just acts as a temporary fixer to a bigger problem at hand. Even silly and entertaining commercials like Old Spice use sexy Mustafa-like men to give the illusion that if men use their body wash, they too can have the sex appeal that Mustafa has. I guess the main problem is how easily people can fall into these advertising traps; every looks the best in their own skin and I suppose it takes looking at things from a different angle to see how wrong commercials are.
Nichols 9 Reflection Every aspect of a rhetorical situation and rhetoric is part of our daily lives, whether or not we pay attention to them. Newspapers, billboards, YouTube videos, websites, advertisements, and even people use these things to get their exigence across and get help on how to modify their situation. My paper touches on every piece that goes into making a rhetorical analysis-audience, genre, rhetoric, and rhetorical situation. My paper is a formal essay speaking to high school/college level students interested in expanding their rhetorical analysis knowledge. It begins by introducing all of the ingredients that go into correctly analyzing a piece of rhetoric; the clear definitions make it easier to grasp the concept of a rhetorical analysis and make it that much easier to repeat the ordeal. The exigence of my paper is having the ability to complete an analysis. I use the element of ethos in the fact that I am a college student with experience in rhetorical analysis; I am a student speaking directly to other students making it more understandable for the readers, being that we are all on the same intellectual level. Pathos is seen in my conclusion where I discuss how important it is to be able to recognize the rhetoric techniques being used in commercials and being able to not let them manipulate those who are educated enough to detect them. Logos is clearly read throughout my paper, whereas I am arguing on how important it is to know and understand these concepts, not just for protecting one’s wallet, but also for protecting one’s knowledge. These concepts can affect us several different ways, but it all depends on whether or not the audience that a specific media is trying to reach is educated on these ideas or not. The educated person is able to quickly identify how companies are manipulatively using rhetoric and allow themselves to see past the lies cunningly being presented. The uneducated person might be
Nichols 10 susceptible to believing whatever it is that a specific media is telling them. My paper is just reiterating how important it is to know and understand the dynamics of a rhetorical analysis. My personal experience with the concepts of rhetorical analysis has definitely changed how I view things. Commercials no longer have the same appeal that they used to; now instead of actually falling pretty to what they are selling, I just chuckle because this time they won’t hypothetically catch me. Even when I read things-articles, blogs, etc.- I always look for the exigence, what it is that the author is trying to persuade me to believe, and rhetoric. I can proudly say that I am educated in the ways of rhetoric and enjoy knit-picking things, especially advertisements, to see how well they use these concepts. My brief experience with all of these concepts gives me enough knowledge to help educate my peers on rhetorical analysis.
Nichols 11 Sources Bitzer, Lloyd F. "The Rhetorical Situation." Philosophy and Rhetoric 1.1 (1968): 1-14. JSTOR. Web. 24 Sept. 2011. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40236733 Dove. "The Dove速 Campaign for Real Beauty." Dove速 Skin Care, Hair Care, Body Cleansers, Lotions & Beauty Tips. Unilever. Web. 19 Jan. 2012. <http://www.dove.us/SocialMission/campaign-for-real-beauty.aspx>. Traister, Rebecca. ""Real Beauty"--Or Really Smart Marketing?" Good Reasons with Contemporary Arguments. By Lester Faigley and Jack Selzer. 5th ed. Boston: Pearson, 2012. 534-38. Print. Hibberd, James. "Barhopping with the Bud Girls." Good Reasons with Contemporary Arguments. By Lester Faigley and Jack Selzer. 5th ed. Boston: Pearson, 2012. 558-61. Print