This is a common scenario for me: I’m working, watching a show, or just driving my family around Flagstaff. I see something—a TV episode, a billboard, or someone’s outfit as they walk down the street.
Before I know it, I’m thinking about whoever created the thing: what are they trying to accomplish and who’s their target audience? Then I’m identifying the choices made. The colors. Pacing. Filters. Dialogue. Onomatopoeias. Call backs. Modes, textures, repetition, pronunciation, fabrics, time signature, so whats, allusions, tone, connotations, cameos, calls to actions, alliteration, chiasmussimileshyperbolemetonymessynecdoches!! Finally I consider: were these choices effective?
What’s happening to me? You’ve probably either experienced it yourself or you’re bamboozled.
Rhetorical analysis is happening to me.
My favorite definition of rhetoric is “the art of influence.” So, rhetorical analysis is studying how influence happens in any medium from pop bops to eulogies to tapestries to marketing. Once you know about rhetoric, you see it everywhere.
During my Master’s degree in English and five years as an college professor I learned and taught this process. It wasn’t always my students’ favorite assignment—maybe because (despite my best efforts!!) it felt like a purely academic exercise to them. But it’s always been much more than academic to me.
After all, at its most dramatic, rhetoric is life and death—UNICEF and Hitler.
Rhetoric, like any tool, isn’t good or evil. It all depends on the creator’s heart. But at its best, rhetoric is about making ourselves heard in the way we intend. It’s about empathy and dialogue—balancing others’ desires with our own. And it’s about hope and progress.
In this blog I pull rhetoric down from the ivory tower and study it in the wild. I mean, I’m doing it anyway. Might as well share. Hopefully you find it as relevant as I do.
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