The Rhetoric (Chapter 21) (ESSAY POSSIBILITY)

I. Introduction.
A. Aristotle was a student of Plato’s who disagreed with his mentor over the place of public speaking
in Athenian life.
B. Plato’s negative view of public speaking was based on his assessment of the Sophists.
C. Aristotle saw rhetoric as a neutral tool with which one could accomplish either noble or fraudulent
ends.
1. Truth is inherently more acceptable than falsehood.
2. Nonetheless, unscrupulous persuaders may fool an audience unless an ethical speaker uses
all possible means of persuasion to counter the error.
3. Speakers who neglect the art of rhetoric have only themselves to blame for failure. 
D. Although Aristotle’s Politics and Ethics are polished, well-organized texts, the Rhetoric is a collection
of lecture notes.
E. Aristotle raised rhetoric to a science by systematically exploring the effects of the speaker, the
speech, and the audience.
II. Rhetoric: making persuasion possible.
A. For Aristotle, rhetoric was the discovery in each case of the available means of persuasion.
B. In terms of speech situations, he focused on civic affairs.
1. Forensic speaking considers guilt or innocence.
2. Deliberative speaking considers future policy.
3. Epideictic speaking considers praise and blame.
C. Aristotle classified rhetoric as the counterpart of dialectic.
1. Dialectic is one-on-one conversation; rhetoric is one person addressing the many.
2. Dialectic searches for truth; rhetoric demonstrates existing truth.
3. Dialectic answers general philosophical questions; rhetoric addresses specific, practical
ones.
4. Dialectic deals with certainty; rhetoric considers probability.
III. Rhetorical proof: logos, ethos, and pathos.
A. The available means of persuasion are based on three kinds of proof.
1. Logical proof (logos) comes from the line of argument in the speech.
2. Ethical proof (ethos) is the way the speaker’s character is revealed through the message.
3. Emotional proof (pathos) is the feeling the speech draws from the hearers. 
B. Aristotle focused on two forms of logical proof—enthymeme and example.
1. Enthymeme is the strongest of the proofs.
a. An enthymeme is an incomplete syllogism.
b. Typical enthymemes leave out the premise that is already accepted by the
audience.
c. Lloyd Bitzer notes that the audience helps construct the proof by supplying the
missing premise.
d. The enthymeme uses deductive logic—moving from global principle to specific
truth.
2. The example uses inductive reasoning—drawing a final conclusion from specific examples.
C. Ethos emphasizes the speaker’s credibility, which is manifested in intelligence, character, and
goodwill.
1. Aristotle was primarily interested in how the speaker’s ethos is created in a speech.
2. The assessment of intelligence is based on practical wisdom and shared values.
3. Virtuous character has to do with the speaker’s image as a good and honest person.
4. Goodwill is a positive judgment of the speaker’s intention toward the audience.
5. Aristotle’s explication of ethos has held up well under scientific scrutiny.
 D. Although skeptical of the emotion-laden public oratory typical of his era, Aristotle attempted to
help speakers use pathos ethically.
E. Aristotle catalogued a series of opposite feelings, and then explained the conditions under which
each mood is experienced.
1. Anger vs. mildness.
2. Love or friendship vs. hatred.
3. Fear vs. confidence.
4. Shame vs. shamelessness.
5. Indignation vs. pity.
6. Admiration vs. envy.
IV. The five canons of rhetoric.
A. Invention—in order to generate effective enthymemes and examples, speakers draw upon both
specialized and general knowledge known as topics or topoi.
B. Arrangement—Aristotle recommended a basic structure.
C. Style—Aristotle emphasized the pedagogical effectiveness of metaphor.
D. Memory—Roman teachers emphasized this component.
E. Delivery—naturalness is persuasive.
V. Ethical reflection: Aristotle’s golden mean
A. Aristotle’s work begs the question of the ethicality of altering a message to make it more
acceptable to an audience.
B. For Aristotle, ethics was an issue of character rather than conduct.
C. He elevated moderation to a theory of virtue and saw wisdom in the person who avoided excess in
either direction.
D. This middle way is known as the golden mean.
E. While the middle way may be the most effective, for Aristotle it was advocated not for its outcome
but because it was the most virtuous.
VI. Critique: standing the test of time.
A. The Rhetoric is revered by many public-speaking teachers.
B. Nonetheless, clarity is often a problem with Aristotle’s theory.
1. The enthymeme is not defined precisely.
2. The classification of metaphor is confusing.
3. The distinctions between deliberative and epideictic oratory are blurred.
4. The promised organizational structure is abandoned.
C. Some critics are bothered by Aristotle’s characterization of the audience as passive.
D. Others desire more discussion of the rhetorical situation. 
Dramatism (Chapter 22) (ESSAY POSSIBILITY)
I. Introduction.
A. Burke believes that language is a strategic human response to a specific situation.
B. The task of the critic is to assess motives.
C. For Burke, life is not like a drama; life is drama.
D. In 1952, Marie Hochmuth Nichols brought Burke to the speech communication field.
II. Identification: without it, there is no persuasion.
A. Identification is the common ground that exists between speaker and audience.
1. Substance encompasses a person’s physical characteristics, talents, occupation,
background, personality, beliefs, and values.
2. The more overlap between the substance of the speaker and the substance of the
audience, the greater the identification.
3. Although social scientists use the term homophily to describe perceived similarity between
speaker and listener, Burke preferred religious allusions—identification is
consubstantiation.
 B. Identification is established through style and content.
C. Identification flows both ways between speaker and audience.
D. Identification is never complete; division is a part of human existence.  But without some kind of
division, theres no need for identification and, consequently, for persuasion.
III. The dramatistic pentad.
A. The dramatistic pentad is a tool to analyze how a speaker tries to persuade an audience to accept
his or her view of reality as true.
1. The act names what took place in thought or deed.
2. The scene is the background of the act, the situation in which it occurred.
3. The agent is the person or kind of person who performed the act.
4. The agency is the means or instruments used to perform the act.
5. The purpose is the implied or stated goal of the act.
B. Content analysis identifies key terms on the basis of frequency and use.
1. The “god term”is the word to which all other positive words are subservient.
2. The “devil term” sums up all that the speaker regards as evil.
3. Words are terministic screens that dictate interpretations of life’s drama.
C. Burke contrasts the dramatistic pentad of intentional action with scientific terms that describe
motion without purpose.
D. The ratio of importance between individual pairs of terms in the dramatistic pentad indicates which
element provides the best clue to the speaker’s motivation.
E. The speaker’s worldview is revealed when one element is stressed over the other four.
1. An emphasis on act demonstrates a commitment to realism.
2. An emphasis on scene downplays free will and reflects an attitude of situational
determinism.
3. An emphasis on agent is consistent with idealism.
4. An emphasis on agency springs from the mind-set of pragmatism.
5. An emphasis on purpose suggests the concerns of mysticism.
F. Burke’s use of purpose and motivation is somewhat confusing.
IV. Guilt-redemption cycle: the root of all rhetoric.
A. The ultimate motivation of all public speaking is to purge ourselves of guilt.
1. Guilt is created through symbolic interaction.
2. Our problems are exacerbated by technology.
3. Hierarchies and bureaucracies induce guilt.
4. Perspective by incongruity calls attention to truth by linking two incongruous words.
5. Our drive for perfection hurts ourselves and others.
6. At its root, rhetoric is the public search for a perfect scapegoat.
B. Redemption through victimage.
1. Rhetoric is a continual pattern of redemption through victimage.
2. Since self-blame (or mortification) is difficult to admit publicly, it’s easier to blame someone
else.
3. Victimage is the process of designating an external enemy as the source of all our ills.
4. Burke was not an advocate of redemption through victimage, but he recognized its
prevalence.
V. Critique: evaluating the critics analysis.
A. Burke may have been the foremost twentieth-century rhetorician.
B. His presentation is often confusing and obscure.
1. He employed multiple vocabularies and copious literary allusions.
2. Burke enthusiasts enjoy the challenge of reading his work because he celebrates the life-
giving quality of language.
C. The dramatistic pentad is the most popular feature of Burke’s approach.
 D. The concept of rhetoric as identification is a major advance.
E. Of Burke’s motivational principles, his strategies of redemption are the most controversial.
1. Many find his religious imagery problematic.
2. His assumption that guilt underlies all public address is questionable.
F. Burke’s commitment to an ethical stance is commendable.
Narrative Paradigm (Chapter 23)
I. Introduction.
A. For Walter Fisher, storytelling epitomizes human nature.
B. All forms of human communication that appeal to our reason are stories.
C. Offering good reasons has more to do with telling a compelling story than it does with piling up
evidence or constructing a tight argument.
D. Fisher’s narrative paradigm emphasizes that no communication is purely descriptive or didactic.
II. Narration and paradigm: defining the terms.
A. Fisher defines narration as symbolic actions—words and/or deeds—that have sequence and
meaning for those who live, create, and interpret them.
B. Fisher’s definition is broad.
1. Narration is rooted in time and space.
2. It covers every aspect of life with regard to character, motive, and action.
3. It refers to verbal and nonverbal messages.
4. Even abstract communication is included.
C. A paradigm is a conceptual framework.
D. Fisher’s narrative paradigm is offered as the foundation on which a complete rhetoric needs to be
built.
III. Paradigm shift: from a rational-world paradigm to a narrative one.
A. The mind-set of the reigning technical experts is the rational-world paradigm.
1. People are essentially rational.
2. We make decisions on the basis of arguments.
3. The type of speaking situation (legal, scientific, legislative) determines the course of our
argument.
4. Rationality is determined by how much we know and how well we argue.
5. The world is a set of logical puzzles that we can solve through rational analysis.
B. The narrative paradigm is built on parallel, yet contrasting, premises.
1. People are essentially storytellers.
2. We make decisions on the basis of good reason, which vary depending on the
communication situation, media, and genre (philosophical, technical, rhetorical, or artistic).
3. History, biography, culture, and character determine what we consider good reasons.
4. Narrative rationality is determined by the coherence and fidelity of our stories.
5. The world is a set of stories from which we choose, and thus constantly re-create, our lives.
C. Unlike the rational-world paradigm, the narrative paradigm privileges values, aesthetic criteria, and
commonsense interpretation.
D. We judge stories based on narrative rationality.
IV. Narrative rationality: coherence and fidelity.
A. Fisher believes that everyone applies the same standards of narrative rationality to stories.
B. The twin tests of a story are narrative coherence and narrative fidelity.
C. Narrative coherence:  does the story hang together?
D. How probable is the story to the hearer?
1. Narrative consistency parallels lines of argument in the rational-world paradigm. 
2. The test of reason, however, is only one factor affecting narrative coherence.
3. Coherence can be assessed by comparing a story to others with a similar theme. 
 4. The ultimate test of narrative coherence is whether or not we can count on the characters
to act in a reliable manner.
E. Narrative fidelity:  does the story ring true and humane?
1. Does the story square with the hearer’s experiences?
2. A story has fidelity when it provides good reasons to guide our future actions.
3. Values set the narrative paradigm’s logic of good reasons apart from the rational-world
paradigm’s logic of reasons.
4. The logic of good reasons centers on five value-related issues. 
a. The values embedded in the message.
b. The relevance of those values to decisions made.
c. The consequence of adhering to those values.
d. The overlap with the worldview of the audience.
e. Conformity with what audience members believe is an ideal basis of conduct.
5. People tend to prefer accounts that fit with what they view as truthful and humane.
6. There is an ideal audience that identifies the humane values that a good story embodies.
7. These stories include the timeless values of truth, the good, beauty, health, wisdom,
courage, temperance, justice, harmony, order, communion, friendship, and oneness with
the Cosmos.
8. Communities not based on humane virtues are possible, but Fisher believes these less
idealistic value systems lack true coherence.
9. Judging a story to have fidelity means we believe shared values can influence belief and
action.
V. Critique: does Fisher’s story have coherence and fidelity?
A. Fisher’s narrative paradigm offers a fresh reworking to Aristotelian analysis.
B. Fisher’s principles of narrative coherence and fidelity can be used to analyze various types of
communication, which provides strong evidence of their validity.
C. Critics charge that Fisher is overly optimistic.
D. Stories promoting the status quo may have undue influence and oppressive power.

Mass Communication: Media and Culture

Media Ecology (Chapter 24) (ESSAY POSSIBILITY)
I. Introduction.
A. Marshall McLuhan believed that media should be understood ecologically
B. Changes in technology alter the symbolic environment—the socially constructed, sensory world of
meanings that in turn shapes our perceptions, experiences, attitudes, and behavior.
II. The medium is the message.
A. We’ve accustomed to thinking of the message as separate from the medium itself.
B. McLuhan blurred the distinction between the message and the medium.
C. We focus on the content and overlook the medium—even though content doesn’t exist outside of
the way it’s mediated.
III. The challenge of media ecology.
A. Any understanding of social and cultural change is impossible without knowledge of the way media
work as environments.
B. All environments are inherently intangible and interrelated.
C. An environment is not a thing; it is the intricate association of many things.
1.  Invisibility of environments
a. We have trouble recognizing “the way media work as environments” because
we’re so immersed in them.
b. We need to focus on our everyday experience of technology.
 c. A medium shapes us because we partake of it over and over until it becomes an
extension of ourselves.
d. It’s the ordinariness of media that makes them invisible.
2. Complexity of environments
a. Understanding the influential relationship between the media environment and
society is a subtle but crucial endeavor that demands a complex sense of both
incremental and sudden changes.
b. McLuhan traces the major ecological shifts in media throughout human history.
IV. A media analysis of human history.
A. The tribal age: An acoustic place in history
1. The senses of hearing, touch, taste, and smell were more advanced than visualization.
2. “Primitive” people lived richer lives than their literate descendants because the ear does
not select.
3. People acted with more passion and spontaneity.
B. The age of literacy: A visual point of view.
1. Literacy moved people from collective tribal involvement to private detachment.
2. Literacy encouraged logical, linear thinking, and fostered mathematics, science, and
philosophy.
C. The print age: Prototype of the industrial revolution.
1. The printing press made visual dependence widespread.
2. The development of fixed national languages produced nationalism.
3. McLuhan regarded the fragmentation of society as the most significant outcome of print.
D. The electronic age: The rise of the global village.
1. McLuhan believed that the electronic media are retribalizing humanity.
2. In an electronic age, privacy is a luxury or a curse of the past.
3. Linear logic is useless in the electronic society; we focus on what we feel.
E. The digital age? Rewiring the global village
1. The digital age is wholly electronic.
2. The mass age of electronic media is becoming increasingly personalized.
V. Ethical reflection: Postman’s Faustian bargain
A. Neil Postman believed that the forms of media regulate and even dictate what kind of content the
form of a given medium can carry.
B. Unlike McLuhan, Postman believed that the primary task of media ecology is to make moral
judgments.
C. New technology always presents us with a Faustian bargain—a potential deal with the devil.
D. Television has led to the loss of serious public discourse. Triviality trumps seriousness.
E. Postman thought three questions should asked of any new technology.
1. What is the problem to which this technology is a solution?
2. Whose problem is it, actually?
3. Is there is a legitimate problem here to be solved, what other problems will be created by
my using this technology?
VI. Critique: How could he be right?  But what if he was?
A. McLuhan did not adequately support his claims.
B. His prose is very difficult to understand.
C. Deterministic theories have difficulty with the criterion of falsifiability.
D. Tom Wolfe suggests that McLuhan may be one of the great geniuses of our era.
Semiotics (Chapter 25)
I. Introduction.
A. Roland Barthes held the Chair of Literary Semiology at the College of France.
 B. In Mythologies, he sought to decipher the cultural meaning of visual signs, particularly those
perpetuating dominant social values.
C. Semiology is concerned with anything that can stand for something else.
D. Barthes is interested in signs that are seemingly straightforward, but which subtly communicate
ideological or connotative meaning.
E. Barthes had an unusual style for an academic and was extremely influential.
II. Wrestling with signs.
A. Barthes’ true concern was with connotation&mash;the ideological baggage that signs carry
wherever they go.
B. The structure of signs is key to Barthes’ theory.
C. Ferdinand de Saussure coined the term semiology to refer to the study of signs.
D. A sign is the combination of its signifier and signified.
1. The signifier is the image; the signified is the concept.
2. In Barthes’ terms, the signifier isn’t the sign of the signified&mash;rather the sign is the
combination of signifier and signified, which are united in an inseparable bond.
3. These distinctions come from Saussure.
4. The relationship between the signifier and the signified in a verbal sign is arbitrary.
5. The relationship between the signifier and the signified in a nonverbal sign is based on
affinity and is therefore quasi-arbitrary.
E. A sign does not stand on its own:  it is part of a system.
1. A structural analysis of features common to all semiotic systems is called taxonomy.
2. Barthes believed semiotic systems function the same way despite their apparent diversity.
3. Significant semiotic systems create myths that affirm the status quo as natural, inevitable,
and eternal.
III. The yellow ribbon transformation: from forgiveness to pride. 
A. Not all semiological systems are mythic.
B. Mythic or connotative systems are second-order semiological systems built off of preexisting sign
systems.
C. Within mythic systems, the sign of the first system becomes the signifier of the second.
IV. The making of myth: stripping the sign of its history.
A. Every ideological sign is the result of two interconnected sign systems.
B. The first system is strictly descriptive as the signifier image and the signified concept combine to
produce the denotative sign.
C. The second system appropriates the sign of the denotative system and makes it the signifier of the
connotative system. 
D. This lateral shift transforms a neutral sign into an ideological tool.
E. The original denotative sign is not lost, but it is impoverished.
1. The mythic sign carries the crust of falsity.
2. The mythic communication is unable to imagine anything alien, novel, or other.
V. Unmasking the myth of a homogeneous society.
A. Only those who understand semiotics can detect the hollowness of connotative signs.
B. Mythic signs don’t explain, defend, or raise questions.
C. Mythic signs always reinforce dominant cultural values.
D. They naturalize the current order of things.
VI. The semiotics of mass communication: “I’d like to be like Mike.”
A. Because signs are integral to mass communication, Barthes’ semiotic analysis has become an
essential media theory.
B. Kyong Kim argues that the mass signification arising in a response to signs is an artificial effect
calculated to achieve something else.
C. Advertisements on television create layers of connotation that reaffirm the status quo.
VII. Critique: do mythic signs always reaffirm the status quo?
A. Some students of signification disagree with Barthes’ view that all connotative systems uphold the
values of the dominant class.
B. Scholars such as Anne Norton and Douglass Kellner expand Barthes’ semiotic approach to argue
that signs can subvert the status quo or exemplify a countercultural connotative system.
C. Dick Hebdige suggests that although countercultural semiotic activity is eventually co-opted by
mainstream society, it enjoys a brief time of subversive signification.
D. Barthes’ semiotic approach to imagery remains a core theoretical perspective for communication
scholars, particularly those who emphasize media and culture.
Cultural Studies (Chapter 26)
I. Introduction.
A. Critical theorists such as Stuart Hall question the scientific focus of mainstream communication
research on media influence.
B. Influenced by Marxist interpretation of society, Hall’s central concern is how the mass media create
support for hegemonic ideological positions.
C. Hall and most critical theorists want to change the world to empower people on the margins of
society.
II. The media as powerful ideological tools.
A. Hall believes that the media function to maintain the dominance of the powerful and to exploit the
poor and powerless.
B. Ideology is defined as “those images, concepts and premises which provide the framework through
which we represent, interpret, understand and ‘make sense’ of some aspect of social existence.”
C. Mainstream U.S. mass communication research serves the myth of democratic pluralism and
ignores the power struggle that the media mask.
D. To avoid academic compartmentalization, Hall prefers cultural studies to media studies.
E. Articulate means both speaking out against oppression and linking that subjugation with the
communication media.
F. Hall’s mission reflects his Marxist interpretation of history.
G. Cultural studies is closely related to critical theory but places more emphasis on resistance than
rationality.
III. Early cultural critics.
A. In order to grasp Hall’s theory, we must first understand its roots.
B. Cultural critics by the end of World War II were concerned with the question of why oppression
persisted and dominant capitalist economies continued to thrive.
C. Frankfurt School theorists argued that the corporate-owned media were effective in tailoring
messages that supported the capitalist system.
1. The media present capitalism as natural, eternal, and unalterable.
2. To describe the cultural role of the media, Hall adopts the term hegemony, meaning
preponderant influence or domination of one nation over another.
3. In Hall’s terms, hegemony refers to already accepted interpretations of reality that keep
society’s haves in power over its have-nots.
D. Roland Barthes provided a way to start with concrete media images and systematically deconstruct
their shift in meaning.
1. Semiotics tangibly illustrates how societal power is preserved and communicated through
everyday objects and symbols.
2. Yet semiotics does not adequately explain why certain meanings get attached to certain
symbols at certain times.
E. Michel Foucault believed signs and symbols couldn’t be separated from mass media images.
1. They are unified by their common discursive nature and require frameworks of
interpretation in order to make sense.
 2. The framework people use is provided through the dominant discourse of the day.
IV. Making meaning.
A. Hall contends that the primary function of discourse is to make meaning.
1. Words and signs have no intrinsic meaning.
2. We learn what signs mean through discourse—through communication and culture.
B. Hall believes we must examine the sources of discourse.
1. People with power create “discursive formations” that become naturalized.
2. Those ways of interpreting the world are perpetuated through further discourse and keep
the dominant in power.
V. Corporate control of mass communication.
A. Hall believes the focus of the study of communication should be on how human culture influences
the media and on power relations and social structures.
B. Hall and other advocates of cultural studies believe that media representations of culture
reproduce social inequalities and keep the average person powerless.
C. At least in the U.S., corporations produce and distribute the vast majority of information we
receive.
D. Corporate control of information prevents many stories from being told.
E. The ultimate issue for cultural studies is not what information is presented, but whose information
it is.
VI. The media role in the Gulf War.
A. A variety of cultural products can be deployed to generate popular support for the dominant
ideology.
B. The media practice hegemonic encoding—the regulation of discourse so that some messages are
encoded by the mass media then decoded, internalized, and acted upon by the audience.
1. Other ideas remain unvoiced.
2. Complex ethical questions are not engaged.
C. Hall uses the term “ideological discourses of constraint” to refer to the media’s limitation of
alternatives and presentation of restricted choices as the only options.
VII. Post 9/11 media coverage.
A. Hall believes the mass media provide the guiding myths that shape our perception of the world and
serve as important instruments of social control.
B. He believes hegemonic encoding occurs all the time, yet it’s not a conscious plot.
VIII. An obstinate audience.
A. Audiences may not accept the source’s ideology.
B. There are three ways to decode a message.
1. Operate inside the dominant code.
2. Apply a negotiable code.
3. Substitute an oppositional code.
C. Although Hall has trouble believing the powerless can change the system, he respects the ability of
people to resist the dominant code.
D. He is unable to predict, though, when and where resistance will spring up.
IX. Critique: Your judgment will depend on your ideology.
A. The strong ideological component inherent in cultural studies limits its credibility.
B. Hall’s work is relatively silent in regards to women as equal victims of hegemony with ethnic
minorities and the poor.
C. Hall doesn’t offer specific remedies for the problems he identifies.
D. Hall’s great contribution is his insistence that one cannot talk about meaning without considering
power.
E. Samuel Becker notes that although Hall knocks the dominant ideology of communication studies,
he has become the most dominant figure in the field.