Felice LaFevre

Reading Response 1

The Ultimate Rhetorical Situation

The Voyager golden record serves as an example of how intricate a rhetorical situation
might be. In 1977, the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft carried a message to possible
extraterrestrial life, known as the Voyager Golden Record. Its purpose was to impart knowledge
about the planet and its people. The relationships between the speaker, an audience, and a
message within a certain context are known as the rhetorical situation, and they may be used to
study the construction and contents of the Voyager Golden Record. In this instance, the
speakers were the group of scientists that assembled the Golden Record's content under the
direction of Carl Sagan. It was their responsibility to speak for humanity and provide a message
that aliens could comprehend. Potential alien life is the Golden Record's target audience. The
prospect of radically disparate kinds of intelligence and communication has to be taken into
account by the scientists. The audience is unidentified and comes from an infinite variety of
cognitive, physical, societal, and cultural backgrounds.The Golden Record's content features a
range of noises, visuals, and melodies that illustrate the diversity of Earth. It has greetings in
fifty-five languages, music from other cultures, sounds of nature, and pictures of Earthly
existence. It is intended that the message be universal and intelligible to beings who have never
heard of Earth before. The expanse of space and the ambiguity surrounding who or what might
come into contact with the Golden Record provide the backdrop for the rhetorical situation. The
probable cultural, technological, and intellectual distinctions between Earth and the audience of
extraterrestrials had to be taken into account by the scientists. I as a reader am thinking and
writing critically about what Sagan and others were trying to convey in their Golden Record.
While Sagan is also trying to think critically about what his audience might read or interpret from
his Golden Record. Clearly the creators of the Golden Record understood the idea of the
Burkean Parlor and realized the alien audience, whoever or whatever they might be, will ask
questions when they enter the conversation or try to interpret the items in the spacecraft
Voyagers. So Sagan tries to answer every single possible question in a myriad of ways from
mathematical to musical. Likewise, I come to this reading asking questions, seeking answers of
Sagan’s presentation. After reading the “NASA Background “ article it is apparent even to my
non aerospace self that it could be understood if the alien species has any math technology.
After watching and listening to the Golden Record presented on YouTube, it is a moving
presentation. I just question that the purpose will be understood by the receiver. Just as I come
to the situation with background experience, so will the alien receiver. It reminds me of the old
Twilight Zone “To Serve Man”. In this fictional piece the humans interpreted the serving of man
as a helpful gesture when in fact the aliens were referencing a cookbook to eat humans. The
complexities of the rhetorical situation, regardless of how many intuitive and critical questions
are asked, may not lead to a clear interpretation or expected conclusion. As in real life, when at
a party a new person joins in and sometimes just never can connect to the conversation
ensuing and finally just results in silence. The difficulties of crafting a message that is both
thorough and understandable for an unknown and possibly quite varied audience give birth to
the rhetorical situation's complexity. Across linguistic and cultural divides, the scientists had to
make decisions on what to include and how to depict Earth. The intricacy of the rhetorical
situation surrounding the Voyager Golden Record is influenced by the choice of content, the
employment of symbols, and the consideration of possible interpretations.