Bitzer Blog

Bitzer's article on the rhetorical situation is an interesting take on the idea, but seemingly narrow. The idea of a theory of situation is not an idle one no, but I think he takes it a little far. Yes certain situations "invite utterances" , but that situation does not fully define what will come from the words (4). This essay touched on what has been bothering me all semester: the seemingly light weight that the words and the actual message play in an argument. Sure the situation matters, and finding the kairos is something a rhetor should always do, but it is not the overarching purpose. In my mind I still put a great onus on the text itself and what it is doing to me.

Look at a book in a library, how is that situational? Bitzer says that "rhetorical discourse comes into existence as a response to a situation," but now that the book is on a shelf next to others, when I pick it up I am not privy to the situation that sparked the penning of it (5). Granted in an example like that, I will not understand everything about the text since I don't have a real context for it, but I can still be moved by the words knowing nothing about the situation. I think that the rhetorical situation does play a large role in the overall accepting of an idea/being moved to an action by an audience, but I think the responsibility falls on the author/speaker to convey the appropriate amount of desperation or need for the audience to act in that way. Not everything starts with the situation.

Kennedy Blog

I found this article to be very confusing. Kennedy took a whole lot of liberties with the word "rhetoric", and expanded its definition to be more along the lines of "communication". He seemed to get more and more wild as it went on, although admittedly he lost me around the time when he gave plants the ability to use rhetoric. I mean I can get on board with rhetoric being prior to speech, since lots of factors can contribute to a decision, but I think he goes a little too far.

That being said, I think the beginning of this piece if dead on. When he says that "the receiver's knowledge of the rhetorical code - determines what the receiver does when the message arrives", I think he is wholly correct (8). The situation and the surroundings and the precursors to the actual message can shape a receiver's mind and it establishes the "code", as Kennedy calls it, to function as a filter through which the incoming message will be interpreted. "Rhetoric allows" according to Kennedy, "a 'switch' in the code" (8). This is when persuasion happens.

He loses me on his third thesis: "Rhetoric is prior to intentionality or to any belief on the part of the speaker about the meaning of a sign or its effect on others" (9). I can get on board with the fact that rhetoric can be before a lot of things, and that many things influence people to a decision, but I don't call those coincidental factors tools of rhetoric. Sure I can put up posters of a band all over my room for no reason other than I like the band, but I don't think it is rhetoric at work when someone else sees the posters and then listens to the band. In all I think he makes some interesting points, but his definition of rhetoric is a little broad for my taste.

Final Project

Final Project: Hitler and Expectation

As students of rhetoric, aesthetic word choice, sound arguments and extended metaphors have been ingrained in us at the tools which combine to form good rhetoric. Is that everything though? Are there not other means that are accessible to us that we can employ to enhance our connection with our audience and become more persuasive? For this essay I am going to target the 1934 Nazi Party Congress at Nuremburg for rhetorical analysis, but I am not going to look at Hitler’s speech on that day. Instead I will consider the rhetorical situation surrounding his discourse and analyze it based on insights from Bitzer, Kennedy, Brennan and Massumi. From there I will highlight techniques that transcend his sinister message and can be useful in a modern context, and how those techniques can be used to in unison with managing the expectation of the audience, and how both of those can be garnered to elicit a certain action out of the viewer – without even saying a word.

                To begin, I want to whole-heartedly agree with the notion Bitzer sets out at the beginning of his article on The Rhetorical Situation: “The presence of rhetorical discourse obviously indicates the presence of a rhetorical situation” (Bitzer 2). Wherever there is an advertisement, a commercial, or in our example here – a speech – there is a rhetorical situation surrounding it and giving context to the discourse.

In the Hitler speech, there is quite a situation around him. There are flags, banners, sharply dressed men in uniform with clean haircuts and freshly shaven faces, and a long procession before Hitler ever says a word. These are all elements of the rhetorical situation, and according to Bitzer, these elements contextualize the discourse that is to follow.

Bitzer goes on to further characterize the role of the rhetorical situation “as a natural context of persons, events, objects, relations and an exigence which strongly invites utterance; this invited utterance participates naturally in the situation…” (Bitzer 5). Under this theory a rhetorical situation not only provides a context for the discourse, but the discourse is a natural participant in the situation – it belongs. It goes even further though – Bitzer says “the situation controls the rhetorical response” (Bitzer 6). So, given a rhetorical situation with a speech (per our example), the discourse will happen naturally in it, and the possible response will be bracketed or limited by the situation’s constraints. This puts a heightened importance on the “persons, events, objects” – or the flags, banners, and the processional – that surrounds the rhetorical discourse.

Hitler was no fool though. He and his men controlled and set up every aspect of the occasion of his speech in order to convey the message visually before Hitler had even arrived. This is an image from a documentary, The Triumph of the Will, made about the speech we are dealing with, and it shows the flag of the German Empire with the Iron Cross on it – a symbol of a time of affluence and deep pride for German citizens – juxtaposed with the Nazi flag. This placement conflates the two symbols, and says to the crowd that the Nazi party will restore the honor and prestige of old Germany. This statement is made during the processional into the city, so before any speech has been made, the crowd is already, if ever so subtly, being put into a state of mind to equate the Nazi party and its leaders to an affluent time for Germany. This is a powerful statement in poverty-stricken-post-World-War-I-Germany.

Massumi has some applicable ideas concerning the subtle parts of the Nazis manipulation of their surroundings. In his chapter entitled The Autonomy of Affect, he says that “the body is radically open, absorbing impulses quicker than they can be perceived” (Massumi 29). So even if the members of the crowd do not stop to cognitively make the connection between these two flags and their meanings, seeing them next to each other, even briefly, will begin to pair them in their mind. Eventually, when they see one, they will think the other, if the process is carried out.

Other instances of The Nazis controlling the rhetorical situation which Hitler is stepping into include the extravagance of his procession into Nuremburg, as seen in the picture below:

They had banners put up one right after another all along the parade route to ingrain the symbol and the party into the minds of the crowd.

  

The soldiers were all clean cut, well dressed and stood in a row. This showed organization and order, two attributes the Nazi’s wanted the people to know they could bring back to Germany.

And when night fell on the town, one symbol remained prominent in the night sky.

Along with the symbol, below it read the phrase “Heil Hitler”, to remind the people how they should respond to this charismatic leader.

Hitler certainly made for himself a well founded situation to set the stage for his speech. The crowd would marinate in Nazi paraphernalia and therefore would be seasoned and tender when he was to begin his speech.

Returning now to Bitzer, he posits that “a situation which is strong and clear dictates the purpose, theme, matter and style of the response[1]” (Bitzer 10). So by the Nazi party putting up swastika flags, coming into the city in a parade fashion, keeping clean cut soldiers around and letting each of those figures remain there even after nightfall, they had created a “strong and clear” situation. So according to Bitzer, they were shaping the audience’s response to what Hitler was going to say, before he even spoke a word.

Complementing the “strong and clear” situation the Nazi’s set up, the conflation and frequency of images used by Hitler has a greater effect. Brennan remarks that an “image has a physical, chemical effect of individuals and groups” (Brennan 71). To illustrate this she discussed an experiment in which men and women were shown an aggressive image. Each group responded to the image with an increase in testosterone levels, indicating a rise in aggression within the individual. Back to our example, the Nazis used conflating images of a better time for Germany and then juxtaposed their symbol right next to it – combining their meanings. So now, in light of Brennan’s analysis, it is clear that the swastika became a positive image for the German people, and their moods could actually have gotten better when they saw the red, white and black flag. Brennan also goes on to say, that “the crowd becomes more than a sum of its parts”, by the message being amplified through each member (Brennan 72).

Moreover, Massumi tells us that “language doubles the flow of images…there is a redundancy of resonation that plays up or amplifies…enabling a different connectivity” to the desired conclusion (Massumi 26). And since the audience for his speech had been marinating for a while in the rhetorical situation the Nazis designed for them, when Hitler actually begins his speech, his points will be all the more effective when they touch on the visual rhetoric around them. When he refers to returning Germany to their former might the audience will hark back to the visual conflation of the flags and their moods will lighten. When he speaks of rising out of poverty and the hardships they were in, the audience will be reminded of the clean cut young men reminiscent of a better time. Most importantly for his means however, when he speaks of peace and victory and power, the audience will see the banner that was flown all over the city and the symbol illuminated at night, and those ideas will amplify and resonate in their minds until they become one in the same, and Hitler’s message hits home.

What the Nazi’s goal was with the décor and whatnot was to create a rhetorical situation that guided the audience to a certain expectation. With all the extravagance in the face of their poverty, the juxtaposition of the German Empire and Iron Cross with the Nazi banner and the order and neatness of their presentation, the Nazi’s were leading the crowd at Nuremburg to a pre-drawn conclusion about what the Nazi party will do for them.

This is in line with one of Kennedy’s theses that reads: “the receiver’s interpretation of a communication is prior to the speaker’s intent in determining the meaning” (Kennedy 7). Applying that to this situation, it means that it doesn’t matter what was said, it matters rather what people think will be said. Hitler could have gotten up there and said (in a much simplified example) “one plus one is two” over and over again, but if the people gleaned from the context surrounding his message that “one plus one equaled three”, that could be what they took away from the speech. But if the audience already had in mind that one and one made two before Hitler said it, then all he would have to do is spoon feed the audience the message they were already looking for.

Bitzer agrees with that idea saying: “the expectations of the audience [are] themselves keyed to a [situation]” (Bitzer 9). So the situation not only creates a context for the spoken discourse but it also molds the audience’s expectation of what they are about to hear, and “controls their rhetorical response” (Bitzer 6). So if a rhetor can mold his/her own rhetorical situation, then he/she can bend their audience’s expectation of what they are about to hear, and partially direct their response. Manipulating the rhetorical situation allowed Hitler and the Nazis to control the crowd’s expectation of what the situation was calling him to say, so when he actually said it, they were already partially in support of it.

While Hitler is correctly acclaimed as an effective rhetorician (although obviously a sick narcissist), a lot of the credit for his effectiveness has been wrongly placed in his suave words, fallacious analogies and the destitute circumstances of Germany circa 1930. In reality some of the responsibility for his persuasiveness is owed to his ability to manipulate his rhetorical situation to guide the German public to a conclusion they had been led to expect as an obvious answer. Now if we can learn something from the way Hitler went about this, it is the importance of the rhetorical situation in which people insert themselves. The Nazis were quite effective at blending all different modes of persuasion together to work in harmony to convince the German people that their party was the best thing for the masses. Everything worked to that end, that main goal, and that continuity heightened the effectiveness of their message.

Now recall Massumi’s example of the story told in three different ways. His discussion of the three variations on the same story yielded an interesting way to consider the question of how to properly engage an audience. For the children viewing the stories, “the sad scenes were rated the most pleasant” (Massumi 23)[2]. To reconcile the fact that “sadness is pleasant” for the children, Massumi observed that “the distinction between form/content [= the sadness], and intensity/effect [= the pleasantness]…enables a different connectivity, a different difference, in parallel” (Massumi 24, 25). So the audience had received the story on two different levels – one, digesting the content of the story to recognize it as sad, and on a second level simultaneously, gaining pleasure from the intensity of the emotions evoked in it.

Massumi also posited that “an emotional qualification breaks narrative continuity for a moment to register a state – actually to re-register an already felt state” (25). So when a rhetor breaks his train of thought to engage the emotions, it appeals to the audience on a variety of levels. According to Massumi, the emotion had already been conveyed to them on a different level, just not explicitly. So when the emotion is qualified or acknowledged at the expense of the narrative (or logical flow) of the piece, the qualified emotion then resounds within the audience. This is a similar doubling quality that the Nazi’s images provided Hitler’s speech.

Backtracking for a moment, we saw that the rhetorical situation is made up of “persons, events, objects, relations and an exigence”, all which have images and emotions associated with each of them. Think of our example. The members of the crowd each saw the banners, soldiers, etc., and the images ere ingrained into the people. Now considering Massumi’s observations – that engaging the emotions through intensity works similar to drawing off images – it is evident that each element in the rhetorical situation also serves to evoke a different emotion in the person also. So if a rhetor were to engage the emotions of his audience as well as allude to the various images present, it would make him that much more effective to his audience. So it is elements in the rhetorical situation that convey to the audience both the expectation for what is going to be said and the expected emotional intensity of the rhetorical event that together shape the response from the crowd.

There is much for modern students to glean from these sources. It is not only the words which matter but everything about how they are presented draws the audience to a particular conclusion. Good rhetoric, is made up of more than arranging 26 letters in clever ways, but has to do with everything that you surround yourself with. We are taught to dress for the job we want, not the one we have – well this is an adaptation on a personal rhetorical situation. A person who wants to be promoted and therefore changes attributes about his/herself to suit the station they want to be in, has changed part of their rhetorical situation. By that altering of your rhetorical situation, you alter the expectation of the people around you and they begin to see you in a new role. Most of us will not change the world as we know it, but using rhetorical means, each of us can change our own place in it.

---

[1] Emphasis added

[2] Recall Massumi’s use of ”intensity” to be “the strength or duration of the image’s effect” (Massumi 24).

Final Project Proposal

For my final project, I would like to take a look at the theory of expectation, as taken from authors that we have read this semester, namely Kennedy and Massumi, and illustrate the power that shaping your expectation can have. I will illustrate the observations gleaned from the Kennedy and Massumi articles with a clip from a speech from Adolph Hitler. I will sub-divide the issue into four parts: 1) the expectation of the audience, 2) how a departure from expectation can affect an audience and 3) how, by controlling the expectation of the audience, a rhetor can be most persuasive, and 4), I will use a clip from a Hitler speech to revisit and illustrate how well controlling the expectation of an audience can help in moving your audience to a specific action - however sinister.

I will use the first portion of my argument to discuss the nature of the audience's expectation of what is being presented to them. Initially, I will talk about the genre of a piece, then the context in which it lies - much like we did with the visual analysis. From there I will dive into the Kennedy selection we read, and analyze how things are perceived initially by the audience. Specifically I will concentrate around his ideas that "the receiver's interpretation of a communication is prior to the speaker's intent in determining its meaning" and that "the receiver's knowledge of the rhetorical code - determines what the reader does when the message arrives" (7, 8).

That puts a whole lot of emphasis on context, so to avoid a discussion purely for the birds, I will bring Massumi in at this point to the effect that context is very important yes, but only initially, and the disruption of expectation within that context is what engages both the "primitive", skin level, and also the exteroceptical receivers. This is where I will hit the "affect" side of things, and expound upon the potential and the probable coupled with the expected vs. intensity/suspense that Massumi explains.

The discussion of Massumi will transition smoothly into the next segment of my discussion, namely, as a rhetor, how to consider the expectations of the audience to yield the highest degree of effectiveness in your means to move them to an action. This will be the main purpose of this discussion, essentially - how to best use expectation when constructing an argument. Armed with that knowledge, the rhetor can then set about disrupting some of them by highlighting certain visceral aspects of his message - the jumps and the shocks accomplished by enargeia and emotionally charged language - to revert the audience from the realm of the possible (on the grid), to that of the potential, where anything can happen. A successful move in that direction will heighten the audience's pleasure in viewing the message, and make them more likely to acquiesce to your request. 

            The main focus of my project will be combining Kennedy's thoughts on expectation, with Massumi's exploration of the three versions of the same snowman story. The question I will be answering is: how does the knowledge collected from that investigation help a rhetor fully engage his audience on all levels, to be the most affective and effective that they can be.

            For a visual element to this project, I will incorporate a speech from Hitler and analyze it using the Kennedy/Massumi hypothesis. Hitler, as the quintessential example for all things rhetoric, will allow an illustration for the context (lavish banners, sharp uniforms, organized army presentation, etc.) and how it is useful. Given the time period in which he rose to power, such extravagance was scarce, so for a charismatic leader to come in sporting all of it, it would make a large statement on the audience, since their expectation is in the realm of their normal poverty-stricken life. Hitler's manipulation of that against the desperation of his destitute audience allowed him to yield a high level of persuasion among his audience.  

Ahmed - Affective Economies

"The emotion of hate works to animate the ordinary subject, to bring fantasy to life, precisely by constituting the ordinary as in crisis, and the ordinary person as the real victim" (118).

This idea is a very potent one, especially seen in the epitome of degenerate rhetoric - Hitler. Of course he did have a real crisis to play off of, but I think taking this idea from Ahmed really brings out ingroup/outgroup thinking and scapegoating and projection in a new way.

Ahmed introduces an interesting challenge to the conventional view of emotions. She is expressing that emotions are not things we possess, that we are not sad, but we are only briefly commune with the pre-existing emotion. I think that is a really provocative idea, but it begs the question of where they come from originally. Do these emotions emanate from our unconscious thoughts? How then can we control them? Maybe not control them, but stay in tuned to what is coming in and affecting us. I think I might be taking the idea further than Ahmed intended, but what does this say about the after school specials that we all watched growing up? They say to not let others affect you and make you own decisions, but in light of the affect and these emotions being placed upon us at the unconscious psychological level, is there a way of establishing a filter?


On a separate note entirely, her comparison with Marx made this whole thing make more sense to me. So just as cycling money through commodities increases the surplus, a particular sign that is assigned a certain affect, when widely circulated, grows in effectiveness in distributing affect.

I think what I still do not get is the origin of affect. I can see how it moves and how the grid and the plane and all of those different ideas work, but I am curious about the where the initial feeling comes from. Most of the people we have read discount the role we play in affect, but I think they have to come from us initially, and then are maybe transmitted in an unconscious manner. Of course maybe at the origin of the universe, whatever force formed everything, formed these emotions or affects and sent them about where they could circulate and increase their surplus and create more.

Visual Argument

I constructed my Prezi presentation over the grave effects cancer can have on young children, and the difference someone can make in their lives. My claim, put very simply, is that donations to any cancer research funds can save the lives of children; without it, more children will die.

My first image shows a child holding a stuffed animal with a grave look on his face, conveying his sadness and isolation. He is bald and in a hospital bed so the presence of cancer is obvious, which deepens this feeling and includes empathy for his neglect. 

From there I have an arrow that points to a young child who has had brain surgery to remove a tumor. This is evident because he too is bald, and the scars are very vivid. There is a person with him in the background but he is looking up at the camera, and that eye contact between the melancholy child and the viewer provokes sadness, empathy and a sense of hopelessness.

The third image is of a child who is being attended to by a nurse. He is again bald to make the presence of cancer obvious, and this shows how much these children are put through. It is included to elicit feelings of worry and pity, because of the look on the child’s face.

From there my visual argument splits into two paths, designated by arrows. Each stop along the prezi now has two images juxtaposed, illuminating two different paths the children can take in their battle with cancer.

The first set of images has four donation cans picturing children on each can. There is money being put into those cans of four different types of currency. This path begins with the donation of money to cancer research. It is not out to provoke an emotion, but to relate to the audience the action necessary to help the kids. The image it is set in opposition to shows a child in a hospital bed whose face is in dismay, and the entire picture has a dark demeanor. It shows a child cancer patient being neglected and feeling dejected.  This set of images is meant to make the audience begin to see they can do something about children with cancer.

The second set of images stem from an arrow from the donation picture and one from the picture of the little boy. The arrow from the donation picture points to a little girl who is smiling and has her arms raised, signifying victory. She has hair and the entire picture is very light. This picture is in direct opposition to the one of the little boy in the previous set of images, as this image provokes happiness, joy, enthusiasm, optimism, triumph and hope. The image underneath has the opposite effect. It shows a young cancer patient in declining critical condition, and the situation appears hopeless despite the presence of a doctor. This image is included to show desperation and hopelessness vs. the triumph of the above picture. The two paths are growing further apart from one another now.

The last set of images shows pictures of families with their loved ones outside of the hospital. The top picture, the one stemming from the donation jars and the girl with outstretched arms, shows a happy, smiling multi-generational family. This is meant to elicit feelings of joy, celebration and optimism. The kids in the picture are smiling, and clearly cancer free. The image below it, from the darker path, shows two men setting a casket down at a funeral. Since there are only two pallbearers it is clear the deceased is a child, and right over the casket you can see a young girl with a shocked look on her face. These two images represent the final stages the battle against cancer can lead you to, and harks back to the donation picture. At this point, I am trying to get the viewer to be thinking, “Can I go back and donate money at the beginning and save the bottom child?”

My purpose for this visual argument is to convey to viewers that cancer will not go away on its own; rather it will take the popular donations by everyone to kick this disease, and have everyone find that happy ending. The action I want people to take is to donate money to cancer research foundations to help prevent any child from being removed from their normal lifestyle. They should feel like they can give children back their childhood by donating money to foundations.

I invite you to view my prezi by clicking here:



Photo Credits:
Stephen Adams, Abandon Cancer Patient, http://www.wellnessuncovered.com/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1917:cancer-patients-abandoned-after-treatment&catid=1:latest-news&Itemid=50, March 31, 2011

Make a Wish Kid, http://www.sodahead.com/living/barefoot-contessa-finally-agrees-to-see-make-a-wish-kid-too-little-too-late/question-1624451/?postId=53705057&page=5&link=ibaf&imgurl=http://whiterevolution.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/chernobylkidwithleukemia1.jpg&q=boy%2Bcancer%2Bpatient, March 31, 2011

Child Cancer Risk, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/5194778.stm, March 13, 2011


Littlest Cancer Patient, http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LittlestCancerPatient, March 31, 2011


Sick Child, http://www.zimvi.com/?p=4303, March 31, 2011 


Funeral, http://sympathyfuneralflowers.wordpress.com/2010/07/10/six-children-buried-and-one-very-sad-funeral-in-hudson-falls/, March 31, 2011

Child Hope Donation Cans, http://illusion.scene360.com/illusions/3963/childhope-donation-cans/, March 31, 2011

J. Bourke, Happy child patient punching the air, http://www.wavebreakmedia.com/stock-video-footage-p-25812/Happy-child-patient-punching-the-air-.html, March 31, 2011

Sandra Magsamen, Family, http://www.oprah.com/relationships/Fun-Filled-Family-Activities/1#slideshow, March 31, 2011

Massumi ch. 1-2

After looking at the first two chapters of Massumi, I am completely exhausted. He is describing affect, something that cannot be described really, since by his own definition, as soon as you give a label to an affect, it inherently loses its affect-ness, and becomes just an emotion. He tries to capture the entity that exists in the half a second after something is unconsciously felt but before it is consciously recognized, but he chooses language that frustrates me. Maybe I am just too dense to get it, but I think it would be much more effective for him to use plain language when describing something so incredibly abstract. The poetic language seems to be geared toward eliciting a certain affect in his reader, which proves his point, but my problem is that without having previously read Damasio and Brennen, I would have no idea what he was talking about. He writes at such an abstract level that yes, his affect was transmitted to me thus proving his point that affects do exist, but if his was the first work I read over the topic, the point would be moot. I would have felt the affect unconsciously, but not realized what he was saying - at lease in the first read. I think he would have been better off explaining his argument in more plain language, and rely on his examples to illustrate his point.

Now to what he was saying. Equally crazy. This is a whole new element to the motto of the Delphic Oracle. (Well I guess not since the notion of affect dates back to Plato and Gorgias.) Now, to "know thyself" and control what affects change you (borrowing from the Brennen conversation), a person must recognize unconscious events - "perce[ive] this self-perception" (36). (Sticks and stones may break my bones but affects will never affect me...?)

At this stage in the course I find it hard to take issue with Massumi's argument, since it is clear to me that affects to exist and play an important role in how a person feels, although it does not play an overwhelmingly influential role. Moreso I take issue with how he relates his claim, which I feel is a petty distinction.

I did find his inclusion of other fields (quantum mechanics, biology, etc.) very interesting. I have always been curious to see if mathematical and physical properties could be applied to feelings, words, etc. insofar as you could estimate their weight, momentum, rotation (changes in meaning - dogwhistles and the like), potential energy, kinetic energy, etc. in relation to each other and who is perceiving them. It has been a crank theory of mine, but it seems to work with Massumi as far as I understand him. Instead of feelings and words however, Massumi takes it even further to include the precursors of feelings and notions - affects.

Written Argument

In this argument I have adapted a letter for this assignment that I actually sent out to raise money for cancer research. I am trying to elicit feelings of sadness and desperation through Mikey's story, and feelings of hopefulness and a sense of motivation to donate. The main claim if the letter is to donate to Texas 4000, but a strong secondary claim here is to be aware that cancer is a huge problem and one that can be solved. The link is below and if you are so inclined, visit www.texas4000.org to find out more.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DmUJce4K078invgzWxCR-1o1PX-cFb4NACiv2HtASEY/edit?pli=1&hl=en&authkey=CNSd6k0#

Damasio ch 1-4

Upon getting over the shock my mirror neurons gave me after reading about Phineas Gage, I began to try and wade through the neurological terminology Damasio uses to try and find a rhetorical use for the tale he is telling (taking "rhetoric" in a more narrow sense, not how Kennedy would define it). Using the stories of Gage and Elliot, Damasio was able to illustrate, however grotesquely, that certain parts of the brain govern certain aspects of life, be it reason, personality, etc, and maybe more importantly, that said reasons are not perfectly defined. It is not the neuroscience that interests me though.

I am fine with the fact that certain emotions exist on certain levels (ch 7), but thinking back to the beginning chapters it can be observed that the brain is not the product of some higher assembly line, rather it is tailored to the specific person through learned practice. This is knowing your audience on a whole new level.

In Damasio's Aside on Phrenology, he said that "[t]he mind results from the operation of each of the separate components, and from the concerted operation of the multiple systems constituted by those separate components" (ch1). So in essence our mind is an orchestra, and our ideas and speech that spew forth is the symphony composed therein. My question is, assuming an understanding of the basic paradigm of brain function, can a person appeal just to the string section, then to the horns, and so on until the entire consciousness is playing the rhetor's song? Second question: did Leo just make a movie about that?

Maybe a better question is: Should, or, is it effective to, target individual emotions related to the ideal state on the overall continuum you want your audience to be at (say resentment for anger), to build to the target emotion gradually?

Thinking about how Smith and Hyde Rethought Emotion

The Smith and Hyde article presented some interesting thoughts and shed a different light on the Aristotle readings. Whereas most of our previous discussions had centered around Aristotle's somewhat problematic exploration of opposites, this article provides a useful application of those polarities. Before I had viewed Aristotle's exploration of the emotions as primarily philosophical, useful in critically thinking about the particular emotions we can evoke in an audience and that audience themselves. Cast in the light of this article however, it seems much more clear and useful.

The individual plays an interesting part in this discussion. They argue for an individual who is innately affected by the masses, since "even being alone presupposes a being-with-others, for an individual can be alone only because the other is not present with him/her" (448). That can be all well and good, but it seems to be cyclical: I am alone because I am not with other people, but it takes other people for me to know I am alone. Maybe that is not cyclical, but it seems problematic to me.

Abandoning that train of thought entirely, I gleaned what seemed to be a procedure for moving the masses. (I think they actually stated it explicitly somewhere, but I could not find it again.) They discussed three things: 1) the public, 2) the individual, and 3) Aristotle's pathe (449). Plato espoused that the argument that worked on the individual would also work on the public, but maybe not the other way around, since the individual is more critical than the crowd since he can ask questions to the speaker. So if a person has an argument that will work on an individual, than it will be exponentially more effective on the crowd, since it will resonate with each individual in the crowd. That being said, if the speaker/writer makes use of Aristotle's pathe/concept of enargia to take the crowd from their mixed emotional state and brings them to the brink of fanaticism (but not into a state of extremity), then that it is the most effective argument.

...Maybe?

Visual Analysis – “Remember Pearl Harbor”

               This image was found in a plain google image search, so that context is not too helpful when trying to glean some aspect of the targeted audience, so instead I would like to consider this image in the context in which it would have been used. As an example of World War II propaganda targeting the general public, this could have been posted anywhere, but most likely in proximity to a war bond dealer. This image is targeting patriotic Americans at home during the war years.

                For those patriotic citizens, this poster would have evoked many different motivations.  The “Remember Pearl Harbor” tag line at the top brings out sadness and pain like salt on an open wound for what happened in Hawaii. The distorted figure in the Nazi uniform waving the alms of peace in the face of a national symbol provokes anger at the Japanese for lying, and vengeful rage to get back at them for what they did. That image also, coupled with the swastika on the knife held in the Japanese arm acts as a unification device building a common enemy in the minds of Americans – an important step in war rhetoric. A crucial part of establishing the common enemy is to dehumanize the outgroup, which is done by having the long nails on the hand of the knife and the distorted figure that is supposed to be a Japanese soldier. That unification device makes American's feel confidant, that this enemy can defeated because we (the ingroup) are inherently better than they are. The arm in the background is a very powerful part of this image, evoking fear and an overhanging foreboding – essentially saying that the enemy, both Japanese and Nazi, are poised and ready to hit the US in a devastating way again while we (the Statue of Liberty), stand idly by, unaware. The Statue of Liberty is not even looking at the Japanese man, adding to the feeling of aloofness (an aloofness you can solve by buying war bonds). By having the date of the Pearl Harbor attack written on the blade of the knife, it is bringing up the feelings people had right after the attack, and saying that another attack can be prevented if you buy war bonds. Given the position of the knife to America’s back, it is portraying another attack as imminent, while drawing on the public’s memory of the horror that came because of it to elicit the dread of it happening again. “What can you do to ensure that it doesn’t? Buy war bonds.”

                The Statue of Liberty is an interesting part of this image, which really ties into the behavior the image sparks. It was targeted at a patriotic American audience, yet a national symbol for liberty and freedom – some of the reasons we were fighting – is presented as a helpless figure, subject to the Nazis and the Japanese. It makes a person want to literally reach out and grab the arm holding the knife and pull it back to save liberty. That feeling translates into doing whatever they could to help the vulnerable American nation. Luckily for them, the answer of how to save the Statue of Liberty, America, and the ideas of freedom and liberty is plainly written at the bottom – “Buy War Bonds”.

                As far as belief, it is telling the viewer that America is under immediate danger, even if someone is telling you peace is near. The sense of impending doom is strengthened by the involvement of Pearl Harbor, and because it was such a powerful event in American society, it becomes just as strong in American propaganda. On that day we went from a country at peace (despite being on the brink of war) violently into the throes of war, and that is the sentiment captured and expressed here by the combination of the symbols of the Japanese figure (feigned peace) and the poised knife (imminent destruction). The main thing it wants you to believe is that Pearl Harbor can happen again, and more importantly, if you do not buy war bonds, it will happen again.

                I don’t believe this image falls into the clean cut “types” that Aristotle outlines. It sure plays on the quick to anger, but since the common trait to its targeted audience is patriotism, a trait not limited to the young, old, or the 49 year-olds, I think it might transcend age (but that could be my own idealistic bias).

In the 1940s, the young had just emerged from the depression, and because of that I believe them to be more frugal than Aristotle allows. Aristotle says “[t]heir lives are mainly spent not in memory but in expectation, for expectation refers to the future, memory to the past” (bkIIch12). This can fit the picture in an interesting way, since the allusion to Pearl Harbor draws in the brief past, and the position of the knife adds a notion of ever-approaching destruction – something the youthful would be concerned about. The elderly on the other hand, the opposite of the Aristotelian youth, live mainly in the past rather than the future, but if either age bracket had a deep tie to patriotism then it would be equally effective, never mind if the person was looking to the past of future (bkIIch13).

The elderly, as Aristotle describes them, have a tight coin purse and are suspicious, but keen to promote self-preservation (bkIIch13). “Their fits of anger are sudden but feeble”, so in a weak moment they might remember the attack and buy a war bond (bkIIch13). It doesn’t fit there, since the attack, which is still painful today, would have been at the forefront of the majority of patriotic peoples mind. “They live by memory rather than hope” (bkIIch13). The Aristotelian elderly do not respond to hope, so they doesn’t fit the picture either since by nature of the ongoing war and the perched knife, the hope for peace and a resolution of the conflict is the point of the propaganda. The self-preservation aspect is interesting, since it has some element of hope ingrained in it innately, but that seems almost contradictory. Due to the complex argument presented by the picture, the overarching Aristotelian types of "young" and "old" do not fit, but more the more narrow elderly interested in self-preservation would fit along with the young who refer to the future (but have a feeling for the past).

Aristotle's Rhetoric Book II, Ch 12-26

In chapter 24 Aristotle outlines nine fallacious lines of argument. His second fallacy peaked my interest in regard to the way he characterized the young and old in generalities (in chapters 12-14), something that initially seems to coincide with the bad lines of argument he lays out. Is he talking out of both sides of his mouth?

He spoke of the age groups in a simplified manner, giving attributes to a wide group of individuals, where many exceptions could be imagined to his paradigm. He says: "young men have strong passions, and tend to gratify them indiscriminately...it is the sexual [bodily desires] by which they are most swayed...[t]hey are changable and fickle in their desires, which are violent while they last but quickly over...[t]hey are hot-tempered and quick-tempered and apt to give way to their anger..." and on and on (bkIIch12). These are sweeping statements about the young that clearly not everyone fits into - were their no mild mannered young men in Athens? And remember "young" was in the 20's and 30's age range. This I find hard to believe.

He characterizes the old in the same simplistic way, and I will not bother you with the citation for it is much similar to the above one for my purpose. To the men in the prime of life he attributes all the desirable traits - discriminating decision making, confidence but not arrogance, etc.

Now, turning to his discussion of fallacious arguments, he says: "There may be syllogism that look genuine but are not" (bkIIch24). One of these such lines "is to assert of the whole that is true of the parts, or of the parts what is true of the whole. A whole and its parts are supposed to be identical, though often they are not. You have to therefore adopt whichever of these two lines better suits your purpose" (bkIIch24). Does this (seemingly paradoxical fallacy) not clash with his own discussion of the traits of age brackets?

He seems to have asserted onto the whole, what is true of some of the parts, since there are youths who are both slow and quick to anger, elderly who are both cynical and optimistic and men in the prime of their lives who are live outside of the moderation of virtue. So is his discussion a fallacious one? I don't think so. The crux appears where he writes "you have to therefore adopt whichever of these lines better [suit] your purpose". I think he is operating under the assumption that he could not possibly characterize every class, emotion, age group, etc. to the T, and instead is listing a general stereotype that would be useful for knowing the majority of an audience. Sure there are exceptions to just about everyone of his discussions, but if a person was appealing to a broad base group, I think he would be best suited to use Aristotle's broad base generalizations. And that was his purpose for these discussions anyway, to help the reader better understand the nature of the audience they would be appealing to.

I am not arguing for the application of stereotyping by everyone everywhere, but it can be a useful tool when used for non-malicious means.

Response to Aristotle's Rhetoric Book II, Ch. 1-11

The overarching purpose of these blogs still eludes me. They seem to be an informal forum to hash out ideas and practice pathetic techniques, in the hope that they become both more and less...pathetic. But then we are graded on them making them immediately formal - a sort of polished hypothesis. I probably should just read the assignment description again.

As for the purpose of this specific entry, as I began with a frustrated digression, I will track my thoughts on the give-and-take between anger and calm upon the mortal mind.

Relying heavily on pathos, as well as on ethos or logos, can ruin an argument. Aristotle makes this point early in his Rhetoric that you need the correct combination of all three principles to be the most persuasive to your audience, and to inherently, find the truth. So I feel safe in saying putting too much reliance in one, shorts the others.

Anger and calm cannot fully exist in the same mind since "...the frame of mind that makes people calm, it is plainly the opposite to that which makes them angry..." (ch 3, ln ~1380b). So just like moderating ethos, pathos and logos, a rhetor must stray from sole/heavy dependence on one emotion. He suggests this later on in the passage:

"Hence Philocrates, being asked by someone, at a time when the public was angry with him, 'Why don't you defend yourself?' did right to reply, 'The time is not yet.' 'Why when is the time?' 'When I see someone else calumniated.'" (ln ~1380b, 10)

In the illustration, the public figure Philocrates refused to defend himself since his accusers were acting out of anger alone. He chose to wait to plead his case to them once they had redirected their anger and let a bit of calm in. He did this because Philocrates knew the mind of those judging him were tainted with fresh emotion and would react rashly and unjustly to his situation (whatever that may have been). It appears that, in the Aristotelian perspective and in my mind the correct one, decisions made in the initial flooding of one's mind by an extreme emotion are rash and hasty and do not qualify for his meaning of the use of pathos as a rhetorical tool. Use emotion - by all means - but use balanced emotion.

Philocrates knew in order to get a fair assessment from his peers he needed to let the initial emotion subside and give time for the calm to swim amongst the anger and dilute it to a more reasoned level. He needed to apply kairos to their emotional level in order to be able to present his actions/argument before the public in a reasoned manner, allowing for time and his words to supply a sense of calm to the public's anger.

I guess my general thought here is that the interplay between anger and calm described in Aristotle's third chapter is a sort of loose paradigm for guiding interaction between emotion in the mind of your audience. So it follows that the ethical responsibility of a rhetor to put his/her audience in the correct emotional state (combonation of anger and calm) when presenting an argument to them in order for them to arrive at a collectively good decision.

Enargeia

The four of us road tripped all night. We finally arrive at a ghost town watering hole jam-packed with tourists for the night. We stand close enough to see, but behind the novices, and take turns wearing out a path to the bar. Suddenly it begins. Spotlight on. They strike the first chord. Endorphins take flight and our eyes light up with the stage. We stop conversation mid-sentence and instinctively step forward. The harmonized melody inextricably wound to memorized lyrics course through our veins, amplifying the pre-drank euphoria. Verses relate moments all four of us have separately lived, uniting them to a common experience. We belt the words at all octaves and pitches, oblivious to those around, keeping rhythm by jamming a boot too harshly into the ground. One hand clutching my beer, the other one flying autonomously to the beat. Everyone around us fades into a blurry collage and are attention only acknowledges the stage and the occasional re-affirming glance at one another, nodding that it all was worth it. And the band plays on.

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