Carlin on PTSD

George Carlin, rhetorical critic extraordinaire. Hints of Foucault, echoes of Burke, with a dash of phonetic analysis thrown in for good measure…

Dance your Diss!

Superb Parody

Video parodies this well made make my smile a mile wide!

enculturation: McLuhan at 100

If you haven’t already, I encourage to check out enculturation‘s latest issue: Marshall McLuhan @ 100: Picking Through the Rag and Bone Shop of a Career, launched on the final day of centenary celebrations, 21 years to the day of McLuhan’s death.  Editors David Beard and Kevin Brooks have pulled together quite a stunning issue.

image by stefan.erschwendner, flickr

Winner: Rhetorical Analysis of the Month (Youth Division)

And our winner for Best Rhetorical Analysis in the month of December by someone 12 years of age or younger goes to Riley, who reminds us that analyzing the rhetoric of color choices, gender shaping, and consumer culture can never begin too early. Congratulations, Riley!

Classical Rhetoric: A Manly Introduction

The Art of Manliness has a well written series of primers on classical rhetoric and the five canons.

Check ‘em all out:

Classical Rhetoric 101: An Introduction

Classical Rhetoric 101: A Brief History

The Five Canons: Invention

The Five Canons: Arrangement

The Five Canons: Style

The Five Canons: Memory

The Five Canons: Delivery

With extra rhetoric, please . . .

Rhetoric in the news:

Herman Cain's Rhetoric Pie

It’s true (and perhaps to be expected) that rhetoric is implicitly defined here as bombastic sound-bites, caustic charges thick with generalization, delivered with unexamined confidence. Sadly, we’ve gotten used to having rhetoric framed this way (though we certainly should not accept it). What interests me, though, is the use of “extra” that’s further emphasized with the heaping mess of pizza glob and goop. It points us to a quantitative framing of rhetoric instead of a qualitative one. To stick with the metaphor: rhetoric may be perfectly acceptable as a garnish, a topping to be sprinkled judiciously on something substantive, but if the “toppings” are piled too high and wide we’ll get sick.

It’s a remarkably unproductive way to frame rhetoric that should signal to rhetoricians everywhere that our work is cut out for us . . .

The Perfect Campaign Speech

I would like to see more (a lot more) of this type of rhetorical analysis:

For similar videos check out “Trailer For Every Oscar-Winning Movie Ever,” Charlie Brooker’s “How to Report the News,” and The Onion’s “Breaking News: Some Bullshit Happening Somewhere.”

More please.

“The ‘War on Cars’: A brief history of a rhetorical device

I just found an interesting piece over at grist that charts a genealogy of sorts for the phrase, “War on Cars.”  It a curious expression that’s been used to frame just about any type of regulation of cars, from congestion pricing (in London, for example) to investment in alternative transportation.

Click on image to access article

It doesn’t take much intellectual effort to look around and realize that our urban infrastructures are hardly waging a war on cars.  But the factual absurdity of the phrase doesn’t mean it isn’t rhetorically powerful; maneuvering into a position of victimhood and defensiveness is often an effective move.

Rhetoricus Algorithmica: Persuasion in the Age of the Database

The latest issue of WIRED has a column by Eli Pariser called “Mind Reading: The new profiling technique that learns exactly what makes you tick–and buy.” In it, Pariser explains how internet advertising is moving beyond the state of simply suggesting products you’re likely to be interested in (determined by browsing habits, purchase history, and so on); soon, thanks to folks like Stanford communications grad student Dean Eckles, we’ll be subjected to targeted advertising pitches for those products. Swayed more by appeals based on ethos (your favorite author endorses this book, so buy now!)? A sucker for argumentum ad populum (hey, everybody else is getting one, so how about you?)? Easily influenced by emotional appeals (buy this DVD or the kitty gets it!)? Now marketing execs won’t have to trouble themselves with the hard work of figuring out the complexities of effective ad pitches… computers will do it for them. Wasn’t this how Skynet got started?

Read the article here.
Visit Dean Eckles’ site here.