The 5-Sided Lego

Authors

  • Hanna Barker
  • Shawn Beaumont

Keywords:

toys, play, pop culture, gender, construction, LEGO, Burke, pentad

Abstract

The study of rhetoric usually concerns itself with analysis of discourse more clearly identifiable as a text, but often overlooked is how apparently non-textual elements may shape our own personal narratives. However, rhetorical theory can indeed be applied to something like LEGO, that beyond marketing and branding, most people do not immediately consider textual. Ultimately by using the Burkeian pentad as a terministic screen, this project aims to determine how the act of playing with LEGO, and even the LEGO brick itself, serve to construct realities, and how those realities impact our own.

Author Biographies

Hanna Barker

Hanna Barker (author) discovered her affinity for rhetorical studies while an undergraduate at McDaniel College and is now working in the office of Communications and Marketing there. She is fascinated by constitutive rhetoric, the theories of Kenneth Burke, and how rhetorical analysis, when applied to texts we don’t usually imagine as rhetorical (like LEGO), helps us understand a little more about how language constructs our worlds.

Shawn Beaumont

Shawn Beaumont (web developer) is an outdoorsman at heart, Eagle Scout, and English major who’s pursuing a career in Journalism and/or New Media. A Marylander all his life, he’s currently working, studying, and living in Westminster, Maryland at McDaniel College. Rarely far from his mountain bike or his MacBook, he takes his passions seriously and views the world through a slightly different, yet critical lens.

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Published

2013-10-14

Issue

No. 10 (2013)

Section

In This Issue

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