CMST 1150 Study Guide - Final Guide: Rhetorical Criticism, Mnemonic, Cultivation Theory
Document Summary
Rhetoric: has to do with the ways in which signs influence people: accomplished trough signs. Rhetorical criticism: the systematic analysis of an argument about what things are or the way things ought to be conveyed in a text through signs as artifacts. Sophists: a group of professional public speaking experts. Nonartistic proofs: support appeals not invented by the speaker. Artistic proofs: rhetorical appeals invented by the speaker. Canons: rules: intervention- audience centered goal, content, and argument development, arrangement- organizational structure, style- language choice, sentence composition, tropes, and figures, memory- mnemonic devices, delivery- controlled use of voice and body. Middle ages focused on genres: poetics, letter writing, preaching. Neo-aristotelian (new-aristotle) approach: draws from the foundations of rhetoric as conceptualized; first method developed for examining rhetorical criticism of public speeches as distinct from literary criticism of written documents. Step 2: interpreting the text according to the five canons.
