Rhetoric and Interpretation

Advanced Rhetorical WritingMatt Barton

The Value of Interpretation

• Learning to interpret works of literature and art can help us interpret things like ads, speeches, and terrorism.– Rhetoric can put “literary criticism” to work at

understanding “everyday” things that matter to us.

Rhetorical Interpretation

• Rhetorically interpreting a poem requires a consideration of– the world it depicts– the world it reflects– the word its audiences reside in.

• Rhetoricians consider the circumstances of an object’s creation and its reception over time…History matters.

Genre & Literary Movements

• Works that depart from tradition are really arguments for a new definition of art or literature.– Who gets to decide what is “art” and what is

not?

Effect of Art

• “By reinforcing or challenging values and beliefs, symbolic acts can influence attitudes towards a variety of crucial matters.”

Keatsian Imperative

• “New Criticism” emphasizes “disinterested interest” in art and criticism.– Don’t read things “into” works; only read

things “out” of them.• “Truth of a work” is found strictly in the work itself;

context completely irrelevant.– Leads to a sort of civic detachment and

selfishness.• Literature ought to be instead “equipment

for living.”

Interpreting Symbolic Acts

• Stockhausen: 9/11 was “the greatest work of art imaginable for the whole cosmos.”– “The journalist in Hamburg completely ripped

my statements out of a context, which he had not recorded in its entirety, to use it as a vile attack against my person and the Hamburg Music Festival.” --Stockhausen

Terrorist Rhetoric

• If military strikes are designed to maximize the destruction of enemy resources, terrorist attacks are designed to maximize news coverage.– Terrorists use our own media against us (we

terrorize ourselves).– The terrorists of 9/11 didn’t get to control how

others interpreted their act.

PC• “Political Correctness” concerns an

“ideological” vocabulary.– Substitutes euphemisms for traditional terms

to avoid offending some people.• Police Officer vs. Policeman• “Learning Disability” vs. “Slow” • 40 BCE (Before Common Era) rather than 40 BC

(Before Christ)

Doublespeak

• Doublespeak is “evasive language, language that gives every appearance of imparting information without actually doing so.” – “Rightsizing” vs. Laying People Off– “Strategic Withdrawal” vs. Retreating

Neutral Language

• Taking a stance against PC usually takes as a given that there’s a “neutral language” available.– Burke argues that “terminologies are lenses

through which we see the world.” • These lenses (or “screens”) serve to express and

shape our valuation of matters even if we don’t intend them to.

Screens

• “Pro-Choice” vs. “Pro-Abortion”• “Pro-Life” vs. “Anti-Choice”• “Estate Tax” vs. “Death Tax”• “Liberating Iraq” vs. “Occupying Iraq”• “Freedom Fighters” vs. “Terrorists”• “Sexual Orientation” vs. “Sexual Lifestyle”

You’re Being Politically Correct

• Challenging someone with being PC means doing the following:– Unmasking supposedly neutral terms and

showing them to be persuasive claims– Setting up an opposition between a PC term

and “what it really says”– Accusing the person of having “an agenda.”

Debunking

• It’s easy to fall into the trap of seeing everyone else as having an ideology.– We all engage in rhetoric and struggle with

competing interpretations of the world, right and wrong, and identity.