5. Rhetorical Criticism as Argument
Brockreide defines rhetoric broadly “as including experiences involving written as well as spoken discourse, nonverbal as well as verbal symbols, movements as well as individual events, and functions other than those implied by a narrow conception of persuasion.” For him, “[r]hetoric is the relationship of persons and ideas within a situation.”
That definition is consistent with the definitions you’ve already read, and further underscores that it’s more productive to ask “what definition of rhetoric allows what kinds of insights?” than “how can I come up with a definition of rhetoric that will be the One Definition to Rule them All?”
For Brockreide, argument is the process of how one “reasons…from one idea to the choice of another idea.” That process has five core characteristics:
“an inferential leap” from accepted ideas to new ones, or at least a strengthening of accepted ideas;
“a perceived rationale to justify that leap” (an answer to the basic question of “why?”);
a recognition that claims compete (i.e., that there are always other ways to view a situation);
“a regulation of uncertainty in relation to the selected claim,” meaning that because the arguer asks the audience to make a leap, “certainty can be neither zero nor total”; and
“a willingness to risk a confrontation of that claim” by putting it out there for an audience.
For rhetorical analysis to be useful, it has to achieve all five of these characteristics: the audience for the analysis (typically, a reader of a paper or viewer of a video essay) has to be asked to make a leap from one set of ideas to another, be given reasons and support for that leap, the scope of the claim being argued for must match the support, and the analyst has to take a chance—to put it out there for the audience to judge.
Brockreide goes on to contrast useful arguments in rhetorical analysis with three pseudo-argumentative (my term) moves that analysts sometimes make that are not useful.
Where Criticism Goes Wrong
First Wrong Move: Mere Yay/Boo Opinion
Brockreide argues that if a rhetorical analyst simply praises or denounces the rhetoric they are examining, the analyst is not really examining it at all. All a reader learns is that the analyst likes or hates the rhetoric, which is not particularly significant from a point of view that values argument and the giving of reasons for others to consider.
As another scholar, Edwin Black, put it: "Good criticism is always a surprise. It is a surprise in the sense that you can’t anticipate what a good critic will have to say about a given artifact." Remember that “criticism” and “analysis,” for our purposes, are synonymous. What Black is expressing is that successful rhetorical criticism contributes something that could not be known or seen but for the careful work of the analyst. It helps us to learn about a particular rhetorical effort and also about rhetoric more generally. In that way, it can surprise us by how it builds an argument worth considering.
To avoid making the yay/boo mistake, Brockreide reminds us to state clearly the specific basis for our evaluations as well as any concepts or explanatory ideas we used in making the evaluations. The reader might still disagree—the analyst can try to limit disagreement with careful argument, but can never eliminate it. But at least the reader should be provided with reasons, criteria, carefully crafted claims, and explanations of how and why the analyst made their evaluation.
Second Wrong Move: Mere Description
Analysts might also trip up by leaning too heavily on description, just summarizing or reporting what is going on in the rhetorical artifact that they are working on.
A description is essential for creating a shared understanding between the analyst and the reader, but is not sufficient. The analyst has to do something more than report—they have to try to build some insight for the reader. Analysts who only describe show that some data are present, but don’t help readers figure out what those data mean or why they should care.
Third Wrong Move: Mere Classification
A similar problem arises when the analyst spends too much time trying to show how the rhetorical artifact meets some genre classification or some set of rhetorical concepts and not enough time offering insights (“so what?” moments) about what the creators of the artifact were trying to do in a particular context.
Analysts who merely classify just show that data can be categorized, which again doesn’t show what those data mean.
What Analysis and Argument Enable: Making Knowledge
These are the two ultimate questions that rhetorical analysts take on. They are easy to state and challenging to answer:
A useful rhetorical analysis isn’t just the application of X or Y ideas from rhetorical theory to a particular instance. In other words, the point of a rhetorical analysis isn’t just to analyze a primary rhetorical artifact for its own sake. Nobody wakes up in the morning and says, “I can’t wait to go apply stuff!” The analysis enables you to make your larger point—to make knowledge.
Your work in this course will help you to learn to build “so what?” claims about particular primary rhetorical artifacts themselves as well as “where do we go from here?” claims about recurring problems of rhetoric that your close analysis of this artifact brings up.
The “so what?” focuses on what’s important about this primary artifact by this rhetor in this situation. The “where do we go from here?” focuses on what understanding this artifact helps us understand about larger problems of rhetoric that are not limited just to this one situation.
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