Page 84 - Cultural Studies A Practical Introduction

68 Rhetoric

Germany in the 1920s and 1930s, for example, they resulted in the actual

formation of “ fight clubs, ” boxing organizations made up largely of dis-
gruntled World War I veterans who felt betrayed by German liberals and
who rose up against them in the Nazi movement.

Student Exercise

Find a use of rhetoric in the world around you and examine how it
works. You might use the Internet to look up the transcript of
Obama ’ s speech to the Democratic National Convention. Does he
use rhetorical devices similar to those employed by Palin to create
identifi cations with his audience and motivate them to action? How
do the ideological beliefs of Obama and his audience determine the
rhetorical frames he employs in his speech?
Or you might choose a current issue that is meaningful to you and
study the way it is addressed differently on Fox News and MSNBC.
Each of these networks is reputed to carry an ideological bias into its
coverage of the news; Fox tends to take a conservative position, and
MSNBC often favors a progressive worldview. This will be most
evident in the political talk shows both networks feature in their
prime time programming. Pay close attention to the language the
hosts use to frame the issue, the visual images that accompany the
discussion, and the political affiliations of the guest commentators

invited on the shows. All of these elements are the result of conscious
decisions made by producers, and work together to build an ideologi-
cal argument. While both networks are technically reporting on the
same reality, you ’ ll probably notice that they take very different
approaches to describing and interpreting that reality. Your task is to
critically analyze what is being implied by the words you hear and
symbols you see on the screen. You may then decide to use rhetorical
strategies to formulate an argument of your own: which broadcast
do you think people should watch? Do you think one channel has a
better grasp of the “ truth ” than the other? How would you use rheto-
ric to persuade a particular audience that your recommendations
should acted upon?