In today’s class:
- A brief introduction to a few rhetorical techniques (10 minutes)
- Time to read and analyze the SOTU address (20 minutes)
- Discuss the SOTU (30 minutes)
- Tweet/Discuss Halloran and Sullivan (13 minutes)
- Homework
Rhetorical Techniques and the State of the Union Address
Because I monopolized all of our last class lecturing on Aristotle, I wanted to hand today’s class over to you. I’m going to give you about 20 minutes to read through Obama’s State of the Union address. The point of this exercise isn’t so much to focus on what Obama is saying, as much as how he is saying it. Let’s pay attention to the following.
In short, how does this speech generate the three primary rhetorical appeals: logos, ethos, and pathos?
I am particularly interested in the SOTU because it is a weird amalgam of all three branches of rhetoric: to the extent that it sets a vision for future policy, it is deliberative and to the extent that it reviews recent accomplishments, it is judicial. Overall, of course, it is largely an epideictic endeavor: one reinforces a particular notion of what it means to be an American.
So, what are the rhetorical techniques to which we should pay attention?
- Inartistic Proof
- Artistic Proof (Enthymeme or Paradigm)
- Balance and Antithesis (when a statement is constructed
- Repetition (either of a particular term or grammatical pattern)
- Division (put simply, where a speaker makes a binary opposition / this or that
- Analogy (whether metaphor or simile)
- Imagery
As you and your partner read through the SOTU, be on the lookout for these techniques. Also, mark off any passages that seem significant or interesting to you and we can discuss them as a group.
Homework
There’s three articles for homework (by Jarratt, Carter, and McComiskey; all three deal with sophistry). There will be a quiz-like-thing on Tuesday on those articles and the Halloran and Sullivan (nothing to freak out about–if you have done the reading, you should do fine on the quiz).
