Supplementary TEXTS for Textual semiotics

Edited and adapted by Henrik Kasch, ASB 2005

Table of contents
Market communication and the notion of genre 3 Semiotics for Beginners 10 Short articles by Daniel Kies on ethos, pathos and logos

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Market communication and the notion of genre

(translated and adapted by Henrik Kasch from Frandsen et al (1997), International markedskommunikation i en postmoderne verden, rhus Denmark: Systime, ch. 5)

Genre a good point of departure for analysing market communication

Browsing a sales letter or a leaflet, we can often quickly decide that it is about advertising or market communication in general. On the other hand, however, we tend to give in fairly fast if we are to attempt to categorise all such texts pertaining to market communication. Just try to group the heaps of sales material in your mail for a whole month. Which belongs where? It soon shows that it is impossible to catalogue consistently on the mere basis of graphics, form of address, layout and visual elements. Genre classification and analysis is an attempt to shed light on the diversity of categories. To this end our define genre as aconcept which is integrated and embedded in the IMK model of market communication: Cultural/ Situational Context Media Genre (code)

SENDER

TEXT (rhetorical strategies)

RECEIVER

PRODUCTION

RECEPTION

Referent (for more details on the IMK model see ch. 2 in International markedskommunikation i en postmoderne verden ). The advantage of using this approach to genre is that it enables the vantage point of the market communication professional. A market communication professional will consider and address the vertical axis of the IMK model in preparing texts, namely: cultural and situational context and media as well as have access to rhetorical strategies to carefully select and distill linguistic and/or visual strategic inputs to compose a text (possibly including visuals) serving its communicative goal.

The levels cultural/situational context, media, rhetorical strategies easily come to the fore when takin a specific genre as the starting-point, because on one hand a genre is bound up with a specific medium/media selection and a specific cultural situational context and on the other in its form and content a genre avails itself of certain rhetorical strategies. Thus, it is no co-incidence that a corporate image folder is available or will be distributed on a fair or in a local show room. Such cultural/situational contexts are in fact charateristic of this genre.

Genre analysis - three levels: communicative goal, moves and rhetorical strategies
As the concept of genre is most widely used and mostly pertains to literary theory and was used to tell apart crime fiction from the historical novel, sonnets from couplets, etc, etc. Only of late in discourse analysis and textual semiotics at large has genre become a category used with scientific and methodological rigour to distinguish non-fictional genres, a three-level analysis is proposed here. Three theoretical levels of analysis are distinguished in accounting for a genre: 1) the communicative goal at hand 2) the structure of moves and 3) rhetorical strategies. Drawing on J M Swales (1990)1 and V K Bhatia (1993:13) 2the IMK model defines genre, as follows:
Genre is a recognizable communicative event characterized by a set of communicative goal(s) identified and mutually understood by the members of the professional or academic community in which it regularly occurs. Most often its is highly structured and conventionalized with constraints on allowable contributions in terms of their intent, positioning, form and functional value. These constraints, however, are often exploited by the expert members of the discourse society to achieve private intentions within the framework of socially recognized goals.

According to Swales and Bhatia the communicative goal of a text is by far the most important genre-classification criterion though they admit that content, form, receiver, medium and channel also play a part. The communicative goal may be identified and understood via the discourse community of the genre (its senders and receivers) and determines the linguistic and visual strategies of the genre, i.e. its rhetoric. The communicative goals of a group of texts are therefore suitable criteria for establishing genre membership. Hence, if the communicative goals change, we have a new genre. To account for communicative goals, a linguistic analysis will not suffice. Linguistic knowledge needs to be augmented by socio-cultural, psycholinguistic (including cognitive) text production and text reception aspects. This approach to genre analysis therefore dovetails with the IMK model, as this model pivots on the situational and cultural context and medium selection. The situational context here refers to the immediate situation embedding the communicative event, which is in turn embedded by the general cultural context in which the communicative event is found. A discourse community is defined as a community of people professional or social that identifies and interprets a specific discourse [here: language use associated with a given social practice] according to specific conventions within the community (cf. Swales 1990:2). A discourse community is therefore a set of communicators involved in the same social practice using the same code (and processes of coding). Translated into a market communication context in its most general sense, the discourse community concept embraces firms and their market(s). The discourse of that community reflects the uses of specific language forms that are characteristic of

the communication of the firms with their markets. If we look at the genres in market communication, the discourse community may be further into to subcategories in terms of each genre, sub-genre or variety employed by the discourse community. For instance the industrial market has discourse community consisting of the agents on that market whose communication applies a specific discourse in accordance with conventions established so that e.g. advertisements may be more technical and less corporate image oriented than advertisements on the consumer market. In quantitative terms (number of agents) the industrial market discourse community is smaller than the consumer market, consisting of consumers in a broad sense and of firms operating on the market. In the IMK framework, the communicative goal the action(s) or state(s) that the sender has in mind and which the receiver expects that the reception of the genre in question will lead to. Any genre serves as a communicational tool to achieve specific goals. The communication of news has as its primary goal to keep people informed of the course of various types of events, but may have the sub-goal of influencing the attitudes of the audience, e.g. to place the media in a favourable light, etc. How these communicative goals are achieved by means of a text can to a large extent be exposed by a move structure analysis.

Moves and move structure

Genre analyses undertaken among others by Swales (1990) and Bhatia (1993) have demonstrated that within a specific genre, copywriters are rather consistent in the way they organise their messages. An analysis of the structure of the text can unravel this organisation. The fact is that according to Bhatia a text is structured as a series of moves, with each move having a sub-goal contributing to the overall communicative goal. A classic example of that is the sales letter, whose move structure is expressly stated in standard business letters textbooks as consisting of four goals correponding to 4 moves: 1) arouse interest 2) create desire 3) carry conviction and 4) induce action (apart from the standard moves in business letter: presenting company name in letterhead, giving reference, stating date, salutation, heading, complimentary closing etc.) cf Taylor (2004: 263ff)3. This recipe may then produce exemplary sales letters. The extent to which prescription (this recipe) applies to real data is of course a whole other ball game.

However, with press releases some research has been carried out by Frandsen et al (1997:239ff) and contrary to prescriptive theory demonstrated that a (proto)typical press lease consists of five moves each satisfying a particular sub-goal: 1) Giving genre (entitling the document: Press Release) 2) Summarising central items of info 3) Elaborating on central items of info 4) Stating where further info is available from 5) Enclosing additional documents, photos, etc. as documentation when needed. An example of a press release with the moves 1,2, 3 and 4 move is the press release from the Danish company, GASA, below (taken from Frandsen et al 1997: 240-241):

To sum up, a text consists of parts that realise a communicative sub-goal. In other words a text realises its overall communicative goal via moves, each of which are used to realise a communicative sub-goal in much the same way as a chess player may have a strategy of how her moves (considering the opponents counter moves) will lead to the accomplishment of certain subgoals which will in turn all contribute to the overall goal of winning the game.

When considering a text, one may then look at it as parts used to realise communicative (sub-) goals. However, this implies that text may be generically classified in terms of the moves it consists of so that for every genre a series of specific moves are characteristic and may used to distinguish that genre from other genres. However, for genres it is often the case that certain moves are discriminative (i.e. obligatory - without which the text would not belong to the genre in question) and others are non-discriminative, i.e. containing the move in question does not change the texts genre membership but may be used to expand or supplement the content of the genre (cf. Bhatia). In a press release, e.g. a firm might give its general policy of corporate social responsibility in an effort to strengthen the corporate brand. Analoguously, in a sales letter to arouse interest will be discriminative move. Since genres may be mixed and elaborated on, the most feasible way to classify genres is by way of prototype classification: in that way central and typical members of the genre contain most or all central features, whereas marginal members of the genre only contain a few and may be on the of belonging to another genre.

Rhetorical strategies
To achieve the sub-goal of a specific move, several rhetorical strategies are at ones disposal. By a rhetorical strategy we understand:
An orchestration of textual (linguistic) and non-textual resources (visual, tactile (touch) and olfactory (smell)) which contribute to achieve the sub-goals of the moves.

Irrespective of the rhetorical strategy selected, rhetorical strategies are non-discriminative, i.e. only reflect a certain way in which to realise individual moves. For instance whether one chooses Yours sincerely or Yours faithfully is not a matter of changing the genre but rather a stylistic choice or choice of tone of voice. For a specific genre, there is a tendency to rely on conventional rhetorical choices, i.e. the wording of e.g. complimentary closings and salutations in business letters do not show much variation, such that the rhetorical choices textual and visual themselves are enough to reveal genre membership. Moreover, there is an overall tendency for discourse community to apply certain rhetorical strategies to carry out the individual moves of the genre, even though there may be room for innovation. Just think of the change in the orchestration of rhetorical means in advertising. In advertising, visuals are often used either to portray an ideal consumer with or without the product, or just the product itself or some other more subtle way of promoting a product. Also tactile resources may be drawn on. E.g. a particular quality of paper that is very pleasant to touch or whose coarseness signals environmental awareness may be used to keep or catch the consumers attention, and sometimes ads may even have a very small sample of the perfume inside the paper or appended, i.e. an olfactory strategy is embarked on. Rhetorical strategies are manifold and there combinatorial potential even vaster, therefore I shall conclude by giving below two lists below illustrating ingredients in textual and visual rhetorical strategies: neither list is meant to be exhaustive. Examples of textual (linguistic) rhetorical strategies 1) Using a selective vocabulary: Special terms and collocations (scientific terminology, jargon, trendy vocabulary, etc.) 2) Using individual words with a special and/or specific connotation 3) Using a specific dialect or sociolect 4) Using a code switch (from one language to another, one dialect to another, etc.)

5) Using tropes: metaphor/imagery, metonymy (one thing stands for another, whole for part or part for whole, as in: The factory sacked him (whole for the part) or: Lend me a hand (part for the whole) ) 6) Using slogans and apopthegms (maxims expressed in a few weighty words) 7) Using other rhetorical figures: specialised syntax: re-iteration, redundancy, parallelisms, alliteration, rhyme, onomatopoiea (words imitating sound, as bow-wow for the dogs barking), chiasmus (two lines with mirrored structures, e.g. subject and direct object being reversed in the second line: liked the car and the car liked him), ellipsis, etc 8) Using nominalisation and passive voice or other special syntactic constructions 9) Using the voice or style to imitate a specific ideal sender or appeal to an intended receiver/addressee 10) Using writing with a special orientation or style: self-expressive style, narrative style, expository style, persuasive style, (faked) dialogue 11) Using a specific composition/structure 12) Using intertextuality: relying on the receivers knowledge of other genres/texts; embedding or imitating other genre(s) in a text (interdiscursivity) Examples of visual rhetorical strategies 1) Using a specific placement of logo/brand/company name 2) Using a typography (italics, bold-faced letters, etc) 3) Placing and using captions, etc. 4) Using specif colour(s) and colour combinations 5) Using a specific ratio of text and visuals, i.e. visual or textual dominance 6) Using a specific composition (placement, format) 7) Using a specific category: realistic, symbolic, natural, posing figures, etc. 8) Text and visuals dynamics: functions: connecting, anchoring or supplementing function 9) Using visual intertextuality/interdiscursivity: using a specific style: impressionism, expressionism, surrealism, etc. 10) Using visual rhetorical figures and tropes, e.g. metonymy as e.g. in sign with bed stand for a place to sleep 11) Using specific visual techniques

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The text below is taken from: http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/sem06.html) Semiotics for Beginners - Denotation,
Connotation and Myth

Daniel Chandler

Beyond its 'literal' meaning (its denotation), a particular word may have connotations: for instance, sexual connotations. 'Is there any such thing as a single entendre?' quipped the comic actor Kenneth Williams (we all know that 'a thing is a phallic symbol if it's longer than it's wide', as the singer Melanie put it). In semiotics, denotation and connotation are terms describing the relationship between the signifier and its signified, and an analytic distinction is made between two types of signifieds: a denotative signified and a connotative signified. Meaning includes both denotation and connotation. 'Denotation' tends to be described as the definitional, 'literal', 'obvious' or 'commonsense' meaning of a sign. In the case of linguistic signs, the denotative meaning is what the dictionary attempts to provide. For the art historian Erwin Panofsky, the denotation of a representational visual image is what all viewers from any culture and at any time would recognize the image as depictingi (Panofsky 1970a, 51-3).Such a definition raises issues - all viewers? One suspects that this excludes very young children and those regarded as insane, for instance. But if it really means 'culturally well-adjusted' then it is already culturespecific, which takes us into the territory of connotation. The term 'connotation' is used to refer to the socio-cultural and 'personal' associations (ideological, emotional etc.) of the sign. These are typically related to the interpreter's class, age, gender, ethnicity and so on. Signs are more 'polysemic' - more open to interpretation - in their connotations than their denotations. Denotation is sometimes regarded as a digital code (HK: citing Chandler: The concept of the 'code' is fundamental in semiotics. Whilst Saussure dealt only with the overall code of language, he did of course stress that signs are not meaningful in isolation, but only when they are interpreted in relation to each other. It was another linguistic structuralist, Roman Jakobson, who emphasized that the production and interpretation of texts depends upon the existence of codes or conventions for communication and connotation as an analogue code) As Roland Barthes noted, Saussure's model of the sign focused on denotation at the expense of connotation and it was left to subsequent theorists (notably Barthes himself) to offer an account of this important dimension of meaning ii (Barthes 1967, 89ff). In 'The Photographic Message' (1961) and 'The Rhetoric of the Image' (1964), Barthes argued that in photography connotation can be

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(analytically) distinguished from denotationiii (Barthes 1977, 15-31, 32-51). As Fiske puts it 'denotation is what is photographed, connotation is how it is photographediv' (Fiske 1982, 91). However, in photography, denotation is foregrounded at the expense of connotation. The photographic signifier seems to be virtually identical with its signified, and the photograph appears to be a 'natural sign' produced without the intervention of a code (Hall 1980, 132)v. Barthes initially argued that only at a level higher than the 'literal' level of denotation, could a code be identified - that of connotation (we will return to this issue when we discuss codes). By 1973 Barthes had shifted his ground on this issue. In analysing the realist literary text Barthes came to the conclusion that 'denotation is not the first meaning, but pretends to be so; under this illusion, it is ultimately no more than the last of the connotations (the one which seems both to establish and close the reading), the superior myth by which the text pretends to return to the nature of language, to language as nature'vi (Barthes 1974, 9). Connotation, in short, produces the illusion of denotation, the illusion of language as transparent and of the signifier and the signified as being identical. Thus denotation is just another connotation. From such a perspective denotation can be seen as no more of a 'natural' meaning than is connotation but rather as a process of naturalization. Such a process leads to the powerful illusion that denotation is a purely literal and universal meaning which is not at all ideological, and indeed that those connotations which seem most obvious to individual interpreters are just as 'natural'. According to an Althusserian reading, when we first learn denotations, we are also being positioned within ideology by learning dominant connotations at the same time (Silverman 1983, 30)vii. Consequently, whilst theorists may find it analytically useful to distinguish connotation from denotation, in practice such meanings cannot be neatly separated. Most semioticians argue that no sign is purely denotative - lacking connotation. Valentin Voloshinov insisted that no strict division can be made between denotation and connotation because 'referential meaning is moulded by evaluation... meaning is always permeated with value judgement' (Voloshinov 1973, 105)viii. There can be no neutral, objective description which is free of an evaluative element. David Mick and Laura Politi note that choosing not to differentiate denotation and connotation is allied to regarding comprehension and interpretation as similarly inseparableix (Mick & Politi 1989, 85). For most semioticians both denotation and connotation involve the use of codes. Structural semioticians who emphasise the relative arbitrariness of signifiers and social semioticians who emphasize diversity of interpretation and the importance of cultural and historical contexts are hardly likely to accept the notion of a 'literal' meaning. Denotation simply involves a broader consensus. The denotational meaning of a sign would be broadly agreed upon by members of the same culture, whereas 'nobody is ever taken to task because their connotations are incorrect', so no inventory of the connotational meanings generated by any sign could ever be complete (Barnard 1996, 83)x. However, there is a danger here of stressing the 'individual subjectivity' of connotation: 'intersubjective' responses are shared to some degree by members of a culture; with any individual example only a limited range of connotations would make any sense. Connotations are not purely 'personal' meanings - they are

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determined by the codes to which the interpreter has access. Cultural codes provide a connotational framework since they are 'organized around key oppositions and equations', each term being 'aligned with a cluster of symbolic attributes' (Silverman 1983, 36). Certain connotations would be widely recognized within a culture. Most adults in Western cultures would know that a car can connote virility or freedom. In the following extract from his essay 'Rhetoric of the Image', Roland Barthes demonstrates the subtlety and power of connotation in the context of advertising. Here we have a Panzani advertisement: some packets of pasta, a tin, a sachet, some tomatoes, onions, peppers, a mushroom, all emerging from a half-open string bag, in yellows and greens on a red background. Let us try to 'skim off' the different messages it contains. The image immediately yields a first message, whose substance is linguistic; its supports are the caption, which is marginal, and the labels, these being inserted into the natural disposition of the scene, 'en abyme'. The code from which this message has been taken is none other than that of the French language; the only knowledge required to decipher it is a knowledge of writing and of French. In fact, this message can itself be further broken down, for the sign Panzani gives not simply the name of the firm but also, by its assonance, a additional signified, that of 'Italianicity'. The linguistic message is therefore twofold (at least in this particular image): denotational and connotational. Since, however, we have here only a single typical sign, namely that of articulated (written) language, it will be counted as one message. Putting aside the linguistic message, we are left with the pure image (even if the labels are part of it, anecdotally). This image straightaway provides a series of discontinuous signs. First (the order is unimportant as these signs are not linear), the idea that what we have in the scene represented is a return from the market. A signified which itself implies two euphoric values: that of the freshness of the products and that of the essentially domestic preparation for which they are destined. Its signifier is the half-open bag which lets the provisions spill out over the table, 'unpacked'. To read this first sign requires only a knowledge which is in some sort implanted as part of the habits of a very widespread culture where 'shopping around for oneself' is opposed to the hasty stocking up (preserves, refrigerators) of a more 'mechanical' civilization. A second sign is more or less equally evident; its signifier is the bringing together of the tomato, the pepper and the tricoloured hues ( ll d) f th p t it i ifi d i It l th It li i it Thi i

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stands in a relation of redundancy with the connoted sign of the linguistic message (the Italian assonance of the name Panzani) and the knowledge it draws upon is already more particular; it is a specifically 'French' knowledge (an Italian would barely perceive the connotation of the name, no more probably than he would the Italianicity of tomato and pepper), based on a familiarity with certain tourist stereotypes. Continuing to explore the image (which is not to say that it is not entirely clear at the first glance), there is no difficulty in discovering at least two other signs: in the first, the serried collection of different objects transmits the idea of a total culinary service, on the one hand as though Panzani furnished everything necessary for a carefully balanced dish and on the other as though the concentrate in the tin were equivalent to the natural produce surrounding it; in the other sign, the composition of the image, evoking the memory of innumerable alimentary paintings, sends us to an aesthetic signified: the 'nature morte' or, as it is better expressed in other languages, the 'still life'; the knowledge on which this sign depends is heavily cultural. (Barthes 1977, 33) Connotation and denotation are often described in terms of levels of representation or levels of meaning. Roland Barthes adopted from Louis Hjelmslev the notion that there are different orders of signification (Barthes 1957xi; Hjelmslev xii 1961, 114ff). The first order of signification is that of denotation: at this level there is a sign consisting of a signifier and a signified. Connotation is a second-order of signification which uses the denotative sign (signifier and signified) as its signifier and attaches to it an additional signified. In this framework connotation is a sign which derives from the signifier of a denotative sign (so denotation leads to a chain of connotations). This tends to suggest that denotation is an underlying and primary meaning - a notion which many other commentators have challenged. Barthes himself later gave priority to connotation, and in 1971 noted that it was no longer easy to separate the signifier from the signified, the ideological from the 'literal' (Barthes 1977, 166)xiii. In passing, we may note that this formulation underlines the point that 'what is a signifier or a signified depends entirely on the level at which the analysis operates: a signified on one level can become a signifier on another level' (Willemen 1994, 105)xiv. This is the mechanism by which signs may seem to signify one thing but are loaded with multiple meanings. Changing the form of the signifier while keeping the same signified can generate different connotations. Changes of style or tone may involve different connotations, such as when using different typefaces for exactly the same text, or changing from sharp focus to soft focus when taking a photograph. The choice of words often involves connotations, as in references to 'strikes' vs. 'disputes', 'union demands' vs. 'management offers', and so on. Tropes such as metaphor generate connotations.

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Connotation is not a purely paradigmatic dimension, as Saussure's characterization of the paradigmatic dimension as 'associative' might suggest. Whilst absent signifiers with which it is associated are clearly a key factor in generating connotations, so too are syntagmatic associations. The connotations of a signifier relate in part to the other signifiers with which it occurs within a particular text. However, referring to connotation entirely in terms of paradigms and syntagms confines us to the language system, and yet connotation is very much a question of how language is used. A purely structuralist account also limits us to a synchronic perspective and yet both connotations and denotations are subject not only to socio-cultural variability but also to historical factors: they change over time. Signs referring to disempowered groups (such as 'woman') can be seen as having had far more negative denotations as well as negative connotations than they do now because of their framing within dominant and authoritative codes of their time - including even supposedly 'objective' scientific codes. Fiske warns that 'it is often easy to read connotative values as denotative facts' (Fiske 1982, 92)xv. Just as dangerously seductive, however, is the tendency to accept denotation as the 'literal', 'self-evident' 'truth'. Semiotic analysis can help us to counter such habits of mind. Whilst the dominant methodologies in semiotic analysis are qualitative, semiotics is not incompatible with the use of quantitative techniques. In 1957 the psychologist Charles Osgood published a book on The Measurement of Meaning together with some of his colleagues (Osgood et al. 1957)xvi. In it these communication researchers outlined a technique called the semantic differential for the systematic mapping of connotations (or 'affective meanings'). The technique involves a pencil-and-paper test in which people are asked to give their impressionistic responses to a particular object, state or event by indicating specific positions in relation to at least nine pairs of bipolar adjectives on a scale of one to seven. The aim is to locate a concept in 'semantic space' in three dimensions: evaluation (e.g. good/bad); potency (e.g. strong/weak); and activity (e.g. active/passive). The method has proved useful in studying attitudes and emotional reactions. It has been used, for instance, to make comparisons between different cultural groups. Whilst the technique has been used fairly widely in social science, it has not often been used by semioticians (including the self-styled 'scientist of connotations', Roland Barthes), although binary oppositions have routinely provided theoretical building-blocks for structuralist semioticians. Related to connotation is what Roland Barthes refers to as myth. We usually associate myths with classical fables about the exploits of gods and heroes. But for Barthes myths were the dominant ideologies of our time. In a departure from Hjelmslev's model Barthes argues that the orders of signification called denotation and connotation combine to produce ideology - which has been described (though not by Barthes) as a third order of signification (Fiske & Hartley 1978, 43). In a very famous example from his essay 'Myth Today' (in Mythologies), Barthes illustrates this concept of myth:

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I am at the barber's, and a copy of ParisMatch is offered to me. On the cover, a young Negro in a French uniform is saluting, with his eyes uplifted, probably fixed on a fold of the tricolour. All this is the meaning of the picture. But, whether naively or not, I see very well what it signifies to me: that France is a great Empire, that all her sons, without any colour discrimination, faithfully serve under her flag, and that there is no better answer to the detractors of an alleged colonialism than the zeal shown by this Negro in serving his so-called oppressors. I am therefore again faced with a greater semiological system: there is a signifier, itself already formed with a previous system (a black soldier is giving the French salute); there is a signified (it is here a purposeful mixture of Frenchness and militariness); finally, there is a presence of the signified through the signifier... In myth (and this is the chief peculiarity of the latter), the signifier is already formed by the signs of the language... Myth has in fact a double function: it points out and it notifies, it makes us understand something and it imposes it on us... One must put the biography of the Negro in parentheses if one wants to free the picture, and prepare it to receive its signified... The form does not suppress the meaning, it only impoverishes it, it puts it at a distance... It is this constant game of hide-and-seek between the meaning and the form which defines myth. The form of myth is not a symbol: the Negro who salutes is not the symbol of the French Empire: he has too much presence, he appears as a rich, fully experienced, spontaneous, innocent, indisputable image. But at the same time this presence is tamed, put at a distance, made almost transparent; it recedes a little, it becomes the accomplice of a concept which comes to it fully armed, French imperiality... Myth is... defined by its intention... much more than by its literal sense... In spite of this, its intention is somehow frozen, purified, eternalized, made absent by this literal sense (The French Empire? It's just a fact: look at this good Negro who salutes like one of our own boys). This constituent ambiguity... has two consequences for the signification, which henceforth appears both like a notification and like a statement of fact... French imperiality condemns the saluting Negro to be nothing more than an instrumental signifier, the Negro suddenly hails me in the name of French imperiality; but at the same moment the Negro's salute thickens, becomes vitrified, freezes into an eternal reference meant to establish French imperiality... We reach here the very principle of myth: it transforms history into nature... In the f th ldi r N r h ti t rid f i rt i l t Fr h i p ri lit (

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the contrary, since what must be actualized is its presence); it is the contingent, historical, in one word: fabricated, quality of colonialism. Myth does not deny things, on the contrary, its function is to talk about them; simply, it purifies them, it makes them innocent, it gives them a natural and eternal justification, it gives them a clarity which is not that of an explanation but that of a statement of fact. If I state the fact of French imperiality without explaining it, I am very near to finding that it is natural and goes without saying: I am reassured. In passing from history to nature, myth acts economically: it abolishes the complexity of human acts, it gives them the simplicity of essences, it does away with all dialectics, with any going back beyond what is immediately visible, it organizes a world which is without contradictions... Things appear to mean something by themselves... (Barthes 1987)

Signs and codes are generated by myths and in turn serve to maintain them. Popular usage of the term 'myth' suggests that it refers to beliefs which are demonstrably false, but the semiotic use of the term does not necessarily suggest this. Myths can be seen as extended metaphors. Like metaphors, myths help us to make sense of our experiences within a culture (Lakoff & Johnson 1980, 1856)xvii. They express and serve to organize shared ways of conceptualizing something within a culture. Semioticians in the Saussurean tradition treat the relationship between nature and culture as relatively arbitrary (Lvi-Strauss 1972, 90, 95)xviii. For Barthes, myths serve the ideological function of naturalization (Barthes 1977, 45-6). Their function is to naturalize the cultural - in other words, to make dominant cultural and historical values, attitudes and beliefs seem entirely 'natural', 'normal', self-evident, timeless, obvious 'common-sense' - and thus objective and 'true' reflections of 'the way things are'. Contemporary sociologists argue that social groups tend to regard as 'natural' whatever confers privilege and power upon themselves. Barthes saw myth as serving the ideological interests of the bourgeoisie. 'Bourgeois ideology... turns culture into nature,' he declares (Barthes 1974, 206). George Lakoff and Mark Johnson outline key features of the myth of objectivism which is dominant and pervasive in Western culture - a myth which allies itself with scientific truth, rationality, accuracy, fairness and impartiality and which is reflected in the discourse of science, law, government, journalism, morality, business, economics and scholarship (Lakoff & Johnson 1980, 188-9). Myths can function to hide the ideological function of signs and codes. The power of such myths is that they 'go without saying' and so appear not to need to be deciphered, interpreted or demystified. Differences between the three orders of signification are not clear-cut, but for descriptive and analytic purposes some theorists distinguish them along the following lines. The first (denotative) order (or level) of signification is seen as primarily representational and relatively self-contained. The second

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(connotative) order of signification reflects 'expressive' values which are attached to a sign. In the third (mythological or ideological) order of signification the sign reflects major culturally-variable concepts underpinning a particular worldview - such as masculinity, femininity, freedom, individualism, objectivism, Englishness and so on. Susan Hayward offers a useful example of the three orders of signification in relation to a photograph of Marilyn Monroe: At the denotative level this is a photograph of the movie star Marilyn Monroe. At a connotative level we associate this photograph with Marilyn Monroe's star qualities of glamour, sexuality, beauty - if this is an early photograph - but also with her depression, drug-taking and untimely death if it is one of her last photographs. At a mythic level we understand this sign as activating the myth of Hollywood: the dream factory that produces glamour in the form of the stars it constructs, but also the dream machine that can crush them - all with a view to profit and expediency. (Hayward 1996, 310)xix The semiotic analysis of cultural myths involves an attempt to deconstruct the ways in which codes operate within particular popular texts or genres, with the goal of revealing how certain values, attitudes and beliefs are supported whilst others are suppressed. The task of 'denaturalizing' such cultural assumptions is problematic when the semiotician is also a product of the same culture, since membership of a culture involves 'taking for granted' many of its dominant ideas. Nevertheless, where we seek to analyse our own cultures in this way it is essential to try to be explicitly reflexive about 'our own' values.

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Short articles by Daniel Kies on ethos, pathos and logos

From http://papyr.com/hypertextbooks/engl_101/pathos.htm Downloaded and adapted by Henrik Kasch

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Daniel Kies Department of English College of DuPage

For Aristotle, the writers' ethos meant the degree of credibility or trustworthiness that authors establish with the audience through their writing. Ethos is one of the three types of persuasion along, with logos and pathos. Ethos, a Greek term from which the word ethics derives, refers to the ethical appeal of the rhetor. Through tone (see invented ethos below), an author's character and attitude toward his/her audience and subject becomes clear to the audience: this forms the basis of the author's ethical appeal. The author's character is what gives value to the ideas in the argument and thus provides support for the arguments since the audience trusts the speaker. Aristotle recognized two kinds of ethos invented and situated (Crowley 84). Invented ethos develops
in the discourse by the tone and attitude the rhetor takes toward his audience and subject. If a rhetor appears unbiased, even-handed, and fair as she/he begins an argument dealing with a controversial subject, chances are that the audience is more inclined to listen to the rhetor's argument and to consider the rhetor to be honest, forthright, and reliable as a source of information about that subject. However, the rhetor probably has some pre-existing reputation, and that too can be used to establish credibility with the audience. One tends to listen to the "experts" when seeking information about a subject. If someone such as President Clinton were to discuss the influence of big money in contemporary American politics, the audience is likely to know him, as an established character, and to recognize him as a person who has enormous knowledge of this issue. Notice that personal character and ethical character are two different things, though often rhetoricians merge the two. A person can have enormous credibility about a subject despite what you think of him or her as a person. President Clinton is a good example here, as is someone like Dennis Rodman. No matter what you think of Rodman's character as a person, when Rodman speaks about basketball, he has enormous credibility on that subject something that advertisers will pay handsomely for to get his product endorsements. (Admittedly, though, personal character does influence an audience as well: Michael Jordan's personal and ethical character make him even more attractive to advertisers of breakfast cereals as well as athletic equipment.)

goodwill. The rhetor establishes intelligence by demonstrating knowledge of the subject. Rhetors often attempt to combine common sense with logical arguments in favor of their position to establish ethos. Discussing different, and often conflicting, viewpoints on a subject also demonstrates that the rhetor is intelligent, wise, and unbiased. Since the audience consists of as many opinions as people, it is important for the rhetor to recognize those differing viewpoints. Such mental flexibility only helps the author build ethical appeal, enhancing persuasion.

Rhetors can establish credibility by demonstrating three characteristics: intelligence, virtue, and

Virtue and goodwill are the remaining traits that help make an author believable. Writers can build
ethical appeal with an audience by stating their beliefs, values, and priorities regarding the subject clearly from the beginning. (See endnote on assumptionsxx) If writers can explicitly state their beliefs and

20

values, and if writers can show that their beliefs and values match those held by the majority of the audience, then the writers have an easier task in building ethical appeal with the audience. If those beliefs do not match the audience's, writers then need to establish the grounds for changing the audience's beliefs. Goodwill helps the writer establish those grounds. If writers project an attitude that shows concern for the audience's viewpoint and respect for the audience's intelligence, if writers show sincerity and common sense, then the audience is more likely to change its ideas too. Both qualities help the author persuade the audience.

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Jackie Joyner-Kersee with the mature athlete in an ad that announces Nike's P.L.A.Y. (Participate in the Lives of America's Youth) campaign, a campaign sponsored by Nike to promote the athletic endeavors of young children. Using Joyner-Kersee's story and image helps add ethical appeal to the campaign,

Consider the above Nike ad. That manufacturer of athletic apparel combines the images of a young

22

since she gives testimony to the importance of athletics in her life. (It's ironic though that Nike used third world child labor to manufacture some of its most expensive and profitable clothing.)

Talmadge (157) noted that the writer's attitude toward his audience and subject is the central to

establishing ethical appeal . The range of attitudes extends from formality to informality. The rhetor who establishes a formal relationship with his audience maintains "an aloof dignity," suitable for serious discourse. An informal relationship between the speaker and the audience is suitable when the rhetor wants to demonstrate a connection to the audience as a group of individuals. One sees this informal relationship between speaker and audience among a group friends talking or among family members gathered together. The writer anticipates which attitude will work best for a particular audience at an early stage of the writing process and then carefully maintains that attitude throughout the work (Talmadge 159). This fact leads us to understand the importance of audience in rhetorical analysis.

from more formal to less formal stance. We can see this clearly in debates, for example. When Kerry and Bush "debated" for the first time in early October, 2004, both speakers where careful to sound formal when discussing the reasons for going to war in Iraq (lest someone should perceive them as flip or ill-informed), but both were also much less formal when talking about the consequences of war. Bush became much less formal when talking about comforting the families of those who lost loved ones in war, and Kerry likewise was much less formal when discussing the consequences of his combat service in Vietnam. It was appropriate that both speakers shift their level of formality at these points; otherwise, someone might perceive one or the other as cold, insensitive, or uncaring. Thus, ethos must attend to the various types of audiences and to shifts in subject matter if writers are to address their audiences successfully. Just as one must adjust his or her language to communicate effectively with a child, so too the writer must be able to communicate in the specific type of language used by the audience.

However, the writer's attitude can change over the course of a document or speech. Writers can shift

The writer's attitude toward audience and subject becomes evident through tone. Tone is the "feeling"
that readers perceive about the writer's attitude. Tone develops through the writer's choice of vocabulary and sentence structure. Rhetoricians often argue that the tone of a successful speech will seem inseparable from the content. "This effect is achieved by the speaker who keenly aware of his own attitude toward his material, who deliberately sustains in his mind in the proper tone, and who remains in full control of it as he speaks" (Talmadge 151).

23

Martin Luther King Jr. understood the power of ethos full well.
He was able to convey in writing a respect for subject and audience, an intelligence and superior degree of knowledge, that combined to create for him enormous credibility. "His voice and moral stature were eloquent weapons in the fight for civil rights and integration in the 1960s" (Horner 51). In his "Letter from Birmingham Jail," excerpted at right, King calmly explains to several priests, rabbis, and ministers in Birmingham who felt he was an "outside agitator," unwelcomed in their town, why he joined the protests in Birmingham. Notice the first paragraph's even, rational tone. Notice the citation of the Apostle Paul in the second paragraph. These help to build King's ethical appeal within an audience that is very hostile toward his actions. "He leaves his readers with the firm impression that he is a person of intelligence, virtue and goodwill arguing a just cause and it is in his words, sentences, and allusions that King establishes his character" (Horner 54).

"Several months ago our local affiliate here in Birmingham invited us to be on call to engage in a nonviolent direct action program if such were deemed necessary. We readily consented and when the hour came we lived up to our promises. So I am here, along with several members of my staff, because I have basic organizational ties here. Beyond this, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the eighth century prophets left their little villages and carried their "thus saith the Lord" far beyond the boundaries of their home towns; and just as the Apostle Paul left his little village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to practically every hamlet and city of the Graeco-Roman world, I too am compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my particular home town. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid."

References
Emotional Appeal: Pathos
(Adapted by HK)

Crowley, Sharon. Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students. New York: Macmillan, 1994. Horner, Winifred Bryan. Rhetoric in the Classical Tradition. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1988. Talmadge, John E. and James B. Haman and Fred Burnhauser. The Rhetoric Reader. Atlanta: Scott, Foresman and Company 1962.

Pathos, also called the pathetic or emotional appeals, persuades

audiences by arousing the emotions (Lanham 74). In his Rhetoric, Aristotle argued that there are two different sources of the emotional appeals. First, the rhetor may use enargeia. The word 'enargeia' means literally "in work" energizing or actualizing. It refers to the rhetor's goal of arousing the passions within the audience to move them to act (Corbett 319). For example, consider the Save the Children ad here. (You may click on the ad to see it enlarged.) The ad uses a photo of a small child, so malnourished that his bones are clearly visible under his skin. He sits huddled in the open air, weak, in a fetal position. A vulture sits, waiting, in the background. The images and text in this ad are designed to have the maximum emotional effect for one thing: to motivate the reader to act to make an act of charity.

Enargeia and suasive language work together with ethos and logos to create a

powerful, moving argument that some ancient rhetoricians described as word magic

24

(Nash 209).

Effective use of emotional

appeal is also credited with saving the political career of then Senator Richard Nixon. In 1952, it was discovered that he had accepted several "gifts" from campaign contributors, gifts that he later had to return.

The scandal came at a bad time,

since Nixon was chosen to be Eisenhower's Vice-Presidential running mate. Under pressure, Nixon made a public accounting of all his assets and an apology for accepting the gifts. Although the speech has several effective emotional appeals, this speech has become known as the "Checkers Speech" since he uses his child's dog, Checkers, as an opportunity to make the most memorable emotional appeal to his audience. I have excerpted the relevant paragraphs at right.

Richard Nixon

"One other thing I probably should tell you because if we don't they'll probably be saying this about me too, we did get something a gift after the election. A man down in Texas heard Pat on the radio mention the fact that our two youngsters would like to have a dog. And, believe it or not, the day before we left on this campaign trip we got a message from Union Station in Baltimore saying they had a package for us. We went down to get it. You know what it was? It was a little cocker spaniel dog in a crate that he'd sent all the way from Texas. Black and white spotted. And our little girl Tricia, the 6-year old named it Checkers. And you know, the kids, like all kids, love the dog and I just want to say this right now, that regardless of what they say about it, we're gonna keep it."

Checkers, the dog.

The most powerful example of emotional appeal I can think of occurs in Martin
Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail." In April of 1963, a young, relatively unknown minister left his home and church in Atlanta, Georgia to help his friends and colleagues protest nonviolently against segregation and discrimination in Birmingham, Alabama. That minister, Martin Luther King, Jr., was arrested and held in jail. While in jail, several priests, rabbis, and ministers published a letter in the Birmingham newspaper, calling this young minister's actions unwise and poorly timed. Their letter suggested that King and other civil rights leaders should just wait, that the life was bound to get better for American

25

blacks, if they just waited.

English, his "Letter from Birmingham Jail." In the following excerpt from the letter, notice King's use of suasive language, especially how he turns pejorative language to his purpose. Notice too his use of repetition in sentence structure, a rhetorical device we will study later, called parallelism (HK: creating coherence and rhetorical force by repeating the same sentence structure).
"We have waited for more than three hundred and forty years for our constitutional and Godgiven rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jet-like speed toward the goal of political independence, and we still creep at horse and buggy pace toward the gaining of a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. I guess it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, 'Wait.' But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your M. L. King, Jr. mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick, brutalize and even kill your black brothers and sisters with impunity; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see the depressing clouds of inferiority begin to form in her little mental sky, and see her begin to distort her little personality by unconsciously developing a bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son asking in agonizing pathos: 'Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?'; when you take a cross-country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading 'white' and 'colored'; when your first name becomes 'nigger,' your middle name becomes 'boy' (however old you are) and your last name becomes 'John,' and your wife and mother are never given the respected title 'Mrs.'; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tip-toe stance never quite knowing what to expect next, and plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of 'nobodiness'; then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait."

In response to that editorial, King wrote one of the greatest pieces of literature in

King's sparing use of pathos in this letter is the best example I can give you to
illustrate the power of emotional appeal.

References
Corbett, Edward P. J. Classical Rhetoric for Modern Students, 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1971. Crowley, Sharon. Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students. New York: Macmillan, 1994.

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Lanham, Richard A. A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967. Nash, Walter. Rhetoric. Cambridge: Basil Blackwell Inc., 1989

Rational Appeal: Logos

Logos, along with ethos and pathos, make up a means of persuasion called the three appeals three ways of persuading an audience (Covino and Jolliffe 15). Logos translates as "word" or "reason," and in rhetoric, logos refers to different systems of reasoning, working together to persuade an audience. Logos, pathos, and ethos are different but complementary methods of persuasion. Ethos moves an audience by proving the credibility and trustworthiness of the rhetor, pathos seeks to change the attitudes and actions of the audience by playing to the emotions of the audience, and logos persuades through the powers of reasoning (Covino and Jolliffe 17).

Developing Logos
For the ancient Greeks, logos meant more than logic or reasoning alone: it meant "thought plus action"
(Covino and Jolliffe 17), "thought" being the ideas themselves and "action" being the way in which those ideas are presented to the audience. Logos appeals to patterns, conventions, and modes of reasoning that the audience finds convincing and persuasive (Covino and Jolliffe 17). Thus, these patterns and conventions might be more than the use of pure reason or logic alone. These also include how the information is presented, not just what the information is. In making decisions about the best way to use logos, the writer must answer three questions: 1. What do we believe, think, or feel in common? 2. Are the premises, or evidence, for the argument just and appropriate? and 3. Does the proper conclusion follow from the assumptions of the premises and what would prevent the audience from accepting the conclusion? (Covino and Jolliffe 17).

reasons and proofs to sway that audience and to pick the best methods of presentation so that the audience is more likely to be accept what the writers offers as proof.

Accurately assessing the audience and the subject allows the writer the best chance to pick the best

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Consider, for example this excerpt (at right) from Martin

Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail." King is able to present the facts, both of the theory underlying nonviolent resistance, in the first paragraph of this quote, and of the specifics of injustice, in the second paragraph.

"In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: 1) Collection of the facts to determine whether injustices are alive. 2) Negotiation. 3) Self-purification and 4) Direct action. We have gone through all of these steps in Birmingham. There can be no gainsaying of the fact that racial injustice engulfs this community. Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States. Its ugly record of police brutality is known in every section of this country. Its unjust treatment of Negroes in the courts is a notorious reality. There have been more unsolved bombings of Negro homes and churches in Birmingham than any city in this nation. These are the hard, brutal and unbelievable facts. On the basis of these conditions, Negro leaders sought to negotiate with the city fathers. But the political leaders consistently refused to engage in good faith negotiation."

In the second paragraph, too, King uses the specifics of racial

injustice in one town, the police brutality, the unequal treatment in the courts, the bombings of black homes and churches, the fruitless negotiations, to warrant his actions in Birmingham.

This is an excellent example of a writer using rational appeal

to sway the audience.

Kinds of Logic
Logic functions as as the "thought" component of "thought

plus action" (logos). Logical arguments consist of a set of premises, or statements of evidence, that lead to conclusions. Obviously, not all conclusions we humans derive are valid conclusions, so the difficulty we have in evaluating logical arguments is distinguishing the valid from the invalid ones. For example, consider this example of a valid argument: All men are mortal. Aristotle is a man. Aristotle is mortal.

Compare it to this example of an invalid argument:

Cats are mortal. Aristotle is mortal. Aristotle is a cat. The "error" of the invalid argument above has to do the "fallacy of the undistributed middle." It is a kind of error based on the structure of these kinds of arguments. Sometimes the correctness of an argument depends on its form, not on the veracity of the premises. With deductive logic, the conclusion is a necessary consequence of the premises, based on rules pertaining to valid arguments: 1. If A implies B and B implies C, then A implies C. 2. If A implies B and A is true, then B is true. 3. If A implies B and B is false, then A is false. The most common type of deductive logic is a syllogism, exemplified in the examples above. And the source of the "error" in the invalid syllogism above can be found via rule 2: if A ("Cats are mortal.") implies B ("Aristotle is mortal."), then B is true. However, in the invalid syllogism, A does not imply B (since Aristotle does not belong to the class "cat"), thus leading to the "fallacy of the undistributed middle."

Logicians often divide their subject into two large domains of study deductive and inductive logic.

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With inductive logic, coming to a valid conclusion is a bit more tricky: the conclusion is only more or less probable on the basis of the premises and often not possible to be proven true absolutely. Because of this, the audience and writer must evaluate the grounds for belief or the validity of the premises. The premises of inductive arguments are based on generalizations, analogies, or causal connections. Generalization are statements that make an assertion about all members of a class of objects (such as "Cats are mortal"), and an analogy is a comparison between two or more things which seem similar in some respects. Causal connections examine or establish the cause and effect relationship between elements of the discourse. For example, if a person sees no change at all after turn the key in a car's ignition no sound, no lights, no noise one might suspect a dead battery, making a causal connection.

Syllogisms and Enthymemes: The Processes of Logos

that its premises are true, a process he called a syllogism. A syllogism is the most common type of deductive logic. Aristotle thought of it as the "main instrument for reaching scientific conclusions." The "All men are mortal..." argument from earlier is an example of a syllogism.

Aristotle analyzed the process whereby a statement can be logically inferred to be true from the fact

Syllogisms have a consistent structure. They must have three terms (signified below by the colors red,
green, and blue), and one of the three terms must occur in both premises. Finally, the term occurring in both premises must be modified by "all" or "none" at least once. For example, All books printed by Gutenberg are valuable. These books were printed by Gutenberg. Therefore, these books are valuable.

Notice too that if a term is modified by "all" or "none" in the conclusion, it must also be modified by
"all" or "none" in the premise. For example, All languages used by humans are expressive. Human expression is important. Therefore, all languages are important.

Now, an enthymeme, on the other hand, is "the rhetorical equivalent of the syllogism" (Corbett 73). In
fact, Aristotle himself defined an enthymeme as a "rhetorical syllogism," saying that "enthymeme is to rhetoric as syllogism is to logic" (Covino and Jolliffe 20). An enthymeme attempts to use the audience's common-sense beliefs to persuade them (Crowley 156). For example, John will surely fail his calculus exam, because he hasn't studied. That example though illustrates some of the interesting differences between the syllogism and the enthymeme. Whereas the syllogism produces a valid conclusion from the truth of its premises, the enthymeme gives us only tentative conclusions based on probable premises. In the example above, for instance, it is probably true that John will fail, but it is not certain. However the strength of the enthymeme is that it relies on premises that are highly probable. For example, Where there is smoke, there is fire. Therefore, whether or not the reasoning is sound or the premises valid, the audience is very likely to accept the conclusion of the enthymeme simply because it relies so heavily on commonly held beliefs (Crowley 159).

Enthymemes are powerful because they express beliefs that are widely shared within the audience.

Unlike the syllogism, therefore, the enthymeme cannot be proven true. That is the major difference
between the enthymeme and the syllogism. Neither the premises nor the conclusions of the enthymeme are provable (Covino and Jolliffe 20).

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The tools of logos are not totally related to logic and reasoning. Rational appeal, for many rhetoricians, includes what are called extrinsic proofs the use of data (such as statistics) and testimony (such as eyewitness accounts or statements from authorities). Such proofs, though, take us to the edge of logos and force us to think about ethos and pathos too. After all, statistics can be deceiving (as Benjamin Disraeli once said, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.") And even eye-witness testimony can be less than accurate, as police and judicial officers readily know. The audience must accept the testimony as valid (ethos), and they must be moved by the data (pathos). Thus, logos, pathos and ethos work in concert to help the rhetor persuade the audience.

References

Corbett, Edward P. J. Classical Rhetoric for Modern Students, 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1971. Covino, William A., and David A. Jolliffe. Rhetoric: Concepts, Definitions, Boundaries. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1995. Crowley, Sharon. Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students. New York: Macmillan, 1994.
1995, 2005 Daniel Kies. All rights reserved. Document URL: http://papyr.com/hypertextbooks/engl_101/logos.htm Last revision: Thu, 20 Jan 2005 21:40:01 GMT

FOR THOSE THAT WANT THE REAL DEAL: Aristotles Rhetoric Online:
http://www.public.iastate.edu/%7ehoneyl/Rhetoric/oneindex.html OR MORE ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLES: http://www.rpi.edu/dept/llc/webclass/web/project1/group4/ Useful collection of links on ethos, pathos and logos: http://livingroom.org.au/blog/archives/ethos_pathos_logos_links.php

SUMMARY : The Rhetorical Triangle: Logos, Ethos and Pathos (from the [IOWA University hypertext] Morphing Book)
Appeals are how a writer/speaker tries to convince his or her intended audience. Three of the biggies are logos, ethos and pathos. Logos = an appeal to reason. There are two types of appeal to reason, deductive and inductive. *Think-does the logic follow? Are the statistics skewed or unrepresentative?* Deductive argument-begins with a generalization and moves toward a specific conclusion. A famous example used by Aristotle himself: All men are mortal. (Generalization) Socrates was a man. (Specific case) Socrates is mortal. (Conclusion about the specific case) Inductive argument-begins with pieces of specific evidence and draws a general conclusion from this.

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ex. Senator Kennedy argued, in Georgia, blacks who killed whites received the death penalty 16.7 percent of the time, while whites who killed blacks received the death penalty only 4.2 percent of the time. (A warning about statistics. You may have heard reference to a politician stacking the cards. This means they use statistics to sway an audience, but are not entirely truthful in using these statistics. There is even a book by Darrell Huff called How to Lie with Statistics. For instance, a writer may commit the sin of omission in reporting a statistic: Ninety percent of Americans agree with President Clinton. What theyve omitted is, that take-out pizza is a wonderful thing. This is an extreme example, but you get my drift. While statistics seem to report a concrete truth, they can be angled to ones advantage. Your should be skeptical in reading statistics and cautious in reporting them.) Ethos = an ethical appeal is based on the nature of the person making the appeal. *Think: is the source credible?* ex. Jerry McCready, an American independent gubernatorial candidate said, As a self-employed businessman, I have learned firsthand what it is like to try to make ends meet in an unstable economy being manipulated by out-of-touch politicians. Pathos = an appeal to emotion. *Think- is the writer simply playing me?* There is nothing wrong with using an emotional \appeal, but you would not want your argument described as nothing but an emotional appeal. (Think of political commercials in which candidates are depicted petting stray dogs and reading to their kids.)

END NOTE ON ASSUMPTIONS (from Kies hypertext on assumptions: http://papyr.com/hypertextbooks/engl_102/assume.htm)

Notes and works cited

1 2 3

J M Swales (1990), Genre analysis English in academic and research settings. Cambridge: Cambridge U.P. V K Bhatia (1993), Analysing genre: Language use in professional settings. London: Longman Shirley Taylor (2004), Model business letters, e-mails & other business documents. London: Prentice Hall.

Panofsky, Erwin (1970a): Meaning in the Visual Arts. Harmondsworth: Penguin

Barthes, Roland ([1964] 1967). Elements of Semiology (trans. Annette Lavers & Colin Smith). London: Jonathan Cape iii Barthes, Roland (1977): Image-Music-Text. London: Fontana iv Fiske, John (1982): Introduction to Communication Studies. London: Routledge v Hall, Stuart ([1973] 1980): 'Encoding/decoding'. In Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (Ed.): Culture, Media, Language: Working Papers in Cultural Studies, 1972-79 London: Hutchinson, pp. 128-38 vi Barthes, Roland ([1973] 1974): S/Z. London: Cape vii Silverman, Kaja (1983): The Subject of Semiotics. New York: Oxford University Press viii Voloshinov, Valentin N (1973): Marxism and the Philosophy of Language (trans. Ladislav Matejka & I R Titunik). New York: Seminar Press

ii

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Mick, David Glen & Laura G Politi (1989): 'Consumers' Interpretations of Advertising Imagery: A Visit to the Hell of Connotation'. In Elizabeth C Hirschman (Ed.): Interpretive Consumer Research. Provo, UT: Association for Consumer Research, pp. 85-96 x Barnard, Malcolm (1996): Fashion as Communication. London: Routledge xi Barthes, Roland ([1957] 1987): Mythologies. New York: Hill & Wang xii Hjelmslev, Louis (1961): Prolegomena to a Theory of Language (trans. Francis J Whitfield). Madison: University of Wisconsin Press xiii Barthes, Roland ([1964] 1967). Elements of Semiology (trans. Annette Lavers & Colin Smith). London: Jonathan Cape xiv Willemen, Paul (1994): Looks and Frictions: Essays in Cultural Studies and Film Theory. London: BFI/Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press xv Fiske, John (1992): 'British Cultural Studies and Television'. In Allen, Robert C. (Ed.) (1992): Channels of Discourse, Reassembled. London: Routledge, pp. 284-326 xvi Osgood, Charles E, George J Suci & Percy H Tannenbaum (1957): The Measurement of Meaning. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press xvii Lakoff, George & Mark Johnson (1980): Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press xviii Lvi-Strauss, Claude (1972): Structural Anthropology (trans. Claire Jacobson & Brooke Grundfest Schoepf). Harmondsworth: Penguin xix Hayward, Susan (1996): Key Concepts in Cinema Studies. London: Routledge

ix

Assumptions are beliefs or ideas that we hold to be true often with little or no evidence required. We make assumptions everyday of our lives; for example, as a driver on the highway, I assume that other drivers will obey traffic signals, so that when I go through an intersection with a green light, I assume that the cross traffic will stop at its red light. Of course, such assumptions are incorrect occasionally. However, generally speaking, most drivers do obey traffic signals and therefore we proceed through intersections on green lights without stopping or even checking first. We assume that the other drivers will comply.
xx

Some assumptions may have supporting evidence (and are called warranted assumptions), but many
assumptions have no supporting evidence at all (and are called unwarranted assumptions). In the study of religion, for example, many people make all sorts of assumptions about the existence of a god (or gods), the origins of the universe, the source of good and evil, etc. Indeed, the religious among us have a word for accepting or believing an idea with no evidence required faith. Furthermore, some authors will come out directly and tell the reader what s/he assumes before s/he begins an essay or an argument. For example, the linguist Noam Chomsky is in the habit of beginning articles in his discipline by writing something like "I assume familiarity with Jespersen (1930), Lee (1953), and Harris (1956)." Rarely do writers make such explicit assumptions. More commonly, the reader must determine what the writer's assumptions are since the writer is not so explicit at all; such assumptions are called implicit assumptions.

Textual analysis cookery book how do I go about using Halliday to analyse discourse?

By Henrik Kasch, Ass. Prof,

ASB, 2005

Textual analysis cookery book: Extended Halliday register analysis

This text is a cookery book and is intended to help out students in learning the basic ingredients of and how to concoct a discourse analysis, using Hallidays register analysis. This recipe takes the student through all the levels needed at the final exam and even presents her with some advanced points. Before we begin however, some cautionary remarks are in order. The steps of the recipe are first and foremost meant for practicing the spadework, i.e. performing the analysis. In other words, the recipe is not intended to suggest an ideal structure for an exam paper, but in a pedagogical fashion show how to work with close-reading a text and basing ones analysis on evidence. The structure of a paper to be handed in is of course something that should be much less pedestrian. Here, it would be much more appropriate to adopt the structure of an essay, i.e. 1) an appetizer (if any), 2) Introduction describing the topic of the analysis, presenting the text(s) analysed in general, a thesis statement (statement of problem), 3) the analys(is/es) themselves and finally 4) a conclusion to round off. With these cautionary remarks, let us proceed to the promised walk-through of Halliday register analysis: STEP ONE: Identifying ideational resources (and accounting for) their functions 1. Ideational content: Field 1.1. Identify structural resources 1.1.1. Process type and participant roles 1.1.1.1.(find verbs and their complementation: subject, direct object, etc., which process (action: affective, motion, locational transfer, personal transfer, resultative, designative; mental: perceptive, reactive, cognitive, verbal, creative; relational: identification, attribution, classification, possession, location, existential (there is) ambient (its raining) ) 1.1.2. Circumstantial roles 1.1.2.1.(find circumstantial roles: adverbials (of manner, place, reason, purpose, contingency, roles) 1.1.3. Time and perspective (tense and aspect): time frame and perspective 1.1.3.1.Find tensed verbs (past tense, present tense, present and past perfect, etc. (which time relation is denoted? - before-now, now or after-now?; ongoing or completed?) 1.1.4. Concept taxonomies: How does the text organise concepts? ; Collocation: which concepts are associated with which attributes, which attributes are used to organise scales (good and bad)? Which concepts are associated with/ or pivot on or understood in terms of other concepts? - Instances of synonymy, antonymy (opposition), meronymy (part-whole), hyponymy (class-subclass). Hint: find the concepts in the text and see which go with which. In other words: here youll find which categorisations does the text make. Each structure has a function, which is either to represent (process types, circumstantials and roles, time and perspective) or to construct a conceptual field (concept taxonomies) 2

After having identified structures you then account for their functions individually and then for how they function together as a whole. In other words, you pursue here is a bottom-up approach and not a top-down one. EXTRAS: Burkes rhetoric (especially useful with pursuasive genres, such as ads, etc) You may use 1) Burkes grammars ratios to account for how the motivation of the act is presented: scene: act; purpose: act; agency: act or agent: act 2) Burkean rherotics notion, substance (geometric (near far), familial (relative, descendence), nutritive (you are what you eat) and directional (you are what you tend to do), to further account for relational processes, how language works as terministic screens (cf. also concept taxonomies under 1.1.4) , i.e. how presenting a person in terms of one role means deflecting attention from other ways in which that person might be more adequately or properly presented. 3) Burkean logology to account for logics of system (logonomics) of thought and how that contrains the presentation of reality. YOUR ADDITIONAL COMMENTS HERE:

STEP TWO: Identifying interpersonal resource structures an accounting for functions 2. The interpersonal function: tenor: speakers position (attitude/belief) and relation to hearer 2.1. Identify structural resources 2.1.1. Speech functions 2.1.1.1. Identify sentence structure and mood (interrogative, declarative and imperative) and speech function (statement, question (yes/no-questions, wh-questions), command/invitation (imperatives) exclamation (ouch, well, oh (my god)); politeness: commands may be structured by way of a (tentative) yes/no question (Could you lend me a hand); or have a tag question appended: Pass me the salt, will you?) 2.1.2. Modality 2.1.2.1. Identify modal verbs (can, could, may, might, must, ought to, shall, should, will would) 2.1.3. Attitudinal lexis 2.1.3.1.Identify qualitative and emphasising adjectives, manner and degree adverbs, linking verbs, reporting verbs (e.g. say, tell), cognitive verbs (e.g. think, feel) 2.1.4. Sentence adjuncts 2.1.4.1. Identify attitudinal sentence adverbials indicating speakers attitude to statement (e.g. unfortunately), vocatives (indexing addressee: Hello, tall and handsome/Mr/John!), question tags turning statements into questions (Its nice, isnt it) for phatic use (addressee contact) or as a hedge expressing uncertainty about content of statement (You are Molly, arent you?) 2.2. Functions: of speech functions, modality, attitudinal lexis and sentence adjuncts 2.2.1. Speech functions have positional functions in that they are used to assign the speech roles but also relational functions indexing the speakers authority or expressing politeness (positive face and negative face) 2.2.2. Modality has a positional function in being used to construct speakers (/writers) orientation to reality/representation of reality but also has a relational function in being used to assign permission, obligation, etc. to addressee 2.2.3. Attitudinal lexis has a positional function in indexing (pointing to) speakers attitude but no relational function 2.2.4. Sentence adjuncts (attitudinal, vocatives and tags) have positional functions in indexing speaker attitude, assessment of possibility/certainty, etc. and relational functions in assigning speech roles 2.3. After having identified structures you then account for their functions individually and then for how they function together as a whole. EXTRAS (I): Burkes rhetoric (especially useful with pursuasive genres, such as ads, etc) You may you may use Burkes notions 1) addressivity (the indexed addressee or presumed/ideal reader) and 2) identification (how is the reader being motivated by the text (overall context) to accept the rewards presented to the reader and do what s/he is told?) is used to persuade the addressee to read, identify with the role proffered for him/her as expressed by the speaker, and 3) transcendence/transformation to explain how the addressee is supposed to transcend, i.e. what to change about his/her behaviour and/or views so as to consubstantiate with the speaker/writer. YOUR ADDITIONAL COMMENTS HERE:

STEP THREE: Identifying textual resource structures and accounting for functions 3. The textual function (structuring the flow of information): mode, organising what is taken for granted,i.e. what the sentence is about (the theme) and what is said about the theme (rheme), i.e. what is new; charting the thematic progression/development of a text 3.1. Identify thematic structures: voice (active vs. passive) 3.1.1. unmarked theme (subject in declarative sentence); DO or aux in yes/no question; main verb in imperative sentence or LETS in mutual imperative; wh-element in whquestion 3.1.2. marked theme: other element initial in declarative sentence than subject, e.g. initial adjunkt; marked predicated theme: sentence cleft: It was FOR DINNER that John came; It was JOHN that came for dinner 3.1.3. Multiple themes: more or one sentence adjuncts (link (textual function), vocative (interpersonal function), attitudinal (interpersonal function) or topic (speaking of X, with respect to X, in regard to X, architecturally (speaking)), i.e. content function) are in initial position. 3.2. Cohesion: endows a text with unity/wholeness in terms of interpretive ties 3.2.1. Identify: 3.2.1.1.Reference: anaphoric (to previous element), cataphoric (to following element), exophoric (to element outside text); forms of references: demonstrative (definite article + demonstrative determiner), personal (personal pronoun), comparative (with compared adjective (e.g.) or specifying adjective/post-determiner (such, other, same, identical); Reference by way of metonymy (part for whole or whole for part or part for (another) part); metaphors we live by, e.g. TIME IS A RESOURCE: we cant waste time on that 3.2.1.2. Ellipsis (understood element) 3.2.1.3. - or substitution (DO-substitution for verbs, ONE for nouns) 3.2.1.4. Conjunctive relations stipulating the logical organisation: 3.2.1.4.1. additives (and, furthermore, in addition, likewise, e.g.) more of the same 3.2.1.4.2. adversatives (yet, but, however, instead, at any rate) contrast, concession, something is different 3.2.1.4.3. temporal (in the mean time, first, after, secondly), causal (therefore, so, because, as a result, if then); 3.2.1.4.4. conjunct(ion)s may realise more than one type, e.g. and may be temporal as in: She left town and found a boy friend, or causal as in: Leave me and youll be sorry 3.2.1.5. Lexical choice: repetition, synonomy, antonymy, hyponymy (superclasssubclass, e.g. furniture and chair), meronymy (part-whole). Lexis (vocabulary, collocations, style) depends on register, i.e. a particular configuration of meanings that are typically associated with a particular situational configuration of field, tenor and mode sublanguages characteristic of particular activities where language is used. 3.3. Functions: the theme component is used to structure thematic development and organisation flow; cohesion is used to create texture (make things hang together) and create logical coherence as well as relate text to context (via lexis (vocabulary)) After having identified structures you then account for their functions individually and then for how they function together as a whole. The last step is then to compose the dish: tenor, field and mode (+ convenient/possible extras) 5

YOUR ADDITIONAL COMMENTS HERE:

An illustrative example of discourse analysis spadework

Doing SFL textual implies three strata of analysis: field, tenor and mode (the three meta-functions). Thus, you may simply analyse the text in terms of these three levels synoptically: Example: The (in)famous Coca-Cola ad copy: Have a coke and a smile! Field: Material designative processes: addressee = agent; a coke and a smile as ranges. No circumstantial roles Time perspective: now, after-now, ongoing Concept taxonomies: both coke and smile are understood as ranges standing for a process experiences you can have. Imperative mood used to express command/invitation No attitudinal lexis, nor sentence adjuncts Speech roles: inviter and invitee Cohesion: Reference: non-specific, exophoric reference (a coke, a smile) conjunction: temporal and causal (and additive) ellipsis: have is ellipsed after the conjunction to suppress inelegant repetition. Using the imperative mood, the speaker invites the hearer to engage in a material process as a result of which another material designative process will be engaged in: the experience of drinking a coke causes smiling, which metonymically reflects happiness. In a Burkean grammar the motivation for the act and the reader to consubstantiate with the speaker and attain a new nutritive substance as a coke-drinker is clearly a case of purpose:act ratio. Furthermore, textually, the coke is only indirectly substantiated in terms directionality, namely as tending to cause happiness, but not described as a commodity that costs money, nor as a something that will make you gain weight and get cavities. In other words, the fact that the reader in reality needs to buy a coke himself before he can is obscured by the wording with the speaker seen as an inviter and the hearer as 6

Tenor:

Mode:

Synthesis

an invitee so as to facilitate the transcendence of accepting the speakers point: The reader is told that a coke is something he should have (drink) as if it was just matter of helping him-/herself to one. The conjunction and may here also point to its additive potential, i.e. more of the same and in that way hint at identity or similarity, i.e. should be construed as a coke is some sense a smile, and since a smile is construed as a free (no cost) activity, this may further serve to downplay/hide the cost aspect of having a coke. A maximally ambiguous interpretation would indeed provide the strongest selling point: coca-cola is a smile, causes you to smile and makes you smile afterwards.