CAS 311Methods of Rhetorical Criticism

3 credits · Communication Arts and Sciences · Penn State

Rhetorical Criticism introduces students to the most common methods of rhetorical criticism within the field of communication. These methods are designed to help students analyze and evaluate commonplace forms of rhetoric. Examples include historical or contemporary speeches, debates, political campaigns, social movements, or mass mediated messages intended to influence the public at large. The course not only provides a survey of essential methods of rhetorical criticism, but also requires students to produce works of rhetorical criticism themselves based on substantive research and written evaluation of a rhetorical artifact. Methods of rhetorical criticism are distinct from analytic methods used by other academic disciplines. Scholars of communication began to establish methods of rhetorical criticism in the early twentieth century in an effort to distinguish the aims of their scholarly pursuits from those of literary criticism or historical research. Rhetorical criticism evaluates the rhetoric of public communication (speeches, debates, or mediated messages intended to shape public understanding of real-world social, political, or moral issues). Such methods enable rhetorical critics to do so, moreover, not only by examining who said what at a given moment in history, but by closely analyzing how and why strategic uses of language or symbolic communication influenced public beliefs or behaviors. Rhetorical Criticism thus provides students with a variety of adaptable analytic tools that they may use to better understand and evaluate the nature as well as impact of rhetorical messages throughout history and in everyday life.