COMMRC0310 Exam Questions with All Correct Answers

COMMRC0310 Exam Questions with All Correct Answers What are the ways in which meaning emerges in rhetoric? - Answer-Language use is based on experience Perceptual patterns emerge from our experiences Language contains frameworks for conceptualizing what we experience Meaning emerges from the interaction among symbols in the context of use How do language choices impact meaning? - Answer-Grammar (space between terms, passive/active voice, word order) Vocabulary (denotation and connotation), Imagery (figures and tropes) How does our selection of symbols shape the way we understand our experiences? - Answer-"The selection [of a symbol to describe an event] creates a frame that highlights certain features and, necessarily, hides others. These frames are called schemas" Symbols help us make sense of what has occurred, particularly as a group. What is the relationship between language and action? - Answer-Basically, it's possible to act with language. Per Hauser, "To use language in situated contexts is to act with language" What is the context theorem of meaning? - Answer-Words are successfully meaningful in the context insofar as they animate and are animated In a metaphor, what are the focus and the frame? - Answer-Focus is the salient (or prominent) term Frame is the literal portion of the metaphor What is the system of associated commonplaces? - Answer-The standard beliefs that are shared by members of the same speech community when they use a term literally In a metaphor, what is emphasis and resonance? - Answer-Emphasis is the degree to which the focus is essential for the meaning of the metaphor The number of implications we can draw from the interplay between the principal subject and the subsidiary subject How do Keith and Lundberg define rhetoric? - Answer-The study of producing discourses and interpreting how, when, and why discourses are persuasive Who were the Sophists and why were they important? - Answer-Traveling teachers who started to teach Athenians how to speak persuasively with the goal of navigating the courts and senate What was Plato's criticism of rhetoric? - Answer-That it was a disconnected set of techniques without a central ethical concern or philosophical system What are Aristotle's three types of speeches? What do they do? - Answer-Forensic (courtroom setting, about what happened, past oriented) Epideictic (ceremonial [e.g. funeral] setting, about praising/blaming, aimed at emphasizing/showing forth particular qualities in someone) Deliberative (lawmaking setting [e.g. floor of Congress], about what community should do, future oriented) What are the three types of rhetorical appeals or proofs? - Answer-Ethos Pathos Logos What three basic points did Aristotle argue about rhetoric? - Answer-First, rhetoric can be treated as a coherent area of inquiry Second, rhetoric and logic are necessary counterparts Third, the forms and functions of speeches are shaped by the possible speech goals How do Keith and Lundberg define identity? - Answer-The set of labels, patterns behavior, and ways of representing yourself that make up your public persona What is the herd instinct? - Answer-The tendency to keep our beliefs, and thus our actions, within the bounds of what society will accept What is culture lag? - Answer-The tendency of practices and beliefs to persist long after whatever conditions made them useful or sensible have disappeared What is provincialism? - Answer-The tendency to see things from the point of view of our primary culture, especially when there is conflict with other groups What is prejudice? - Answer-Thinking ill of others without sufficient warrant What are scapegoats? - Answer-Others we can blame for the ills of the world What is a partisan mind-set? - Answer-Leads people to perceive evidence and to judge arguments via an 'us against them' or a 'my right view against your wrong view' attitude What is confirmation bias? - Answer-Tendency of people to interpret messages so as to confirm their existing view of the world What is the difference between wishful thinking and self-deception? - Answer-Wishful thinking - believing something we would like to be true no matter what the evidence Self-deception - consciously believing what, at a deeper level, we know to be dubious What is rationalization? - Answer-When we ignore or deny unpleasant evidence so as to feel justified in doing what we want to do or in believing what we find comfortable to believe What is procrastination? - Answer-To put off for tomorrow what common sense tells us should be done today What is the difference between suppression and denial? - Answer-Suppression - when we avoid thoughts that are stressful by either not thinking about them or, more commonly, by thinking non-stressful thoughts. What does Hauser contend that rhetorical communication is typically concerned with? - Answer-Bringing about agreement, often with the further goal of eliciting action What are the four possible modes used in the typical manner of reasoning? - Answer- Definition - assert the basic nature of the subject Similitude - reason to the probability of a conclusion from the similarity of a new situation to a known one Cause and effect - emphasizes the developmental features of a situation rather than its essence Circumstances - appeals to the force of immediate facts What is rhetorical framing? - Answer-Propounding a view of the world that both legitimates and motivates action What is a syllogism? - Answer-A formal deductive argument made up of a major premise, a minor premise, and a conclusion in which, if the premises are true, the conclusion must be true. What is an enthymeme? - Answer-A syllogism with one missing premise, usually supplied by the audience (thereby involving them in the process of their own persuasion) What is anaphora? - Answer-the repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive phrases, clauses or lines. What is an argument from consequences? - Answer-An argument that an idea or proposition is true or false because the consequences of it being true or false are desirable or undesirable. What is an argument from authority? - Answer-making an argument based on authority and power. What is an argument from definition? - Answer-Using a strategically reasoned definition to support an argument position. What is an argument from principle? - Answer-Argument that values and principles should guide decisions. What is crescendo and climax? - Answer-crescendo is a gradual increase in intensity while climax is the conclusion of a sequence of phrases or sentences, a crescendo, each more forceful or intense than the last What is enactment? - Answer-an argument technique in which the speaker embodies the argument What is logos, ethos, and pathos? - Answer-logos is argument through logic or practical reasoning ethos is usually structured as an argument from credibility or expertise pathos is argument by arousal of emotion What is rhetorical form? - Answer-The raising and fulfilling of expectations in an audience What is hyperbole? - Answer-Deliberate and obvious exaggeration used for effect What is identification? - Answer-A proposal which produces in the audience a powerful feeling of affinity with another person or group What is kairos? - Answer-The principle of timely, creative response to a particular situation What are the five categories of rhetorical action in Olson, et al's article? - Answer- Performing and seeing Remembering and memorializing Confronting and resisting Commodifying and consuming Governing and authorizing How do they define each? - Answer-Links visuality and rhetoric, locates the study of visual rhetoric within a disciplinary framework of communication, and explores the role of the visual in the cultural space of the United States On what three assumptions did Olson et al ground their approach to the study of visual rhetoric? - Answer-First, in practice and in principle, words and images are oftentimes mixed together in rhetorically interesting ways Second, the visual per se is by no means absent from even our most ancient traditions Third, scholarship in visual rhetoric is strongest when it combines resources of the rhetorical tradition itself with the conceptual resources developed by scholars in other fields What is Gronbeck's definition of rhetorical consciousness? - Answer-An awareness of the ways that persuasive communication is context dependent, contingent, and often strategically crafted by agents with particular purposes in mind What is Olson et al's definition of rhetorical action? - Answer-Those actions that humans perform when they use symbols to persuade or invite cooperation from others How do they define visual rhetoric? - Answer-Those symbolic actions, enacted primarily through visual means, made meaningful through culturally derived ways of looking and seeing and endeavoring to influence diverse publics At face value, what two meanings does 'visual rhetoric' encompass? - Answer- Rhetorical expression in visual form eg advertisement AND a public message or process that constitutes meaning. What term have postmodern thinkers coined to indicate the central importance of vision and visual images in contemporary society? - Answer-ocularcentrism When the pictorial turn in the humanities took place, one writer said "visual rhetoric 'is concerned not only with how images look, but how they are looked at.'" What does this mean? - Answer-Images express meaning but only insofar as those images are reflections of the society's that create them- their culture, their society etc. What are the four stages of a rhetorical situation? - Answer-Origin, maturity, deterioration and disintegration What is a 'fitting response'? - Answer-One that is addressed to resolving the complex of factors that define the situation