Journalism, mass media and communication rhetorical situation analysis

Project description

Situation Analysis

By the end of class today, you will have selected a particular “text” which will serve as the focus of this and all of your subsequent papers (so pick wisely!). Your task for your first assignment is to analyze the situation of your text in 2-3 double-spaced pages.
Requirements and Objectives
Generally, you are asked to reconstruct the exigencies of the situation to which your text is a response. In very basic terms, you are trying to observe and describe a range of situational factors and/or elements which, when noted, enable interpretation (help you explain how elements in the text function). The minimum requirements of situation analysis are:
a) identify the general exigence or exigencies that are shaping the situation
b) identify the audience (or in some cases audiences) of the message and indicate how they might be capable of resolving the exigence/exigencies (why is the speaker speaking to them?)
c) identify the important constraints that hinder or impede the advocate’s effort to address his/her exigence(ies)
d) identify the relevant resources that might help the advocate address the exigence(ies).
Your primary objectives in this assignment should be:
a) demonstrate that you have a solid grasp of the conceptual material
b) show that you’ve done some effective research that results in an insightful discussion of the rhetorical situation to which your text responded.
Instructions
Identify a Text. Traditionally, rhetorical criticism analyzed speeches and writing. Today, though, several scholars have extended the tools of rhetorical criticism to a variety of media, including films, TV shows, political campaigns, advertisements, and other types of texts. Overall, you will need to offer a justification for why it’s important to better understand your text. Your text must:
• Be a public and significant text (no random youtube videos)
• Be a response to some public dilemma or issue
• Be manageable to analyze in terms of length and content
• Have a clear linguistic component (either written or oral)
What makes a text worthy of analysis? Some objects merit study because they:
• Are the work of famous and/or powerful men and women.
• Were responses to a crucial historical event (a key contro¬versy, a public catastrophe, etc.) or to an extremely complicated and/or unique rhetorical situation.
• Illustrate an im¬portant resource because they allow the critic to explore a significant conceptual question (a critic interested in studying how discourse enacts power might, for example, in¬vestigate the discursive practices of bureaucracies and large institutions in order to un¬cover how they exert influence).
• Are representa¬tive of a group of people whose discourse has, by and large, been ignored by most scholars.

Once you’ve identified a reason that your text merits study, offer a justification of your text in your paper after you describe what your artifact is. You need to explain why it merits sustained critical attention or why people interested in rhetoric should want to read an analysis of this object. Try selecting a text that appears unusual, interesting or provocative for some reason – be confident that you’ll be able to offer some insightful observations of the text that aren’t immediately apparent.
Some Sources for Finding Texts (For some links you’ll need to be logged-in through the library):
o National Archives
o Miller Center
o American Rhetoric
o LOC Prints & Photographs
o LOC Manuscripts
o Oxford Art Online
o Project Gutenberg
o The Living Room Candidate
o Media Education Foundation
o Google Advanced (limit domain: .edu/.gov)
o Prelinger Archives
o Smithsonian

Research. Next, you’ll need to uncover some general information about the person whose situation you’re analyzing. This assignment is not asking you to analyze your selected text – make sure you understand the difference between analyzing a situation and analyzing a text. Any quotes from the text that you include in this paper must be used to support claims about the situation. Don’t confuse a summary of the message or a discussion of message strategy with an analysis of the situation.
Doing research on rhetorical situations tends to be challenging because you won’t find the terms in any database. The following investigation strategies are commonly employed by rhetorical critics.
A. See if there are any existing critical studies (books, chapters in books, essays in scholarly journals) that might contain useful information about the situation. These studies can provide you with very useful insight into the situation; locating them might be very helpful. Consulting one of the communication databases available through the library web site’s research gateway will help you locate some existing critical studies. And save these resources for your literature review paper!
o SU Library Databases
o Library of Congress
o Google Scholar
B. If there are no studies of the specific text, you might consult studies of similar message types. For example, if you were examining the situation of Barack Obama’s “Inaugural Address,” you might profit from examining the scholarly literature on the genre of inaugural addresses and/or studies of other particular inaugural addresses.
C. Examine other scholarly sources (secondary sources) such as history books for insights.
D. Get an understanding of the general historical context of your text. Review basic reference materials. Examine newspapers and newsmagazines that came out in the weeks immediately preceding the speech. But simply listing a few news stories or articles in a bibliography isn’t enough. You need to examine material that, indirectly or implicitly, provides insight into the situation or support for claims about the situation. You have to read broadly (quantity) and perceptively (quality). Try to find reactions to the speech as well – this may come in the form of letters to the editor and newspaper or historical accounts of audience reaction.

o SU’s Biography Databases, Websites and E-Books
o American National Biographies Online
o Biography in Context
o Library of Congress’s Historical Newspapers
o SU’s Online News Database
o New York Times Online Archive
o NPR
o Oxford Reference
o World Almanac

E. Consult biographies and/or autobiographies of the advocate/speaker/writer; these sources might help you “get inside” the person’s perspective and understand the pressures they were under and the problems they believed were important. Several of the sources above will have biographical information as well. But feel free to find some actual books, too!
F. Looks for clues in your text. The text might provide what scholars describe as “textual evidence” of contextual factors.
G. Find reactions to the text; often these contain useful insights into exigence, constraints, etc.
Focus on Constraints and Resources. In discussing constraints, consider how the following variables might shape the rhetorical situation:

o Speaker Variables
o Audience Variables
o Topic Variables
o Setting Variables
o Media Variables
o Rhetorical Conventions/Expectations

For example, give some thought to the issue of a genre-expectation and how it might function as a constraint/resource. Only discuss those items which are relevant to the situation you are analyzing.
Focus on Exigencies. Use Jasinski’s discussion of different exigence types as a resource in trying to understand the specifics of the situation. But remember that this list isn’t exhaustive. It gives you a rough idea of some of the more common problems speakers and writers must negotiate. If you’re work is about the past but written today, explain the exigencies that make our focus on the past necessary within the context of your text.

Citing Your Sources
Remember to follow proper citation style in your paper – failing to do so will result in point deductions. Consult the MLA style guides at our library or visit Purdue’s OWL website for help.

Suggestions
Make sure you provide evidence for your major claims. Don’t simply make assertions; provide support from your research or, in some cases, the text itself.
When you discuss constraints and/or resources, indicate how the elements you have identified function to impede or assist the advocate’s effort to address the exigence or exigencies. Don’t simply list constraints and resources; explain how the elements functioned in the situation.
Don’t waste space in your paper defining terms or using quotations from Jasinski. Don’t provide an elaborate introduction or conclusion.

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