Rhetoric A–Z / Rhetorical criticism

What are rhetorical analysis and rhetorical criticism?

Rhetorical criticism is the study of how a message is shaped by means of human symbols, and of how it becomes possible in its context. It has two steps: analysis, which breaks the message down into its parts, and criticism, which connects the message to the society, ideas and ideology it belongs to.

To carry out rhetorical criticism or analysis is to study how a message has been shaped by means of human symbols. The message may be expressed in, for example, a text, an image, a speech, a film, architecture, rituals or social media.

The first step is analysis: breaking the message down and identifying its various components. Which components these are depends on the method used. The second step is criticism: trying to understand how the message becomes possible. This means connecting the message to its place in a society, a broader idea or an ideology, and understanding the relationship between the individual message and its context. In this way we can understand both the message through its context and the context through the message.

Want to go straight to how it’s done? How to do rhetorical analysis and criticism

Criticism

The word criticism originates in ancient Greek and takes us all the way back to the founding theses of rhetoric. Its etymological root is the verb κρίνω, which means to separate, to order, to choose and to judge. From it developed both the adjective κριτικός, meaning able to judge, discern and criticise, and the noun κρίσις, judgement.

We recognise the latter as the aim of rhetoric: that the audience should be able to pass judgement. For anyone who wants to be truly critical, then, it is a matter of developing the ability not only to pass judgement, but, within that judgement, to separate, create order, choose and assess.

What makes a study rhetorical?

What, then, makes criticism rhetorical? What distinguishes rhetorical criticism from criticism in, say, philosophy, literary studies, gender studies or anthropology? Many university disciplines are defined first and foremost by their object: literary studies studies literature, political science the state and politics, and biology what the Greeks called βίος, life.

But as Aristotle already pointed out, rhetoric, like dialectic, stands apart in that it has no specific, clearly delimited object. There are therefore three ways of justifying that a study is rhetorical: either we examine a rhetorical object, or we use a rhetorical theory and method, or we start from a rhetorical or rhetorical-studies problem.

The rhetorical object

What makes an object rhetorical is that it has meaning for people. The interesting thing is that we humans can ascribe meaning to almost anything, if only we try. Almost anything can therefore be studied with rhetorical methods, since the meaning we see in something can be separated, ordered and judged. But for rhetorical criticism to be relevant, the rhetorical object must also be interesting in some way. It is not enough that someone ascribes meaning to something.

When we start from the object, we can study either a single object or a discourse. As to what material can be analysed, the two approaches do not differ much. Rhetoric is always concerned with material that in one way or another tries to persuade. What applies here is what is usually called broad persuasio: what tries to persuade includes not only the most obvious cases, such as a political speech, an advertisement or an opinion piece, but also fiction, film, informative communication and even poetry and architecture.

The difference lies in how we look at the object. When we study a specific object, it is chosen out of a wish to understand how it intervenes in a situation, for example how a political leader speaks during a crisis or how a film treats a topical issue.

In the second kind of study, the question is how a range of works together create what, following Michel Foucault, is called a discourse: a way of speaking, thinking and knowing about something at a specific historical moment. To study contemporary populist discourse is thus to examine it through many different kinds of cultural products, such as popular culture, educational practices, political documents and public speeches. Rather than asking how a particular object fits into a context, we try here to reach the context through different kinds of messages.

Rhetorical theory and method

Modern rhetorical criticism grew largely out of literary studies. It was literary scholars who felt that their methods, focused mainly on the aesthetic aspects of a work, could not account for, say, political speeches, since these aimed first of all to be effective and persuasive rather than aesthetic. Just as literary studies had its origin in Aristotle’s Poetics, these scholars found new inspiration in his Rhetoric. The result became what is today called the neo-Aristotelian method, which starts from the rhetorical work process and mainly studies how the individual object relates to its context.

Today there is a wide range of rhetorical theories and methods. Among the best known are Kenneth Burke’s dramatistic pentad, Chaïm Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca’s new rhetoric, and Walter Fisher’s narrative criticism. A rhetorical criticism can thus also be designed starting from a particular theory and method.

The rhetorical problem

Finally, a problem in rhetorical studies can be the starting point for rhetorical criticism. The interest is then driven by a scholarly challenge: an inadequate theory, an unexplored field or a concept that needs developing. This is where the more discourse-oriented approaches become relevant. If the aim is a deeper understanding of ethos, we usually need to study many different materials to draw conclusions about so complex a concept, just as Aristotle himself did when he studied speakers in as many different situations as possible.

How to do rhetorical analysis and criticism

The most basic rhetorical method is, as mentioned, the neo-Aristotelian one. It starts from the rhetorical work process, in Latin rhetorices partes, which consists of intellectio, inventio, dispositio, elocutio, memoria, and actio and pronuntiatio. The analysis of, for example, a speech is therefore carried out in six steps. The last two concern delivery. If you are analysing a written text, they can instead concern medium, layout and other visual aspects, such as images, colours and illustrations.

1. Intellectio: the situation of the speech. What rhetorical problem does the speech respond to? What rhetorical audience does it address? What conditions have shaped the situation it speaks in?
2. Inventio. What is the thesis? Which arguments are used? How are ethos, pathos and logos used? How do they respond to the situation?
3. Dispositio. How is the speech arranged? How does its structure respond to the situation?
4. Elocutio. Which figures and tropes are used? Is there a central metaphor, metonymy, irony or synecdoche that structures the speech’s thought? How do they respond to the situation?
5. Memoria. In a modern interpretation, memoria concerns not only the speaker’s memory but what the audience is meant to remember. How has the speaker shaped the speech so that the audience will remember what was said? What is meant to stick, and why?
6. Actio and pronuntiatio. How does the speaker use voice and gesture to convey the message? Where is the emphasis placed? How does it respond to the situation?

The critical step can then be carried out. By separating, ordering and judging all the parts of the speech, we become able to see the message the speaker wants to convey, even if it is not obvious at first. This requires relating the parts of the speech to their context and using the concepts of rhetoric to see through language.

Further reading on rhetorical criticism

In English
Foss, Sonja K. Rhetorical Criticism: Exploration and Practice. 5th ed. Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press, 2018.
Kuypers, Jim A. (ed.). Rhetorical Criticism: Perspectives in Action. 2nd ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016.

In Swedish
Fischer, Otto, Patrik Mehrens and Jon Viklund (eds). Retorisk kritik: teori och metod i retorisk analys. Ödåkra: Retorikförlaget, 2014.

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