RHETORIC

- Art by which people adapt discourse: - Speech, writing, gesture, graphic art, and cinematic or televisual images - To specific audiences for the purpose of moving them to a particular set of beliefs or actions

- Party
- Policy
- Personality
- Swing Voters, Base, Non-voters?

- Not how many votes did swayed with speech, or social science but social
construction of reality – often slower process - Rhetoricians measure in different way: 1) Are people talking about it? 2) Did s/he set the agenda? 3) Are people talking about it in a different way? 4) Did s/he provide a frame to allow people to see the issue in a light that is favorable for him/her? 5) Did s/he use language to allow people to construct his/her character in a different light? 6) Did s/he use language to allow people to feel emotions that benefited his/her purpose?

- Road map for the electorate to follow - On which attention is focused

- Media puts pictures in our head - Media tell us what to think about - Media exposure increases salience and attitude extremity

- Choosing how to present a story – an angle or “hook”
- The perspective by which a situation is presented

• Political Communication researcher Jim A. Kuypersfirst published work advancing framing analysis as a rhetorical perspective in 1997. His approach begins inductively by looking for themes that persist across time in a text (for Kuypers, primarily news narratives on an issue or event), and then determining how those themes are framed. Kuypers’ work begins with the assumption that frames are powerful rhetorical entities that “induce us to filter our perceptions of the world in particular ways, essentially making some aspects of our multi-dimensional reality more noticeable than other aspects. They operate by making some information more salient than other information. . . .” ^[1]In "Framing Analysis From a Rhetorical Perspective" Kuypers details the differences between framing analysis as rhetorical criticism and as a social scientific endeavor, in particular arguing that framing criticism offers insights unavailable to social scientists.^[2]
• In his 2009 work, Rhetorical Criticism: Perspectives in Action^[3]Kuypers offers a detailed template for doing framing analysis from a rhetorical perspective. According Kuypers, "Framing is a process whereby communicators, consciously or unconsciously, act to construct a point of view that encourages the facts of a given situation to be interpreted by others in a particular manner. Frames operate in four key ways: they define problems, diagnose causes, make moral judgments, and suggest remedies. Frames are often found within a narrative account of an issue or event, and are generally the central organizing idea." ^[4]Kuypers’ work is based on the premise that framing is a rhetorical process and as such it is best examined from a rhetorical point of view.

- Candidates frame their:
1. character/life
2. their campaign
3. issues
4. situations
often in contrast to their opponent(s)

- attempt both to define and characterize one’s own character - attempts to characterize and define one’s opponent Important for candidates to define themselves

•Making people feel, almost viscerally •Goes beyond the issue •Stays with you; priming

•Words and language that emotionally resonate with people… in order to give people what they want?
•Move our guts: emotional resonance

–Political system –People rule –Majority rule (vs. Republic) –Free and fair elections

–Active participation, flow of information –Implication: People can come together with accurate information and make choices…together

•Democracy implies each person must be able to develop to limits of ability…so person must be able to acquire knowledge to do so

“A democracy demands that knowledge be made available to all…it requires that the sources and channels of communication be wide and diverse, rather than limited and one-sided. It cannot tolerate restriction and distortion”

1. accuracy
2. respect
3. fairness