Wet Biggity-Blogging: A Cultural Examination of Digital Society

Animal Crossing, the video game.

Ian Bogost, video game researcher, theorist, and designer, analyzes the messages and claims made by video games and the rhetorical framework through which those messages are conveyed. In “The Rhetoric of Video Games,” Bogost unpacks the social messages that are framed in the video game Animal Crossing.

In Animal Crossing, players explore debt and commerce by interacting with a simplified model of reality. Animal Crossing players learn about “contemporary material property ideals” by carrying mortgage debt on their simulated huts and by interacting with a raccoon that represents the village’s “corporate bourgeosie.”

This link between debt and acquisition gives form to a routine that many mortgage holders fail to recognize: buying more living space not only creates more debt, it also drives the impulse to acquire more goods. More goods demand even more space, creating a vicious cycle. (Bogost, “The Rhetoric of Video Games”

Video games make claims, Bogost argues. So video games necessarily rely on a particular melange of rhetorical elements for their claims to be convincing. People won’t pursue gaming objectives without some persuasion that the objectives will be personally worthwhile. Thus, a particular claim about our contemporary economic reality made by Animal Crossing is wholly dependent on how persuasively well-crafted and challenging the gaming experience is for the player.

Animal Crossing’s ethos, for example, hinges on the particular values and subcultural identity of gamers. The ACC is a virtual group dedicated to discussing the game’s art and objectives; they don’t necessarily discuss the direct concepts of Animal Crossing–no topics relating to the concept of participating in a microcosm of contemporary economic reality, for example–but the fact that the group exists denotes that Animal Crossing is persuasive in its claims. It is an enjoyably challenging game with very realistic objectives.

Bogost’s main insight is that the rhetorical frameworks inherent to video games can be harnessed. Video games are able to be persuasive about many fantastic claims, about everything from zombie apocalypses to their ability to make players into better dancers. With planning and organizing, video games can gear up children’s interests in fields like computer programming–in effect, the same means and objectives that inspire kids to obliterate radioactive zombies with bullets can cultivate their interest in designing and building new video games.

Electronic text analysis gives researchers means of interpreting words and their arrangements on a meta-level. After all, symbolic meaning (the heart of every letter and syllable of all human language) is what makes and connects us as human beings.

This kind of study has shown that lexis and grammar do not exist independently from one another, but rather they are inextricably linked.

Lexis and grammar are the systems of meaning and practical usage that pervade how meaning is conveyed, from literature to political rhetoric. Achieving an understanding of one is to ascertain an understanding of the other, and both create avenues of insight. Dr. Adolphs introduces two elementary modes of electronic text analysis:

(1) intra-textual analysis, and

(2) comparisons of collections of texts with references, which may include other electronic texts or data.

In this way, ETA gives credence to realms of literary reality; there are sub-levels of meaning, insinuation, and faint impressions left from author’s personal biases with thought and language. ETA can also be used on political ideology, indicating that even the non-subjective sphere of human politics can be deconstructed and analyzed at the very kernels of rhetoric. As a tool, ETA enables researchers to depart from the universal, de facto objectivity, and pursue what is really being said.

The 5 Canons of Oration, from Cicero’s De Oratore, can be used as a blueprint for organizing persuasiveness:

inventio ~ finding what you want to say, your argument

dispositio ~ arrangement of saying it

Five sub-components for building rhetorical power into your argument’s disposition:

-> Exordium (introduction)
-> Narratio (statement of the case)
-> Divisio/Partitio (outline of points)
-> Confirmatio (evidence)
-> Confutatio (rebuttal)

elocutio ~ style of rhetoric

memoria ~ memorization of the oration (applicable if reciting)

pronuntatio ~ pronunciation

Also according to the ancient author Cicero, rhetorical eloquence is founded on a vast knowledge of the liberal arts.

VI. [20] In my opinion, indeed, no man can be an orator possessed of every praiseworthy accomplishment, unless he has attained the knowledge of everything important, and of all liberal arts, for his language must be ornate and copious from knowledge, since, unless there be beneath the surface matter understood and felt by the speaker, oratory becomes an empty and almost puerile flow of words. [21] (De Oratore, Book 1)

Oratory grace & artfulness, eloquence, concentrates this knowledgeability into a beam of rhetorical force that “must be employed in allaying or exciting the fears of those who listen” (between [17]&[18]). Thus, Cicero’s rhetorical method was oriented pathologically, targeting audience emotions. Cicero’s effect, as we will momentarily examine, employed the Canonical structure to strike audiences’ emotions, and build his persuasiveness over that effect.

Quintilian, attempting to further Cicero’s principles, demonstrates moral character as an even greater factor in rhetorical elegance. Without trust, our ability to appeal to one another on a rational basis is a treacherous, uncivilized talent not worth cultivating.

For it would have been better for us to have been born dumb and to have been left destitute of reasoning powers than to have received endowments from providence only to turn them to the destruction of one another. (Book 12, Ch 1)

So Quint’s methodology counter-weighs Cicero’s, although they intuitively merge along Aristotle’s rhetorical elements:

(1) Emotional appeal

(2) Knowledgeability or logic, coupled with

(3) Credibility 

Constructing a persuasive rhetoric is an integration of these three elements and the Canonical structure. In the Prima Oratio, Cicero makes a vehement case for Catiline’s expulsion from Rome, employing several opening rhetorical questions:

When, O Catiline, do you mean to cease abusing our patience? How long is that madness of yours still to mock us? When is there to be an end of that unbridled audacity of yours, swaggering about as it does now? (The First Oration, Cicero)

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLFu45VifuY

A pleasant Latin rendition of the Prima Oratio.

Cicero prioritizes emotional impact, only later establishing credibility & presenting his reasoning for Catiline’s indictment. And it appeared effective; he won his case.

However, even compared to Aristotle, Cicero was as verbose as he was vehement. Quintilian hovers around the limit. Ancient rhetoricians’ clever points read as if they’re coming undone–undulating around crucial details that could be delivered more efficiently & thus with swifter impact. (Did Cicero need to state more than three rhetorical questions? Could he have thwarted a potentially greater degree of eloquence?) Modern people demand efficient deliverance.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNCCOIu7DfM

Secrets of great (modern) orators: Economize your words.

So pathos, logos, ethos are the three appeals of rhetoric; but rhetorical eloquence emits from both:

(a) A legitimate grasp of ones facts and knowledge basis to work from, and

(b) A conscientiousness of their path of conveyance.

This conscientiousness can be constructed via the 5 Canons (plus five sub-components of dispositio). But consider pathos, logos, ethos to be the infrastructure of your persuasion–the intuitive filling of methodical deliverance. Organizing your formal claim–the basis for your need to persuade–will develop your argument. But when you bake a cake, you don’t forget icing: Cultivate eloquence through your integration of Aristotle’s rhetorical trifecta into the rhetoric’s organization. The desired effect is a compelling argument.

Persuasiveness means having an awareness for influencing others’ opinions. Rhetoric, as Aristotle famously philosophized, is a means of persuasion. Written and oral rhetoric anticipates the probable outcomes of opinion, given a compelling deliverance of information that particularly relates to the type of audience. There are three categories of rhetoric, epideictic (ceremonial), forensic, and deliberative (political), corresponding to three types of audiences.

Aristotle’s verbatim explanation of the genres of rhetoric:

“In a political debate the man who is forming a judgement is making a decision about his own vital interests. There is no need, therefore, [for the persuader] to prove anything except that the facts are what the supporter of a measure maintains they are. In forensic oratory this is not enough; to conciliate the listener is what pays here…” (Aristotle’s Rhetoric, Book I, Ch. 1) “Forensic speaking either attacks or defends somebody: one or other of these two things must always be done by the parties in a case. The ceremonial oratory of display either praises or censures somebody. These three kinds of rhetoric refer to three different kinds of time. The political orator is concerned with the future: it is about things to be done hereafter that he advises, for or against. The party in a case at law is concerned with the past; one man accuses the other, and the other defends himself, with reference to things already done. The ceremonial orator is, properly speaking, concerned with the present, since all men praise or blame in view of the state of things existing at the time, though they often find it useful also to recall the past and to make guesses at the future.” (Rhetoric, Book 1, Ch. 3)

Persuasiveness can be spontaneous or practiced, possessing either of two qualities: atechnic (inartistic) & entechnic (artistic). Again, persuasion is really just the art of rhetoric as an intuitive technique for compelling desired opinions. The greek word pisteis conceptually represents one’s means of persuasion, and is the umbrella term for rhetoric’s art & effects. The nougat of pisteis contains the trifecta of ethos, logos, & pathos:

Ethos is rhetorical credibility.

Pathos is effectiveness at eliciting audiences’ emotions.

Logos is the rationale of the argument.

An even more ancient Greek, Phaedrus, the character of the ancient text Phaedrus, is discomforted by a concern that opinions are the soul of an argument’s convincingness; that opinions themselves are in actuality just manipulatable game pieces.

And yet, Socrates, I have heard that he who would be an orator has nothing to do with true justice, but only with that which is likely to be approved by the many who sit in judgment; nor with the truly good or honorable, but only with opinion about them, and that from opinion comes persuasion, and not from the truth.

“Persuasive power” hints at a capability of deception. Consider Hitler’s infamy for compelling the German public into the racial purification of Germany.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGhdX1SI3KY&bpctr=1358369794

Aristotle argued that all rhetoric contains logical, pathological, and ethical elements that may appeal specifically to some, but maximum rhetorical potency contains sunbeams of truth. The most convincing arguments are ultimately just coherently organized demonstrations of ideas that transcend the context for persuasion. Compare Hitler’s speech the enduring American civil rights movement, heroically compelled by MLK’s “I have a dream” speech.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smEqnnklfYs

The effects of MLK’s deliberative rhetoric far outstripped Hitler’s, illustrating that the endurance of the ends (the desired outcome of opinion) is proportional to the means. MLK & Hitler’s respective rhetorical means both contained equally potent combinations of the logos, pathos, ethos trifecta. But viability has a shelf-life; at its core is a type of probability. Hitler’s persuasiveness was vested in an acute awareness of his audience’s susceptibility, his method deriving from tapping into the audience’s particular susceptibility. Pre-WWII Germans were in very different straits than they were once Hitler was in full power. As the war pressed on, and the conditions of Germans’ lives, mentalities, & society adjusted, so did the viability of Hitler’s persuasion. Great ideas worth persuading, like solidarity & civil liberty, are able to trot alongside the evolution of contexts; ever-shifting given the inconstancy of historical circumstances and collective attitudes. Without substance, rhetoric otherwise collapses.

Persuasiveness, in sum, does not entirely depend on truth to be compelling and thus effective; many can be jostled into breaking a diet when they’re very hungry, or convinced into a date if already a little interested. But the greatest probability of successful persuasion relates to the rhetoric’s viability beyond the short-ended context of who’s listening, when. Successful rhetoricians not only anticipate appealing to their audiences logically, credibly, and emotionally, but anticipate eventual probabilities as well–the probable long-ended effects of their audiences’ responses. The fact that Hitler was a masterful rhetorician is secondary, permanently, to the abominable outcome of his rhetoric’s deceit.

Socrates proved the case for rhetorical virtue to Phaedrus, as he always does through his awesome Socratic persuasiveness. Aristotle later reinforced it: “Hence the man who makes a good guess at truth is likely to make a good guess at probabilities.” (Rhetoric, Book 1, Ch. 1)