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 …
Category Archive: Rhetoric
Feb 15
An Introduction to Data Display: Analyzing the Rhetorical Value of Visual Organization
In persuading an audience, clarity is crucial. Shorten audience’s comprehension process by simplifying your information in visual display. By displaying versus describing your persuasive data, meaning is obvious. Persuasiveness needn’t any silver-tongued tricks. Charles Kostelnick, author of the professional article, “The Visual Rhetoric of Data Displays: The Conundrum of Clarity”, suggests that straight-foward, visual displays …
Feb 08
View from the Meta-Plateau: Examining Adolph’s Elementary Modes of Electronic Text Analysis
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 …
Jan 25
The Non-Stuff of DisneyLands: Sustaining Attention in an Information Saturated World
In his essay, The Economics of Attention, Richard Lanham examines the evolving modalities of our world as it quickly habituates itself towards digitalization. Our physical world is dissolving into a non-reality of subsidized dairy cows picturesquely grazing in Swiss countrysides, of reserving Mt. Everest to challenge its iconic human inhospitality. As our world became …
Jan 18
Cultivating Persuasiveness: A Process for Building Rhetorical Eloquence
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 …
Jan 11
Shadow of the Ass: A Brief Lesson in Rhetoric, Plus Examination of Our Susceptibility to Rhetorical Power
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 …