Week 9 lecture notes com350
- 1. Week 9 Lecture Notes COM 350 Chapter 8 IdeologicalCriticism Foss, S. (2018). Rhetorical Criticism: Exploration & Practice. 5th Ed. Long Grove, Il:Waveland Press.
- 2. Ideology A set of beliefs or a pattern that interprets relevant issues for a group and encourages particular attituded. Any artifact can serve as an artifact for ideological criticism because ideologies exist everywhere! Examples of ideologies: patriotism, Christianity, 12- step programs, vegetarianism Look at the artifact to discover the beliefs, values, and assumptions it suggests
- 3. Features of Ideologies The ideology is composed of evaluative beliefs with possible alternative judgments Statements communicate group beliefs Ideologies allow group members to act as group members Ideologies address membership, activities, goals, core beliefs, defining events, sacred texts, values, group relations, and resources
- 4. Hegemonic Ideologies When an ideology become hegemonic, it accumulates the power to classify the world for others. Use social control as a means of symbolic coercion. A form of domination where certain interests of groups are served. To maintain a position of dominance, a hegemonic ideology must be renewed, reinforced, and defended continually through the use of rhetorical strategies and practices. The rise of dominance is not always deliberate and conscious. dominance happens by happenstance, circumstance, and cultural preferences.
- 5. Influences on Ideological Criticism Structuralism: a series of projects in which linguistics is used as a model for attempts to develop the basis of systems (called grammars) such as myths, novels, and genres. Semiology, one form of structuralism, is the science of signs: what sighs are and how they function, provides a way to study an artifact as clues to its ideology Marxism: an intellectual system that informs the work of ideological critics. Material conditions interact with and influence the symbols by which groups make sense of their world. Deconstructionism (aka post structuralism): deconstruct the self-evident central concepts (reverse engineering the artifact). Directed to texts, taking apart and exposing the underlying meanings.
- 6. More Influences on Ideological Criticism Cultural Studies: Relations of power in a society are embedded in and reproduced through cultural creation. 1964 Richard Hoggart and Stuart Hall Critics seek to uncovers oppressive relations and forces that could lead to liberation. Basic assumption: culture is everyday discursive practices, artifacts of popular culture are legitimate data for critical analysis. Articulation theory: establishment of a relationship among elements so that their identify is transformed. Critics use the artifact to figure out how meaning is constructed and to discover and make visible the ideology embedded in the artifact, and to identify the role communication plays in creating and sustaining an ideology, and to discover whose interests are represented in that ideology.
- 7. More Influences on Ideological Criticism Post modernism: a theory of cultural, intellectual, and societal discontinuity, based on the theory that the culture moved on to new forms of communication and representation. Characteristics of the new age include fragmentation of individuals and communities, a consumer lifestyle, a sense of alienation, a destabilization of unifying discourses and principles. Post modern theory provides a context for contemporary artifacts and the needs to which these artifacts are responding.
- 8. Analyze the artifact in 4 steps 1- Identify the presented elements 2 – Identify the suggested elements linked to the presented elements 3 – Formulate an ideology 4- identify the functions served by the ideology
- 9. Coding and formulating Code for presented elements. these can be argumentative claims, musical features, and in nondiscursive or visual artifacts, shapes, materials, and objects code for the suggested elements: articulate ideas, references, themes, allusions, or concepts suggested by the presented elements. Look for clusters in the suggested elements.. Use the questions on page 247 of our text for help with articulating the ideology in the artifact.