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Contents vii
Reframing an Unwanted Transition:

A Metaphoric Analysis of Jiang Zemin’s
Address at the Handover of Hong Kong 314
Andrew Gilmore
10 Narrative Criticism 319

Procedures 323
Selecting an Artifact 323
Analyzing the Artifact 325
Formulating a Research Question 337
Writing the Essay 338
Sample Essays 338
“You Don’t Play, You Volunteer”: Narrative Public
Memory Construction in Medal of Honor: Rising Sun 342
Aaron Hess
Facilitating Openness to Difference: A Narrative Analysis of
Leslie Marmon Silko’s Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit 357
Laura S. More, Randi Boyd, Julie Bradley, and Erin Harris
To Ensure a Smooth and Successful Transition:
A Narrative Analysis of Jiang Zemin’s
Address at the Handover of Hong Kong 361
Andrew Gilmore
11 Pentadic Criticism 367

Procedures 369
Selecting an Artifact 369
Analyzing the Artifact 369
Sample Essays 380
Fahrenheit 9/11’s Purpose-Driven Agents:
A Multipentadic Approach to Political Entertainment 382
Samantha Senda-Cook
The Construction of Agency as a Cause for Recall:
A Pentadic Analysis of Wisconsin Governor
Scott Walker’s Victory Speech 403
Rachael Shaff
Artifact: Speech by Scott Walker 405
Circumvention of Power: A Pentadic Analysis of

Jiang Zemin’s Address at the Handover of Hong Kong 407
Andrew Gilmore
Foss-RC 5E.book Page viii Monday, June 19, 2017 2:08 PM
viii Contents
12 Generative Criticism 411

Encountering a Curious Artifact 411
Coding the Artifact 413
Searching for an Explanation 420
Creating an Explanatory Schema 422
Talking with Someone 424
Introducing Random Stimulation 425
Shifting Focus 426
Reversing 427
Questioning 427
Applying Aristotle’s Topics 428
Applying Metaphors 428
Assessing the Explanatory Schema 430
Coding the Artifact in Detail 432
Searching the Literature 433
Sample Essays 435
Toward a Theory of Agentic Orientation:
Rhetoric and Agency in Run Lola Run 438
Sonja K. Foss, William J. C. Waters, and Bernard J. Armada
Coding for Coping with Fatal Illness 459
Coping with Fatal Illness: Avery’s Bucket List as Reality Television 467
Rachael L. Thompson Kuroiwa
Romancing the Chinese Identity:
Rhetorical Strategies Used to Facilitate
Identification in the Handover of Hong Kong 476
Andrew Gilmore
Foss-RC 5E.book Page ix Monday, June 19, 2017 2:08 PM
Preface
Rhetorical criticism is not a process confined to a few assignments in a rhe-

torical or media criticism course. It is an everyday activity we can use to
understand our responses to symbols of all kinds and to create symbols of our
own that generate the kinds of responses we intend. I hope this book not only
provides guidelines for understanding and practicing critical analysis but also
conveys the excitement and fun that characterize the process.
I am grateful to a number of people who assisted me in various ways with
earlier editions of this book: Bernard J. Armada, Ernest G. Bormann, Kim-
berly C. Elliott, Richard Enos, Karen A. Foss, Cindy L. Griffin, Sara E.
Hayden, Richard L. Johannesen, Laura K. Hahn, D. Lynn O’Brien Hallstein,
Kellie Hay, Michelle A. Holling, Gordana Lazić, Xing Lu, Debian L. Marty,
Clarke Rountree, Diana Brown Sheridan, Robert Trapp, and William Waters.
Their gifts of time, energy, and support have contributed immeasurably to
making this book what it is today. This book is also a product of the questions,
insights, and essays of criticism of the students in my rhetorical criticism
courses at the University of Denver, the University of Oregon, Ohio State Uni-
versity, and the University of Colorado Denver.
This edition of the book has benefited from sage advice from four scholars
and colleagues. Karen A. Foss read all of the chapters and provided her usual
valuable substantive and stylistic advice. Two of my colleagues at the Univer-
sity of Colorado Denver, Lisa Keränen, and Amy A. Hasinoff, read the chapter
on narrative criticism and helped me move into the digital world of storytell-
ing. Barry Brummett helped me sort through the method of homology, which
is part of the discussion in the chapter on generic criticism.
I also appreciate the scholars whose essays I have included as samples of
the methods for their willingness to share their critical essays; their excellent
models of criticism both enrich and clarify the approaches they illustrate.
Andrew Gilmore deserves a special note of thanks for his contributions to this
edition of the book. He is the author of nine sample essays in the book, in
which he applied different methods to the same artifact to help demonstrate
what each method reveals and conceals. Little did he know, when he wrote his
ix
Foss-RC 5E.book Page x Monday, June 19, 2017 2:08 PM
x Preface
first essay of criticism in my rhetorical criticism class in 2014, that he would

be recruited to be involved in this project. He tackled each essay with enthusi-
asm, sophisticated critical skills, and unwavering dedication. Neil Rowe and
Carol Rowe, my amazing publishers, provided their usual enthusiastic sup-
port, freedom, and just the right amount of prodding to produce this revision.
My husband, Anthony J. Radich, himself a superb rhetorical critic, contrib-
uted to this project constant good humor, support, and love.
Foss-RC 5E.book Page 1 Monday, June 19, 2017 2:08 PM
PART 1
Introduction
The Nature of Rhetorical Criticism
W e live our lives enveloped in symbols. How we perceive, what we know,

what we experience, and how we act are the result of the symbols we create
and the symbols we encounter in the world. We watch movies, television
series, and YouTube videos; listen to speeches by political candidates; notice
ads on billboards and buses; choose furniture and works of art for our apart-
ments and houses; and talk with friends and family. As we do, we engage in a
process of thinking about symbols, discovering how they work, and trying to
figure out why they affect us. We choose to communicate in particular ways
based on what we have discovered. This process is called rhetorical criticism,
and this book provides an opportunity for you to develop skills in the process
and to explore the theory behind it.
Rhetoric
A useful place to start in the study of rhetorical criticism is with an under-
standing of what rhetoric is. Many of the common uses of the word rhetoric
have negative connotations. The term often is used to mean empty, bombastic
language that has no substance. Political candidates and governmental offi-
cials often call for “action not rhetoric” from their opponents or from the
leaders of other nations. The term is also used to mean “spin” or deception of
the kind we associate with the selling of used cars. In other instances, rhetoric
is used to mean flowery, ornamental speech laden with metaphors and other
figures of speech. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s speech “I Have a Dream” might
be considered to be an example of this kind of rhetoric. None of these concep-
tions is how the term rhetoric is used in rhetorical criticism, and none of these
definitions is how the term has been defined throughout its long history as a
discipline dating back to the fifth century BC. In these contexts, rhetoric is
defined as the human use of symbols to communicate. This definition
includes three primary dimensions: (1) humans as the creators of rhetoric; (2)
symbols as the medium for rhetoric; and (3) communication as the purpose
for rhetoric.
3
4 Chapter One
Humans as the Creators of Rhetoric

Rhetoric involves symbols created and used by humans. Some people
debate whether or not symbol use is a characteristic that distinguishes
humans from all other species of animals, pointing to research with chimpan-
zees and gorillas in which these animals have been taught to communicate
using signs. As far as we know, humans are the only animals who create a sub-
stantial part of their reality through the use of symbols. Every symbolic choice
we make results in seeing the world one way rather than another. When we
change the symbols we use to frame an event, our experience of the event is
altered. Thus, rhetoric is traditionally limited to the human rhetor as the orig-
inator or creator of messages. Rhetor is a term you will be encountering fre-
quently in this book. A rhetor is the creator of a message—the speaker,
musician, painter, website designer, blogger, filmmaker, or writer, for exam-
ple—who generates symbols for audiences.
Symbols as the Medium for Rhetoric

A second primary concept in the definition of rhetoric is that rhetoric
involves symbols rather than signs. A symbol is something that stands for or
represents something else by virtue of relationship, association, or conven-
tion. Symbols are distinguished from signs by the degree of direct connection
to the object represented. Smoke is a sign that fire is present, which means
that there is a direct relationship between the fire and the smoke. Similarly,
the changing color of the leaves in autumn is a sign that winter is coming; the
color is a direct indicator of a drop in temperature. A symbol, by contrast, is a
human construction connected only indirectly to its referent. The word cup,
for example, has no natural relationship to an open container for beverages. It
is a symbol invented by someone who wanted to refer to this kind of object; it
could have been called a fish, for example. The selection of the word cup to
refer to a particular kind of container is arbitrary.
The following example illustrates the distinction between a symbol and a
sign. Imagine someone who does not exercise regularly agreeing to play ten-
nis for the first time in many years. Following the match, he tells his partner
that he is out of shape and doesn’t have much stamina. The man is using sym-
bols to explain to his partner how he is feeling, to suggest the source of his dis-
comfort, and perhaps to rationalize his poor performance. The man also
experiences an increased heart rate, a red face, and shortness of breath, but
these changes in his bodily condition are not conscious choices. They commu-
nicate to his partner, just as his words do, but they are signs directly con-
nected to his physical condition. Thus, they are not rhetorical. Only his
conscious use of symbols to communicate a particular condition is rhetorical.
The intertwining of signs and symbols is typical of human communication.
For instance, a tree standing in a forest is not a symbol. It does not stand for
something else; it simply is a tree. The tree could become a symbol, however, if
someone chooses it to communicate an idea. It could be used in environmen-
tal advocacy efforts as a symbol of the destruction of redwood forests, for
example, or as a symbol of Jesus’s birth when it is used as a Christmas tree.
The Nature of Rhetorical Criticism 5
Humans use all sorts of nonrhetorical objects in rhetorical ways, turning them
into symbols in the process.
Although rhetoric often involves the deliberate and conscious choice of
symbols to communicate with others, actions not deliberately constructed by
rhetors also can be interpreted symbolically. Humans often choose to interpret
something rhetorically that the rhetor did not intend to be symbolic. Someone
can choose to give an action or an object symbolic value, even though it was
not intended as part of the message. In such cases, the meaning received is
often quite different from what the creator of the message intends. When the
United States deliberately deploys an aircraft carrier off the coast of North
Korea, it has performed a rhetorical action to warn Pyongyang not to continue
with its testing of nuclear weapons. Both sides read the message symbolically,
and there is no doubt about the meaning. If a U.S. reconnaissance plane acci-
dentally strays over North Korea without the purpose of communicating any-
thing to North Korea, however, the pilot is not engaged in rhetorical action. In
this case, however, the North Koreans can choose to interpret the event sym-
bolically and take retaliatory action against the United States. Any action,
whether intended to communicate or not, can be interpreted rhetorically by
those who experience or encounter it.
The variety of forms that symbols can assume is broad. Rhetoric is not
limited to written and spoken discourse; in fact, speaking and writing make
up only a small part of our rhetorical environment. Rhetoric, then, includes
nondiscursive or nonverbal symbols as well as discursive or verbal ones.
Speeches, essays, conversations, poetry, novels, stories, comic books, graphic
novels, websites, blogs, fanzines, television programs, films and videos, video
games, art, architecture, plays, music, dance, advertisements, furniture, auto-
mobiles, and dress are all forms of rhetoric.
Communication as the Purpose of Rhetoric

A third component of the definition of rhetoric is that its purpose is com-
munication. Symbols are used for communicating with others or oneself. For
many people, the term rhetoric is synonymous with communication. The
choice of whether to use the term rhetoric or the term communication to
describe the process of exchanging meaning is largely a personal one, often
stemming from the tradition of inquiry in which a scholar is grounded. Indi-
viduals trained in social scientific perspectives on symbol use often prefer the
term communication, while those who study symbol use from more humanis-
tic perspectives tend to use the term rhetoric.
Rhetoric functions in a variety of ways to allow humans to communicate
with one another. In some cases, we use rhetoric in an effort to persuade oth-
ers—to encourage others to change in some way. In other instances, rhetoric
is an invitation to understanding—we offer our perspectives and invite others
to enter our worlds so they can understand us and our perspectives better.1
Sometimes, we use rhetoric simply as a means of self-discovery or to come to
self-knowledge. We may articulate thoughts or feelings out loud to ourselves
or in a journal and, in doing so, come to know ourselves better and perhaps
make different choices in our lives.
6 Chapter One
Another communicative function that rhetoric performs is that it con-

structs reality. Reality is not fixed but changes according to the symbols we
use to talk about it. What we count as real or as knowledge about the world
depends on how we choose to label and talk about things. This does not mean
that things do not really exist—that this book, for example, is simply a figment
of your imagination. Rather, the symbols through which our realities are fil-
tered affect our view of the book and how we are motivated to act toward it.
The frameworks and labels we choose to apply to what we encounter influ-
ence our perceptions and interpretations of what we experience and thus the
kinds of worlds in which we live. Is someone an alcoholic or morally
depraved? Is a child misbehaved or suffering from ADD? Is an unexpected situ-
ation a struggle or an adventure? Is a coworker’s behavior irritating or eccen-
tric? The choices we make in terms of how to approach these situations are
critical in determining the nature and outcome of the experiences we have
regarding them.
Rhetorical Criticism
The process you will be using for engaging in the study of rhetoric is rhe-
torical criticism. It is a qualitative research method that is designed for the
systematic investigation and explanation of symbolic acts and artifacts for the
purpose of understanding rhetorical processes. This definition includes three
primary dimensions: (1) systematic analysis as the act of criticism; (2) acts
and artifacts as the objects of analysis in criticism; and (3) understanding rhe-
torical processes as the purpose of criticism.
Systematic Analysis as the Act of Criticism

We are responding to symbols continually, and as we encounter symbols,
we try to figure out how they are working and why they affect us as they do.
We tend to respond to these symbols—like movies or songs—by saying “I like
it” or “I don’t like it.” The process of rhetorical criticism involves engaging in
this natural process in a more conscious, systematic, and focused way.
Through the study and practice of rhetorical criticism, we can understand and
explain why we like or don’t like something by investigating the symbols them-
selves—we can begin to make statements about messages rather than state-
ments about our feelings. We engage in more disciplined and mindful
interpretations of the symbols around us. Rhetorical criticism, then, enables
us to become more sophisticated and discriminating in explaining, investigat-
ing, and understanding symbols and our responses to them.
Acts and Artifacts as the Objects of Criticism

The objects of study in rhetorical criticism are symbolic acts and artifacts.
An act is executed in the presence of a rhetor’s intended audience—a speech
or a musical performance presented to a live audience, for example. Because
an act tends to be fleeting and ephemeral, analysis of it is difficult, so many
rhetorical critics prefer to study the artifact of an act—the text, trace, or tangi-
ble evidence of the act. When a rhetorical act is transcribed and printed,
The Nature of Rhetorical Criticism 7
posted on a website, recorded on video, or preserved on canvas, it becomes a

rhetorical artifact that is accessible to a wider audience than the one that wit-
nessed the rhetorical act. Both acts and artifacts are objects of rhetorical criti-
cism. But because most critics use the tangible product as the basis for
criticism—a speech text, a building, a Facebook page, a blog, a sculpture, or a
recorded song, for example—the term artifact will be used in this book to refer
to the object of study. The use of the term is not meant to exclude acts from
your investigation but to provide a consistent and convenient way to talk
about the object of criticism.2
Understanding Rhetorical Processes as the Purpose of Criticism

The process of rhetorical criticism often begins with an interest in under-
standing particular symbols and how they operate. A critic may be interested
in a particular kind of symbol use or a particular rhetorical artifact—the
Holocaust Museum in Washington DC or Adele’s music, for example—and
engages in criticism to deepen appreciation and understanding of that arti-
fact. Critics of popular culture such as restaurant, television, theatre, film, and
music critics are these kinds of critics—they tend to be most interested in
understanding the particular experience of the restaurant or film they are
reviewing. But criticism undertaken primarily to comment on a particular
artifact tends not to be “enduring; its importance and its functions are imme-
diate and ephemeral.”3 Once the historical situation has been forgotten or the
rhetor or artifact is no longer the center of the public’s attention, such criti-
cism no longer serves a useful purpose if it has been devoted exclusively to an
understanding of a particular artifact.
In contrast to critics of popular culture, rhetorical critics do not study an
artifact for its qualities and features alone. Rhetorical critics are interested in
discovering what an artifact teaches about the nature of rhetoric—in other
words, critics engage in rhetorical criticism to make a contribution to rhetori-
cal theory.4 Theory is a tentative answer to a question we pose as we seek to
understand the world. It is a set of general clues, generalizations, or principles
that explains a process or phenomenon and thus helps to answer the question
we asked. We are all theorists in our everyday lives, developing explanations
for what is happening in our worlds based on our experiences and observa-
tions. If a friend never returns your calls, emails, or texts, for example, you
might come to the conclusion—or develop the theory—that the friendship is
over. You have asked yourself a question about the state of the friendship, col-
lected some evidence (made calls and sent emails and texts and observed that
they were not returned), and reached a tentative conclusion or claim (that the
other person no longer wishes to be your friend).
In rhetorical criticism, the theorizing that critics do deals with explana-
tions about how rhetoric works. A critic asks a question about a rhetorical
process or phenomenon and how it works and provides a tentative answer to
the question. This answer does not have to be fancy, formal, or complicated. It
simply involves identifying some of the basic concepts involved in a rhetorical
phenomenon or process and explaining how they work. Admittedly, the theory
that results is based on limited evidence—in many cases, one artifact. But
8 Chapter One
even the study of one artifact allows you to step back from the details of a par-
ticular artifact to take a broader view of it and to draw some conclusions
about what it suggests concerning some process of rhetoric.
The process of rhetorical criticism does not end with a contribution to the-
ory. Theories about rhetorical criticism enable us to develop a cumulative
body of research and thus to improve our practice of communication. The
final outcome of rhetorical criticism is an improvement of our abilities as
communicators. As a rhetorical critic, you implicitly suggest how more effec-
tive symbol use may be accomplished. In suggesting some theoretical princi-
ples about how rhetoric operates, you provide principles or guidelines for
those of us who want to communicate in more self-reflective ways and to con-
struct messages that best accomplish our goals.5 As a result of our study of
these principles, we should be more skilled, discriminating, and sophisticated
in our efforts to communicate in our talk with our friends and families, in the
decoration of our homes and offices, in our online behavior, in the choices we
make about the clothing we wear, and in our efforts to present our ideas at
school or at work.
Knowing how rhetoric operates also can help make us more sophisticated
audience members for messages. When we understand the various options
available to rhetors in the construction of messages and how they create the
effects they do, we are able to question the choices others make in their use of
symbols. We are less inclined to accept existing rhetorical practices and to
respond uncritically to the messages we encounter. As a result, we become
more engaged and active participants in shaping the nature of the worlds in
which we live.
Notes
1
This function for rhetoric was suggested by Sonja K. Foss and Cindy L. Griffin in their theory of
invitational rhetoric: Sonja K. Foss and Cindy L. Griffin, “Beyond Persuasion: A Proposal for an
Invitational Rhetoric,” Communication Monographs 62 (March 1995): 2–18. Also see Sonja K.
Foss and Karen A. Foss, Inviting Transformation: Presentational Speaking for a Changing World,
3rd ed. (Long Grove, IL: Waveland, 2012).
2 This distinction is suggested by Kathleen G. Campbell, “Enactment as a Rhetorical Strategy/
Form in Rhetorical Acts and Artifacts,” Diss. University of Denver 1988, 25–29.
3
Karlyn Kohrs Campbell, “Criticism: Ephemeral and Enduring,” Speech Teacher 23 (January
1974): 11.
4
More elaborate discussions of rhetorical criticism as theory building can be found in: Roderick
P. Hart, “Forum: Theory-Building and Rhetorical Criticism: An Informal Statement of Opin-
ion,” Central States Speech Journal 27 (Spring 1976): 70–77; Richard B. Gregg, “The Criticism
of Symbolic Inducement: A Critical-Theoretical Connection,” in Speech Communication in the
20th Century, ed. Thomas W. Benson (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1985),
42–43; and Campbell, “Criticism,” 11–14.
5
Discussions of rhetorical criticism to increase the effectiveness of communication can be found
in: Robert Cathcart, Post Communication: Criticism and Evaluation (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Mer-
rill, 1966), 3, 6–7, 12; and Edwin Black, Rhetorical Criticism: A Study in Method (Madison: Uni-
versity of Wisconsin Press, 1978), 9.
Doing Rhetorical Criticism
The definitions of the terms rhetoric and rhetorical criticism in chapter 1 have
provided a starting place for understanding rhetorical criticism. Knowledge
about what rhetorical criticism is does not automatically translate into the
ability to do criticism, however. This chapter is designed to provide you with
an overview of the actual process of producing an essay of criticism.
Because this textbook is a first experience with rhetorical criticism for
many of you, you probably will feel more comfortable initially practicing rhe-
torical criticism using specific methods. Using these methods enables you to
begin to develop your critical skills and to learn the language and basic proce-
dures of criticism. This chapter, then, provides you with information about
how to do criticism when your starting point is a formal method of criticism.
A variety of these methods are presented in chapters 3 through 11. Chapter 12
offers a different way of doing criticism—generative criticism—an approach
you probably will want to try as your skills as a critic grow. Using this
approach, you will create a method or framework for analyzing an artifact
from the data of the artifact itself.
Your starting place, however, in most of the chapters is with a method of
criticism—either one you have chosen or one selected for you by your profes-
sor. When you begin with a particular method, the process of rhetorical criti-
cism involves four steps and possibly five or six, depending on your
preferences or your professor’s assignment: (1) selecting an artifact; (2) ana-
lyzing the artifact; (3) formulating a research question; (4) reviewing relevant
literature (optional); (5) writing the essay; and (6) applying the analysis in
activism (optional).
Selecting an Artifact
Your first step is to find an artifact to analyze that is appropriate for the
method you will be applying. The artifact is the data for the study—the rhetor-
ical act or artifact you are going to analyze. It may be any instance of symbol
use that is of interest to you and seems capable of generating insights about
9
10 Chapter Two
rhetorical processes—a song, a poem, a speech, a YouTube video, a webcam

drama, a video game, a series of Tweets, a podcast, a work of art, or a build-
ing, for example.
An artifact is appropriate for a method if it meets two criteria. It first must
contain the kinds of data that are the focus of the units of analysis of the
method. Units of analysis focus attention on certain dimensions of an artifact
and not others. A critic cannot possibly examine all of the features of an arti-
fact, so units of analysis serve as a vehicle or lens for you to use to examine the
artifact. They are scanning devices for picking up particular kinds of informa-
tion about an artifact, directing and narrowing the analysis in particular ways,
revealing some things and concealing others. Units of analysis are things like
strategies, types of evidence, values, fantasy themes, and metaphors. If you are
using the narrative method, for example, you will need an artifact that is a
narrative or that includes a story within it. If you are using metaphoric criti-
cism, you will need an artifact that contains some obvious metaphors.
The artifact you choose also should be something you really like or really
dislike, something that puzzles or baffles you, or something that you cannot
explain. We have such responses to the artifacts around us all the time—we
love a particular song, we cannot understand why a political candidate has
the appeal that he does, we marvel at the artistry involved in a quilt, or we
cannot figure out what the message of a building is supposed to be. Let your
daily encounters with the symbols around you guide you in your selection of
an artifact. Your interest in, passion for, and curiosity about an artifact are
important initial ingredients for writing an essay of criticism.
Analyzing the Artifact

The second step in the process of criticism is to code or analyze your arti-
fact using the procedures of the method. Each method of criticism has its own
procedures for analyzing an artifact, and at this step, you apply the units of
analysis provided by the method. If you are applying metaphoric analysis, for
example, you will be involved in coding your artifact for metaphors and their
tenors and vehicles, the two parts of metaphors. If you are applying the cluster
method, you will be identifying key terms in the artifact and finding the terms
that cluster around them. This is the step at which you engage in a close and
systematic analysis of the artifact and become thoroughly familiar with the
dimensions highlighted by your method.
An easy way to do the coding of your artifact is to write or type your notes
about the artifact in a list, leaving some space between each “code.” Physically
cut the observations you have made apart so that each idea or observation is
on a separate strip of paper. Then group the strips that are about the same
thing and put them in one pile. Group the strips that are about something else
and put them in another pile. What is in these piles will depend on the method
of criticism you are using—perhaps different fantasy themes, different meta-
phors, or different elements of narratives. Play around with different ways to
organize your piles. The strips of paper allow you to group and regroup your
codes into different categories and encourage you to experiment with multiple
ways of conceptualizing the data of your artifact.
Doing Rhetorical Criticism 11
Formulating a Research Question

The research question is what you want to find out about rhetoric by
studying an artifact. It suggests what your study contributes to our under-
standing of how rhetorical processes work—your contribution, in other
words, to rhetorical theory. In contrast to much qualitative research, the
research question in rhetorical criticism is typically generated after you do
your analysis because the analysis shows you what you have learned that can
constitute a contribution to our understanding of rhetoric. This contribution is
captured in your research question. Although you may choose to state your
research question as a thesis statement instead of an actual question in your
essay, you want to be able to articulate what your research question is in your
mind because it encourages you to be very clear about your objective in your
analysis. Research questions are questions such as: “How does an ambiguous
artifact persuade?,” “What strategies can help people regain credibility after
they have been discredited?,” “What strategies do marginalized groups use to
challenge a dominant perspective?,” or “How does a political leader construct
a nation as an enemy?”
To create a research question, use the principle behind Jeopardy and cre-
ate a question for which the analysis you have just completed is the answer.
Use your findings to discover what is most significant, useful, or insightful
about your artifact and make that focus into a research question. If your anal-
ysis reveals, for example, that an artifact is making a highly controversial topic
seem normal, your research question might be something like, “What rhetori-
cal strategies facilitate the normalization of a controversial perspective?”
Research questions tend to be about four basic components of the commu-
nication process—the rhetor, the audience, the situation, and the message. If
you are having trouble developing a research question, identifying the arena
in which your study belongs might help you formulate your question.
• Rhetor. Some research questions deal with the relationship between
rhetors and their rhetoric. Questions that focus on the rhetor might be
concerned with the motive of the rhetor, the worldview of the rhetor, or
how the rhetoric functions for the rhetor. “What is the meaning of the
term compassion in the homilies of religious leaders?” is a research
question that has the rhetor as a focus.
• Audience. Some research questions are concerned with the relationship
between an artifact and an audience. Although rhetorical criticism does
not allow you to answer questions about the actual effects of rhetoric on
an audience, you can ask questions about the kind of audience an arti-
fact constructs as its preferred audience or how an artifact functions to
facilitate the development of certain values or beliefs in an audience. A
sample research question centered on an audience is: “What is the ideal
audience constructed by reality television?”
• Situation. Other research questions deal with the relationship between
an artifact and the situation or context in which the artifact is embed-
ded. Such questions might deal with the impact of a situation on an arti-
fact, the rhetor’s definition of a situation in an artifact, or whether the
12 Chapter Two
artifact adequately addresses an exigency in a particular situation.

Research questions in which a situation is central are: “How do political
leaders define exigencies following a national crisis?” and “What is the
impact of those definitions on perceptions of the crisis?”
• Message. Most research questions in rhetorical criticism deal with the
message. The focus is on the specific features of the artifact that enable
it to function in particular ways. Such questions might deal with the
kinds of arguments constructed, the types of metaphors used, the key
terms used, or a combination of rhetorical strategies and characteristics
that create a particular kind of artifact. Research questions that focus on
a message are questions such as: “What are the features of effective
apologies?,” “How does rhetoric generate support for propositions that
are contrary to cultural norms?,” or “What rhetorical strategies do indi-
viduals subjected to involuntary confinement use to create families?”
When you formulate your research question, try to avoid three mistakes that
beginning critics sometimes make as they create research questions. One is to
make the question too broad and generic. A question such as “How does politi-
cal rhetoric about war function?” is too broad and unfocused to answer through
the rhetorical analysis of one or even several artifacts. Try to narrow the scope
of the question by paying attention to the specific features of the artifact that are
most interesting to you. You might narrow the question to one such as “What
rhetorical strategies do political leaders use to justify unpopular wars?”
A second problem that can occur with research questions is that the word-
ing of the questions does not allow for the exploration and explanation of any-
thing interesting. Yes-or-no questions, which typically begin with do, are one
example. “Do political leaders justify unpopular wars?” is this kind of ques-
tion. Not only do these kinds of questions require simple yes-or-no answers,
but the answers to them are usually obvious—of course political leaders try to
justify unpopular wars. To make sure your research question is one that takes
advantage of the interesting and useful insights your analysis has produced,
you might want to use the following questions as models. These are templates
for typical research questions in essays of rhetorical criticism:
• What rhetorical strategies are used to . . . ?
• How do . . . function in the rhetoric of . . . ?
• What are the rhetorical processes that characterize the rhetoric of . . . ?
• What are the mechanisms by which . . . ?
• How do rhetors construct . . . ?
• How is the rhetoric of . . . constructed?
• What rhetorical strategies are available to . . . ?
• What is the nature and function of rhetoric designed to . . . ?
• What is the nature of the worldview constructed to . . . ?
• What are the features of . . . ?
• What are the characteristics of . . . ?
• What strategies are used to construct worldviews that function to . . . ?
• What perceptions result from the rhetorical construction of . . . ?
There is one more thing to avoid as you develop your research question.
Do not include your specific artifact or data in your research question.
Although there are exceptions with some methods of criticism (such as the
ideological approach), the question usually should be larger than the artifact
you are analyzing. You should be able to use any number of artifacts to answer
the question rather than being limited to the one you chose to study. Turn the
question that fits the analysis of your artifact into a more general one by mak-
ing the elements of the question more abstract. Instead of a question such as,
“How did George W. Bush reassure citizens after the terrorist attacks of Sep-
tember 11?,” your question could be, “What rhetorical strategies do political
leaders use to reassure citizens after catastrophic events?” You have made the
name of the rhetor of the artifact you are studying into the more abstract term
of political leaders and the terrorist attacks of September 11 into catastrophic
events. Instead of a question such as, “How does the National Rifle Association
make its ideology palatable to resistant audiences?,” your question could be,
“How do organizations with strong ideologies construct messages that appeal
to normally resistant audiences?”
Reviewing Relevant Literature

The next step in the process of rhetorical criticism is an optional one. You
will want to engage in this step if your professor requires that your essays of
criticism include a literature review or if you are preparing an essay for con-
vention presentation or possible publication in a journal. In this case, the liter-
ature review is designed to familiarize the readers of your essay with key
findings from previous studies. It is designed to provide contextual knowledge
the reader will need in order to understand your findings and their signifi-
cance. The literature review allows you to enter the conversation about a topic
in your field by acquainting yourself with what others are saying so you can
extend the conversation they have begun.
Identifying the Literature to Review

How do you figure out what literature to review? Let’s take a research
question and develop the categories of literature that you would include in
your literature review. Assume that you did a metaphoric analysis for your
essay and that the research question you came up with, as a result of your
analysis, is, “What are the metaphors used by state legislators in argumenta-
tion about children’s issues?” You are interested in seeing how the metaphors
create particular realities around children’s issues and encourage legislators
to perceive and deal with such issues in particular ways. As you search for lit-
erature on the topic, you might be tempted to search for all studies that have
to do with state legislators, children’s issues, argumentation, and metaphors.
But these topics are too large—you can’t possibly include in your literature
review all of the studies on even one of these topics, nor would you want to.
Such a literature review would be unfocused and would get your readers off
track from the narrative you want to tell about the current state of the litera-
ture and how it relates to the findings of your analysis.
14 Chapter Two
Working out the categories of literature to cover in your literature review

is not hard to do because the relevant studies come directly from your
research question. Begin by searching for studies that answer your exact
research question. For example, with the research question about legislators’
use of metaphors in their arguments related to children’s issues, you first
would search for studies about the metaphors used by state legislators in argu-
mentation about children’s issues. Type into your search box “metaphors +
state legislators + argumentation + children’s issues.” Let’s assume there are
no studies that directly answer your research question. Then you want to
select one of the key terms in the question and move up one level of abstrac-
tion and search again, using that more abstract term in your question. As S. I.
Hayakawa explained in Language in Thought and Action, the same concept
can be labeled with terms that are more or less concrete, and you can move up
and down the ladder of abstraction to talk about the concept in more specific
or more general terms.
We can see how the ladder of abstraction works by borrowing an example
from Hayakawa about a cow named Bessie. When you talk about this animal
as Bessie, she is the only thing in the category of Bessie. Moving up the ladder
of abstraction, you could refer to her as a cow. Notice that, as you talk about
Bessie in more general, abstract terms, the category has been expanded, and
there are now more items in it—all cows fit into the category, whereas only
one particular cow did when the category was Bessie. To move up another
level, you could label Bessie a farm animal, which now includes not only cows
but chickens, goats, pigs, and horses. You can continue up the ladder of
abstraction and call her a possession, and now you are including not only farm
animals but houses, tractors, cars, and clothing, for example. Again, this
greater abstraction increases the number of objects that fit into the category.
Notice that, when you make similar moves in your literature search, each
time you move up the ladder of abstraction, there are more possibilities for
studies that fit into the category. By moving up levels of abstraction with the
key terms of your research question, you open up the numbers of studies avail-
able to you. For example, in the research question about legislators and meta-
phors, state legislators could become politicians, which means you can now
look for studies that deal with how mayors, lieutenant governors, governors,
congressional representatives, senators, and presidents argue about children’s
issues. So now you would be searching for literature that answers the ques-
tion, “What are the metaphors used by politicians in argumentation about
children’s issues?,” and you would type into your search box “metaphors +
politicians + argumentation + children’s issues.” If there are no studies rele-
vant to this topic, you could move to a higher level of abstraction and turn pol-
iticians into policy makers, which could include people who work in nonprofit
organizations, corporations, education, and so on. If you don’t find studies
that deal with this question, you would want to repeat the process, selecting
another term in your original research question and replacing it with a term
that is more abstract than the original. So, for example, you could take the key
term children’s issues and make it into family issues, a more abstract term.
There’s one other source for developing bodies of literature to include in a
literature review—your artifact. In addition to looking to your research ques-
tion for clues about what your literature review should contain, also look to
your artifact, particularly if it is an artifact that is well known, produced by a
prominent person, or significant for other reasons. You want to see if studies
of your artifact have been done, how they might inform your own analysis,
and whether they shed any light on the research question you are asking. If,
for example, you are going to use as your data a work of art by feminist artist
Judy Chicago, see if studies have been done on her art in the past and include
them in your literature review. If your data are Walt Disney cartoons, see what
studies have been done of them and what kinds of findings about what kinds
of questions those studies produced. In the case of legislators’ discussions
about children’s issues, you probably aren’t going to find many studies that are
all that useful to include in your literature review—”argumentation about chil-
dren’s issues” isn’t a particularly well-known kind of artifact, and it is not
associated with anyone of prominence. In this case, your artifact—a set of
speeches by legislators—would not be a source of literature for you.
Coding the Literature

You now have gathered the literature you want to include in your litera-
ture review, and you are likely to find yourself facing two common problems
when you survey the literature. One is how to keep track of and deal with all
the literature. You might remember when you wrote papers in the past and
highlighted passages or had Post-it notes stuck on virtually every page of every
book and article you collected. A second problem is how to organize and pres-
ent the literature. Even if you could process all of the material you have effi-
ciently, how do you organize it so that it makes sense to your readers? The
following system of coding the literature addresses these problems and
enables you to engage the literature in an efficient and manageable fashion.
Coding the literature means gleaning the ideas that are relevant and useful
for your project from the literature. Do this coding the first time you read a
book or an article instead of reading it first and then going back through it to
code. When your literature is gathered and is stacked before you, sit at your
computer and take a book from the top of the pile. Review it for ideas that
have a direct bearing on your research question and artifact. Use all the clues
the book provides to discover what is relevant for the rhetorical process you
are investigating—the table of contents, chapter titles, headings, and the
index. For each chapter that seems relevant to your research question, ask: “Is
this chapter relevant for my study?” If it isn’t, do not read it, and do not code
it. When you come upon a relevant chapter, review it heading by heading and
subheading by subheading. Ask at each heading, “Is this section relevant for
me?” If it isn’t, skip it. When you find a relevant idea, take notes about it on the
computer. Using single spacing, type either a direct quote, a paraphrase, or a
summary of the idea you find useful, and include the source and page number
for each note you take. Insert a double or triple space between the notes.
Use the same process to code your articles that you use to code the books.
Look through each article to see which sections seem relevant to your
research question and artifact. When you see a section that might be useful,
skim it, seeing if there are excerpts you want to pick up. Be careful when you
16 Chapter Two
are coding articles that you don’t get lost in the details of a study. Highlight
only the findings of the study. Because you are looking for claims and conclu-
sions that are relevant to your research question, you usually do not need to
know anything about how the findings that you are including in the literature
review came to be generated—the participants, data, or methods used in the
study that produced those findings, for example. You are interested in the find-
ings of the study because the findings are what are contributing to a theoreti-
cal discussion about your topic. After you have coded all of the literature, print
out a copy of the notes you took during your coding and physically cut the
notes apart.
If you are not a fast keyboarder, there is another way to code literature
that may work better for you. As you read a book or an article, make a line in
the margin beside each passage that is relevant to your analysis (be sure to use
a pencil if the book doesn’t belong to you so you can erase these lines later).
When you have finished reading a book or an article, take it to a copy machine
and make a copy of each page where you marked a passage or passages. On
the copies of the pages, write the source and page number in the margin by
each passage you have marked. Then cut out the passages from each copied
page. At the end of this process, then, each note or marked passage is on a sep-
arate slip of paper, along with a shorthand reference to the source and page
number from which the note or passage came.
The next step of the process is to sort the slips into piles according to sub-
ject, putting everything that is about the same topic in the same pile. For exam-
ple, all the slips of paper in one pile might have to do with power, those in
another pile with gender, those in another pile with agency, and those in
another pile with the role that material conditions play in rhetoric. Put the
piles into envelopes and label the envelopes. Storing the slips in envelopes pre-
vents you from losing track of the piles or having them messed up by unwitting
animal or human companions. You now have before you many different enve-
lopes with labels on them containing many excerpts or typed notes from your
literature. What you really have is a filing system for the major ideas of your
literature review. In the case of literature about metaphors used in argumenta-
tion about children’s issues, you might find that the literature sorts into piles
such as types of arguments used about children’s issues, major topics covered
in such arguments, the legislative outcomes linked to certain kinds of argu-
ments, and metaphors about children used in advocacy for children in general.
Creating a Conceptual Schema

Your next task is to turn the ideas represented by the envelopes into a con-
ceptual schema or creative synthesis for your literature review. A conceptual
schema is a way of organizing your literature review that creates connections
among the pieces of your literature and shows how they relate to one another.
Another way to think of a conceptual schema is as an explanation for what
you are seeing across your piles of slips. It is a framework for presenting your
findings that allows you to tell a story about the content of your literature
review and features the themes that you want to highlight in the theoretical
conversation to which your essay of criticism will contribute.
A conceptual schema is not a chronological description of literature in

which you take each study and talk about it in the order in which it was done.
These kinds of literature reviews are tedious because they do not make an
argument or connect the studies in any way. Your literature review, in con-
trast, is going to be organized by major topics and not by individual studies. In
fact, you may find that the same study appears in more than one of the subar-
eas of your literature review.
You have the mechanism for creating a conceptual schema for your litera-
ture right in front of you. Go to your computer and make a list of the labels
that are on your envelopes. Leave a couple of spaces between each of the
labels as you type the list. Make the font for the list large—perhaps 26 point—
and then print it out. Grab your scissors again, and cut the labels apart. Take
the labels to your desk, a table, a bed, or the floor, and lay them out in any
order in front of you. Begin to play around with the relationships you see
among the topics represented in the labels. Maybe you have three different
topics that are the major variables that have been studied. Lay out those three
labels across the top of your space. Are there other labels or topics that belong
under them? If so, position them in that order. Do you have some topics that
disagree with a position? Some that agree? If so, group them together. Per-
haps you discover that the literature can be organized by influences, compo-
nents, functions, outcomes, models, different ways of doing something, steps
in a process, perspectives on a phenomenon, or comparison and contrast. You
can try out different ways of organizing the literature just by moving the labels
into different patterns. Keep trying alternatives until you come up with a con-
ceptual schema that encompasses all or most of the major labels and that
seems to you to be the most effective way to tell the story of your literature.
There is no right or wrong conceptual schema for a body of literature.
Someone else could review, code, and sort the same literature you did and
come up with a very different conceptual schema from what you did. That is
not a problem. You want to organize the literature in a way that makes sense
to you, connects the major subjects covered in the literature, and helps you
engage the theoretical conversation related to your research question in a
coherent way. Developing your conceptual schema from the labels enables
you to accomplish all of these objectives in a way that is grounded in your
unique interpretation of the literature.
Writing the Literature Review

Let’s assume that you now have your conceptual schema for your litera-
ture review. In other words, you have in front of you the labels that represent
your envelopes arranged in this schema on the desk or floor in front of you.
This layout is a visual representation of your conceptual schema. Take a pic-
ture of it with your phone so you won’t forget it.
Choose a section of the literature review that you want to write. You can
begin with any section because you know exactly what your sections are, how
they relate to each other, and the order in which you want to discuss them.
Find the envelope with the slips related to that topic, take them out of that
envelope, and lay them out in front of you. Move them around and play with
18 Chapter Two
different ways of arranging them to create a miniconceptual schema that pres-

ents the literature about that subarea. In other words, do the same thing you
did with the whole literature review on a smaller scale, and arrange the
excerpts or typed notes about that topic so that they make the argument you
want to make about what the literature says in that subarea. As you review the
slips, you undoubtedly will discover that some slips say the same thing. Group
them together and then choose the one that says the idea best or the one that
comes from the most credible source. If several sources make the same point,
you can cite them in one parenthetical citation or a footnote following your
discussion of that idea, alleviating the need to repeat the same idea multiple
times. You’ll also discover that some excerpts are not as relevant as you
thought they would be to the topic and that you can leave them out.
What is left is a layout in front of you of the literature on a particular sub-
area you want to talk about in the order in which you want to talk about the
ideas of that subarea. The excerpt or note you want to talk about first is at the
top of your workspace, the second one next, and on down through all of the
excerpts that remain from the envelope. Now comes the magical part because
the literature review almost writes itself. Start with the first slip and type its
content into your computer. Then type in what is on the second slip, the third
slip, the fourth slip, and all the way through your layout. You are literally writ-
ing your way through your slips. Of course, you have to add introductions,
overviews, your argument about the ideas on the slips, and transitions
between them, but those are easy to write because you see your argument and
know exactly where you are going. As a result, you are easily able to create the
context necessary so that your essay of criticism can contribute to a theoreti-
cal conversation in the communication discipline.1
Writing the Essay

After you have analyzed your artifact, you are ready to write your essay of
criticism. Think of doing the analysis and writing the essay as two separate
processes. All of the thinking you have done and the steps you have gone
through to conduct your analysis are not included in your essay. What you
want to put on paper is the end result of your analysis so that you produce a
coherent, well-argued essay that reports your insights. An essay of criticism
includes five major components: (1) an introduction, in which you discuss the
research question, its contribution to rhetorical theory, and its significance
(this also includes your literature review if you are including one in your
essay); (2) a description of your artifact and its context; (3) a description of
your method of analysis; (4) a report of the findings of the analysis; and (5) a
discussion of the contribution your analysis makes to rhetorical theory. These
components do not need to be discussed in separate sections or identified with
headings, but you want to include these topics in your essay in some way.
Introduction
Your task in the introduction to the essay is the task of the introduction of
any paper. You want to orient the reader to the topic and present a clear state-
ment of purpose that organizes the essay. In the introduction, identify the
research question the analysis answers. You don’t have to state the question as
an actual question in your essay—it often is stated as the purpose or thesis
statement in your essay, using words such as “I will argue,” “I will suggest,” or
“I will explore.” If the research question you have formulated, for example, is
“What are the functions of reality television for audiences?,” you may want to
state it in this way: “In this essay, I will explore how reality-television shows
function for audiences to try to discover the appeal of such programs.”
A major purpose of the introduction is to generate interest so that your
readers will want to read your essay, even if they have no initial curiosity about
your artifact. One way to invite them into the essay is by suggesting that they
will learn something of importance to them. If possible, think of some real life
examples of rhetorical processes with which your readers have had experience
that relate to your analysis. If you are analyzing a speech by a member of the
National Rifle Association to gun-control supporters, you might provide exam-
ples of individuals who have attempted to persuade those who hold views that
are hostile to theirs. If you are analyzing a speech in which a rhetor attempts
to synthesize two polarized positions, you might argue that this artifact is a
model of how rhetors can create identification between opposing positions.
Knowledge about how to do this, you can suggest, is important for managing
conflict effectively between other opposing factions.
Another way to generate interest is by providing information about other
studies that have been done on the artifact you are analyzing that are incom-
plete, inadequate, or do not provide a satisfactory explanation for it. If you are
including a literature review in your essay, this is a logical way for you to gen-
erate interest. You can suggest that your study is important because it extends,
elaborates on, builds on, challenges, or in some way adds to knowledge that
already exists concerning a particular rhetorical process. When you discuss
why the knowledge about the rhetorical process to which you are contributing
is important, you are addressing the “so what?” question in research. This
question asks you to consider why the reader should care about the topic and
continue to read the essay.
Description of the Artifact

If the readers of your essay are to understand your analysis of an artifact,
they must be somewhat familiar with the artifact itself. To acquaint readers with
the artifact, provide a brief overview or summary of the artifact near the begin-
ning of the essay. Give readers whatever information they need to understand
the artifact and to be able to follow your analysis. If you are analyzing a film, for
example, tell when the film was released and who directed it and provide an
overview of the film’s plot, major characters, and significant technical features.
If you are analyzing a speech, include in the description of the artifact who gave
the speech, on what occasion, and the date and place of the speech. You also
want to provide the context for the artifact, locating it within the social, politi-
cal, and economic arrangements of which it is a part. If, for example, you are
analyzing a Harry Potter book or movie, give a brief explanation of the Harry
Potter phenomenon—tell who the author of the books is, the number of books in
20 Chapter Two
the series, the number of books sold, the amount of money generated at the box
office by the films, and the controversies the phenomenon generated.
Your description of the artifact is, to some extent, an interpretation of the
artifact. You cannot tell the reader everything about the artifact, so you must
make decisions about what to feature in the description. In this process, you
want to describe and thus to highlight aspects of the artifact that are most
important for and relevant to the analysis that will follow. Do not describe the
artifact in too much detail here. You will reveal a great deal about the artifact
as you present the findings of your analysis, so details that will emerge later in
your analysis do not need to be included in your overview. This is the place to
provide a broad overview of the artifact, knowing that readers will become
much more familiar with the details of your artifact later.
In the description of the artifact, also provide a justification for why that
artifact is a particularly appropriate or useful one to analyze in order to
answer your research question. Many different artifacts can be used for
answering the same research question, so provide an explanation as to why
analyzing your artifact is a good choice for explaining the specific rhetorical
process your research question addresses. Many kinds of reasons can be used
to justify your artifact. You might explain that the artifact is historically impor-
tant or represents a larger set of similar texts that are culturally significant.
Perhaps the artifact you are analyzing has won many prestigious awards or
has been highly successful in generating money. Maybe the artifact has
reached large numbers of people or created an unusual response. Perhaps the
rhetorical techniques used in the artifact are highly unusual and warrant
exploration to explain their results.
Description of the Method

You need to cover one more topic to complete readers’ understanding of
what will happen in the essay—a description of the method you used to ana-
lyze the artifact. Identify the method you are using, explain who created the
method (if one person is identifiable with the method), define its key concepts,
and briefly lay out its basic procedures. If you are using the fantasy-theme
method of criticism, for example, your description might include mention of
its creator, Ernest Bormann; a definition of its basic terms, fantasy theme and
rhetorical vision; and a brief explanation of the major critical processes
involved in the method.
Report of the Findings of the Analysis

The report of the findings of your analysis constitutes the bulk of the essay.
In this section, lay out for readers the results of your analysis of the artifact.
Tell what you discovered from an application of the method of criticism to the
artifact and provide support for your discoveries using the data of the artifact.
If you used pentadic analysis as your method, for example, you would identify
the terms of act, purpose, agent, agency, and scene for your artifact. If you ana-
lyzed the artifact using the fantasy-theme method, this section would be orga-
nized around the fantasy themes of settings, characters, and actions evident in
your artifact and the rhetorical vision they create.
Bring in relevant literature as you explain your findings to elaborate on or

extend your ideas. Be sure that you feature your ideas in your analysis section,
though, and make the topic statements of your paragraphs about your ideas
and not echoes of the ideas of others. Any theories or concepts you believe are
relevant to your analysis should be used to support, elaborate on, and extend
your ideas. Don’t let the ideas of others subsume yours.
If you used the technique of cutting apart your observations on individual
strips of paper in the coding step, you have available to you a very easy way to
write up your analysis. Organize the piles in the order in which you want to
talk about the components of your findings. When you are ready to write a
section of your analysis, take the pile relevant to the topic of the section and
sort the strips of paper within it, laying out the pieces in the order in which
you want to discuss ideas and examples and eliminating those you decide not
to include in your essay. As you write, connect the topics of the strips with
transitions, previews, summaries, and interpretations.
The approach of cutting apart and organizing your observations makes
writing up your essay easy. You have the freedom to write the sections of the
analysis in any order—you do not have to begin with the first component of
the schema. Each pile contains all of your ideas relevant to a section; you do
not need to see what happens in one section to be able to write the next.
Another advantage of this system is that you cannot lose track of where you
are because the ideas of your schema are clearly organized, and all the con-
tent you want to discuss is identified and waiting in the piles.2
Contribution to Rhetorical Theory

Your essay ends with a discussion of the contribution your analysis makes
to rhetorical theory. This contribution is your answer to your research ques-
tion. At this point in the essay, move away from your specific artifact and
answer your research question more generally and abstractly. Transcend the
specific data of your artifact to focus on the rhetorical processes with which
you are concerned. Suggest to your readers how your analysis of your artifact
contributes to an understanding of the larger rhetorical process with which
your essay is concerned, discussing the implications or significance of the
contribution you mentioned in the introduction.
Your contribution to rhetorical theory is likely to be made in one of two
ways: identifying new concepts or identifying new relationships among con-
cepts. Concepts and relationships are the two basic elements of theories. Con-
cepts are the components, elements, or variables the theory is about. The
concepts tell what you are looking at and what you consider important. State-
ments of relationship are explanations about how the concepts are related to
one another. They identify patterns in the relationships among variables or
concepts, and they tell how concepts are connected. One rhetorical theory
concerning the process of credibility, for example, suggests that, to be credi-
ble, a rhetor must demonstrate intelligence, moral character, and good will
toward the audience. The concepts of the theory are intelligence, moral char-
acter, and good will, and the theory posits that all three of these concepts,
interacting together and displayed in an artifact itself, contribute to an audi-
22 Chapter Two
ence’s perception that the rhetor is credible; this is a statement of relation-

ships. Your analysis can contribute to rhetorical theory, then, by identifying
important concepts in a rhetorical process, by suggesting how concepts relate
to one another, or by doing both.
Although you cannot generalize your findings to other artifacts like yours
or to artifacts characterized by similar rhetorical processes on the basis of
your one essay of criticism, you still can make a contribution to rhetorical the-
ory. David Zarefsky calls this kind of contribution a “theory of the particular
case” and suggests that “studying individual cases can yield generalizable
insights. The resulting generalizations will have but modest explanatory and
predictive power because they abstract out only the common elements of com-
plex individual situations and because the situations to which one might pre-
dict are likewise complex and individual.”3 But your analysis allows you to
suggest a theory that “more fully encompasses the case than do the alterna-
tives.” You are able to provide an initial general understanding of some aspect
of rhetoric on the basis of the necessarily limited evidence available in the
artifact.4 Your analysis can provide you with hunches or presumptions about
new cases. If you discover that a rhetor who is trying to reassure a group of
people uses particular kinds of metaphors to do so, you might guess that other
rhetors trying to do the same thing might do so as well. Should you discover,
in a follow-up essay of criticism, a different case of reassurance—the rhetor
does not use the same kinds of metaphors you identified earlier—you now
have something more to figure out in terms of how reassurance works.
The idea that you can and should make a contribution to rhetorical theory
in an essay of criticism makes many beginning rhetorical critics uncomfort-
able. You may feel as though you are not expert enough to develop a theory or
to contribute to an understanding of how rhetoric works. Perhaps you feel that
you have not yet earned the right to make such contributions because you are
still a student. You are an expert, however, in your way of seeing—in the appli-
cation of your perspective on the world. You have applied a method of criti-
cism and coded your artifact from your unique perspective. This is a
perspective that belongs to no one else. You will see things in an artifact that
no one else sees, and making a contribution to rhetorical theory is the way by
which you can share that unique perspective and offer a new understanding of
an artifact. Also remember that the perspective you share with others is not
coming out of thin air—you will have the backing of the careful and system-
atic analysis you have completed as the basis on which to make your contribu-
tion to rhetorical theory.
Applying the Analysis in Activism

For some rhetorical critics, there is a final step of criticism that goes
beyond writing an essay of criticism that makes a contribution to an under-
standing of a rhetorical process. They see critics as change agents whose role is
to use the criticism they produce to engage in activism. They want critics to use
their criticism to transform society in some way. For these critics, the “larger,
general public” is an audience for criticism5 just as much as scholars in the
communication discipline because the critic should not simply try to “under-
stand or explain society but to critique and change it.”6 For critics who choose
to be activists, the objective is to challenge the “norms, practices, relations,
and structures that underwrite inequality and injustice.”7 They want their criti-
cism to “make a difference in the world” by addressing the questions, “How do
we live, and how might we live differently?”8 Karlyn Kohrs Campbell summa-
rizes this position by explaining that “criticism plays a crucial role in the pro-
cesses of testing, questioning, and analyzing by which discourses advocating
truth and justice may, in fact, become more powerful than their opposites.”9
Critics who adopt an activist stance justify this step in the process of criti-
cism by pointing out that “research is never a politically neutral act. The deci-
sion to study this group rather than some other, to frame the research
question this way rather than another, and to report the findings to this group
or in that journal rather than in some other forum privilege certain values,
institutions, and practices.”10 As a result, whether the authors claim to be
doing so or not, they are producing criticism that is either contributing to the
transformation of society into a more equitable and humane culture, or they
are reinforcing and reifying the status quo. As Samuel L. Becker explains,
“The major question most of us face in our lives as scholars is not whether our
research should be useful; it is, rather, what it should be useful for and for
whom it should be useful.”11 Others justify the activist stance for rhetorical
critics by pointing to the fact that communication inherently is a practical dis-
cipline that yields useful knowledge. They note that the historical roots of the
discipline of communication “were grounded in producing useful knowledge,
such as teaching people to become better speakers in their everyday interac-
tions and in the public sphere.”12
There are a number of ways in which your essay of criticism may function
as an instrument of change. Your findings, for example, may help explain and
demystify the rhetorical practices that sustain inequality and oppression. By
identifying and pointing to these rhetorical practices, you can help others see
how inequality is constructed and encourage individuals to create alternative
rhetorical practices that create different conditions. If you have analyzed pro-
test rhetoric of some kind, your essay might point to the practices that are
effective and ineffective in efforts to create change, and your findings may be
used to create more effective campaigns for social change or to elect certain
political candidates. If you are analyzing the rhetoric of groups who voices are
not often heard, you can help bring those “forgotten or silenced voices”13 into
the dialogue to provide a more comprehensive perspective on an issue and
more innovative and workable solutions to it. As Raymie E. McKerrow sug-
gests, you can use what you have learned to “identify the possibilities of future
action available.”14
If you choose to be an activist critic, you have a number of possibilities for
disseminating the results of a rhetorical analysis. You can begin by enacting
what you have learned from your critical analyses in your own life. If you have
learned about strategies for creating a more equitable and humane world from
your analysis of certain kinds of rhetoric, you can enact those strategies in
your own life. You also have the option of interacting with friends, family, and
colleagues about the results of your analyses, encouraging those around you to
24 Chapter Two
consider how the symbolic practices they encounter and their own use of sym-
bols affect their everyday lives. You can share your findings in more formal
ways with others—on a website or blog, for example, or by writing an op-ed
piece for a newspaper.15 If you are a teacher, you can make use of your find-
ings in educational settings, teaching best practices about the nature and func-
tion of rhetoric and the ways in which rhetoric creates worlds. You may choose
to work on a political campaign or on behalf of a movement for some kind of
social change. Your knowledge of rhetorical criticism can help you analyze the
messages from those who oppose your perspective, analyze those that the cam-
paign is producing, and design more effective messaging for the public audi-
ence. If your focus is on an analysis of silenced voices, you can share your
findings about the rhetoric of these individuals with policy makers and stake-
holders involved in an issue, and you also can share your findings with those
who are silenced, encouraging them to understand their own rhetorical
choices and to develop their own responses and interventions into discourse
that silences them. In various ways, then, as an activist rhetorical critic, you
“furnish inspiration and directions toward more promising ways of life.”16
Assessing the Essay

What makes one essay of criticism better than another? By what stan-
dards is an essay of criticism judged? Rhetorical criticism is a different kind of
research from quantitative research, so it is not judged by the standards that
are used for such research. In quantitative research, the basic standards of
evaluation are validity and reliability. Validity is concerned with whether
researchers are measuring what they claim they are measuring, and reliability
has to do with the replicability of results if the same set of objects is measured
repeatedly with the same or comparable measuring instruments. In contrast,
the standards of evaluation in rhetorical criticism are justification, reasonable
inference, and coherence.
The standards used in rhetorical criticism to judge analyses of artifacts are
rooted in two primary assumptions. One assumption is that objective reality
does not exist. As discussed in chapter 1, those of us who study rhetoric
believe that reality is constituted through the rhetoric we use to talk about it;
reality is a symbolic creation. Thus, the artifact you are analyzing does not
constitute a reality that can be known and proved. You cannot know what the
artifact “really” means or how it “really” works because there are as many
realities about the artifact as there are critics and vocabularies from which to
conduct inquiry about it.
A second assumption on which the standards of rhetorical criticism are
built is very much related to the first: A critic can know an artifact only
through a personal interpretation of it. You cannot be objective, impartial, and
removed from the data because you bring to the critical task particular values
and experiences that are reflected in how you see and write about that artifact.
As a result of these assumptions, your task as a critic is to offer one perspective
on an artifact—one possible way of viewing it. You are not concerned with
finding the true, correct, or right interpretation of an artifact. Consequently,
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DANCE ON STILTS AT THE GIRLS’ UNYAGO, NIUCHI
Newala, too, suffers from the distance of its water-supply—at least

the Newala of to-day does; there was once another Newala in a lovely
valley at the foot of the plateau. I visited it and found scarcely a trace
of houses, only a Christian cemetery, with the graves of several
missionaries and their converts, remaining as a monument of its
former glories. But the surroundings are wonderfully beautiful. A
thick grove of splendid mango-trees closes in the weather-worn
crosses and headstones; behind them, combining the useful and the
agreeable, is a whole plantation of lemon-trees covered with ripe
fruit; not the small African kind, but a much larger and also juicier
imported variety, which drops into the hands of the passing traveller,
without calling for any exertion on his part. Old Newala is now under
the jurisdiction of the native pastor, Daudi, at Chingulungulu, who,
as I am on very friendly terms with him, allows me, as a matter of
course, the use of this lemon-grove during my stay at Newala.
FEET MUTILATED BY THE RAVAGES OF THE “JIGGER”
(Sarcopsylla penetrans)
The water-supply of New Newala is in the bottom of the valley,

some 1,600 feet lower down. The way is not only long and fatiguing,
but the water, when we get it, is thoroughly bad. We are suffering not
only from this, but from the fact that the arrangements at Newala are
nothing short of luxurious. We have a separate kitchen—a hut built
against the boma palisade on the right of the baraza, the interior of
which is not visible from our usual position. Our two cooks were not
long in finding this out, and they consequently do—or rather neglect
to do—what they please. In any case they do not seem to be very
particular about the boiling of our drinking-water—at least I can
attribute to no other cause certain attacks of a dysenteric nature,
from which both Knudsen and I have suffered for some time. If a
man like Omari has to be left unwatched for a moment, he is capable
of anything. Besides this complaint, we are inconvenienced by the
state of our nails, which have become as hard as glass, and crack on
the slightest provocation, and I have the additional infliction of
pimples all over me. As if all this were not enough, we have also, for
the last week been waging war against the jigger, who has found his
Eldorado in the hot sand of the Makonde plateau. Our men are seen
all day long—whenever their chronic colds and the dysentery likewise
raging among them permit—occupied in removing this scourge of
Africa from their feet and trying to prevent the disastrous
consequences of its presence. It is quite common to see natives of
this place with one or two toes missing; many have lost all their toes,
or even the whole front part of the foot, so that a well-formed leg
ends in a shapeless stump. These ravages are caused by the female of
Sarcopsylla penetrans, which bores its way under the skin and there
develops an egg-sac the size of a pea. In all books on the subject, it is
stated that one’s attention is called to the presence of this parasite by
an intolerable itching. This agrees very well with my experience, so
far as the softer parts of the sole, the spaces between and under the
toes, and the side of the foot are concerned, but if the creature
penetrates through the harder parts of the heel or ball of the foot, it
may escape even the most careful search till it has reached maturity.
Then there is no time to be lost, if the horrible ulceration, of which
we see cases by the dozen every day, is to be prevented. It is much
easier, by the way, to discover the insect on the white skin of a
European than on that of a native, on which the dark speck scarcely
shows. The four or five jiggers which, in spite of the fact that I
constantly wore high laced boots, chose my feet to settle in, were
taken out for me by the all-accomplished Knudsen, after which I
thought it advisable to wash out the cavities with corrosive
sublimate. The natives have a different sort of disinfectant—they fill
the hole with scraped roots. In a tiny Makua village on the slope of
the plateau south of Newala, we saw an old woman who had filled all
the spaces under her toe-nails with powdered roots by way of
prophylactic treatment. What will be the result, if any, who can say?
The rest of the many trifling ills which trouble our existence are
really more comic than serious. In the absence of anything else to
smoke, Knudsen and I at last opened a box of cigars procured from
the Indian store-keeper at Lindi, and tried them, with the most
distressing results. Whether they contain opium or some other
narcotic, neither of us can say, but after the tenth puff we were both
“off,” three-quarters stupefied and unspeakably wretched. Slowly we
recovered—and what happened next? Half-an-hour later we were
once more smoking these poisonous concoctions—so insatiable is the
craving for tobacco in the tropics.
Even my present attacks of fever scarcely deserve to be taken
seriously. I have had no less than three here at Newala, all of which
have run their course in an incredibly short time. In the early
afternoon, I am busy with my old natives, asking questions and
making notes. The strong midday coffee has stimulated my spirits to
an extraordinary degree, the brain is active and vigorous, and work
progresses rapidly, while a pleasant warmth pervades the whole
body. Suddenly this gives place to a violent chill, forcing me to put on
my overcoat, though it is only half-past three and the afternoon sun
is at its hottest. Now the brain no longer works with such acuteness
and logical precision; more especially does it fail me in trying to
establish the syntax of the difficult Makua language on which I have
ventured, as if I had not enough to do without it. Under the
circumstances it seems advisable to take my temperature, and I do
so, to save trouble, without leaving my seat, and while going on with
my work. On examination, I find it to be 101·48°. My tutors are
abruptly dismissed and my bed set up in the baraza; a few minutes
later I am in it and treating myself internally with hot water and
lemon-juice.
Three hours later, the thermometer marks nearly 104°, and I make
them carry me back into the tent, bed and all, as I am now perspiring
heavily, and exposure to the cold wind just beginning to blow might
mean a fatal chill. I lie still for a little while, and then find, to my
great relief, that the temperature is not rising, but rather falling. This
is about 7.30 p.m. At 8 p.m. I find, to my unbounded astonishment,
that it has fallen below 98·6°, and I feel perfectly well. I read for an
hour or two, and could very well enjoy a smoke, if I had the
wherewithal—Indian cigars being out of the question.
Having no medical training, I am at a loss to account for this state
of things. It is impossible that these transitory attacks of high fever
should be malarial; it seems more probable that they are due to a
kind of sunstroke. On consulting my note-book, I become more and
more inclined to think this is the case, for these attacks regularly
follow extreme fatigue and long exposure to strong sunshine. They at
least have the advantage of being only short interruptions to my
work, as on the following morning I am always quite fresh and fit.
My treasure of a cook is suffering from an enormous hydrocele which
makes it difficult for him to get up, and Moritz is obliged to keep in
the dark on account of his inflamed eyes. Knudsen’s cook, a raw boy
from somewhere in the bush, knows still less of cooking than Omari;
consequently Nils Knudsen himself has been promoted to the vacant
post. Finding that we had come to the end of our supplies, he began
by sending to Chingulungulu for the four sucking-pigs which we had
bought from Matola and temporarily left in his charge; and when
they came up, neatly packed in a large crate, he callously slaughtered
the biggest of them. The first joint we were thoughtless enough to
entrust for roasting to Knudsen’s mshenzi cook, and it was
consequently uneatable; but we made the rest of the animal into a
jelly which we ate with great relish after weeks of underfeeding,
consuming incredible helpings of it at both midday and evening
meals. The only drawback is a certain want of variety in the tinned
vegetables. Dr. Jäger, to whom the Geographical Commission
entrusted the provisioning of the expeditions—mine as well as his
own—because he had more time on his hands than the rest of us,
seems to have laid in a huge stock of Teltow turnips,[46] an article of
food which is all very well for occasional use, but which quickly palls
when set before one every day; and we seem to have no other tins
left. There is no help for it—we must put up with the turnips; but I
am certain that, once I am home again, I shall not touch them for ten
years to come.
Amid all these minor evils, which, after all, go to make up the
genuine flavour of Africa, there is at least one cheering touch:
Knudsen has, with the dexterity of a skilled mechanic, repaired my 9
× 12 cm. camera, at least so far that I can use it with a little care.
How, in the absence of finger-nails, he was able to accomplish such a
ticklish piece of work, having no tool but a clumsy screw-driver for
taking to pieces and putting together again the complicated
mechanism of the instantaneous shutter, is still a mystery to me; but
he did it successfully. The loss of his finger-nails shows him in a light
contrasting curiously enough with the intelligence evinced by the
above operation; though, after all, it is scarcely surprising after his
ten years’ residence in the bush. One day, at Lindi, he had occasion
to wash a dog, which must have been in need of very thorough
cleansing, for the bottle handed to our friend for the purpose had an
extremely strong smell. Having performed his task in the most
conscientious manner, he perceived with some surprise that the dog
did not appear much the better for it, and was further surprised by
finding his own nails ulcerating away in the course of the next few
days. “How was I to know that carbolic acid has to be diluted?” he
mutters indignantly, from time to time, with a troubled gaze at his
mutilated finger-tips.
Since we came to Newala we have been making excursions in all
directions through the surrounding country, in accordance with old
habit, and also because the akida Sefu did not get together the tribal
elders from whom I wanted information so speedily as he had
promised. There is, however, no harm done, as, even if seen only
from the outside, the country and people are interesting enough.
The Makonde plateau is like a large rectangular table rounded off
at the corners. Measured from the Indian Ocean to Newala, it is
about seventy-five miles long, and between the Rovuma and the
Lukuledi it averages fifty miles in breadth, so that its superficial area
is about two-thirds of that of the kingdom of Saxony. The surface,
however, is not level, but uniformly inclined from its south-western
edge to the ocean. From the upper edge, on which Newala lies, the
eye ranges for many miles east and north-east, without encountering
any obstacle, over the Makonde bush. It is a green sea, from which
here and there thick clouds of smoke rise, to show that it, too, is
inhabited by men who carry on their tillage like so many other
primitive peoples, by cutting down and burning the bush, and
manuring with the ashes. Even in the radiant light of a tropical day
such a fire is a grand sight.
Much less effective is the impression produced just now by the
great western plain as seen from the edge of the plateau. As often as
time permits, I stroll along this edge, sometimes in one direction,
sometimes in another, in the hope of finding the air clear enough to
let me enjoy the view; but I have always been disappointed.
Wherever one looks, clouds of smoke rise from the burning bush,
and the air is full of smoke and vapour. It is a pity, for under more
favourable circumstances the panorama of the whole country up to
the distant Majeje hills must be truly magnificent. It is of little use
taking photographs now, and an outline sketch gives a very poor idea
of the scenery. In one of these excursions I went out of my way to
make a personal attempt on the Makonde bush. The present edge of
the plateau is the result of a far-reaching process of destruction
through erosion and denudation. The Makonde strata are
everywhere cut into by ravines, which, though short, are hundreds of
yards in depth. In consequence of the loose stratification of these
beds, not only are the walls of these ravines nearly vertical, but their
upper end is closed by an equally steep escarpment, so that the
western edge of the Makonde plateau is hemmed in by a series of
deep, basin-like valleys. In order to get from one side of such a ravine
to the other, I cut my way through the bush with a dozen of my men.
It was a very open part, with more grass than scrub, but even so the
short stretch of less than two hundred yards was very hard work; at
the end of it the men’s calicoes were in rags and they themselves
bleeding from hundreds of scratches, while even our strong khaki
suits had not escaped scatheless.
NATIVE PATH THROUGH THE MAKONDE BUSH, NEAR

MAHUTA
I see increasing reason to believe that the view formed some time
back as to the origin of the Makonde bush is the correct one. I have
no doubt that it is not a natural product, but the result of human
occupation. Those parts of the high country where man—as a very
slight amount of practice enables the eye to perceive at once—has not
yet penetrated with axe and hoe, are still occupied by a splendid
timber forest quite able to sustain a comparison with our mixed
forests in Germany. But wherever man has once built his hut or tilled
his field, this horrible bush springs up. Every phase of this process
may be seen in the course of a couple of hours’ walk along the main
road. From the bush to right or left, one hears the sound of the axe—
not from one spot only, but from several directions at once. A few
steps further on, we can see what is taking place. The brush has been
cut down and piled up in heaps to the height of a yard or more,
between which the trunks of the large trees stand up like the last
pillars of a magnificent ruined building. These, too, present a
melancholy spectacle: the destructive Makonde have ringed them—
cut a broad strip of bark all round to ensure their dying off—and also
piled up pyramids of brush round them. Father and son, mother and
son-in-law, are chopping away perseveringly in the background—too
busy, almost, to look round at the white stranger, who usually excites
so much interest. If you pass by the same place a week later, the piles
of brushwood have disappeared and a thick layer of ashes has taken
the place of the green forest. The large trees stretch their
smouldering trunks and branches in dumb accusation to heaven—if
they have not already fallen and been more or less reduced to ashes,
perhaps only showing as a white stripe on the dark ground.
This work of destruction is carried out by the Makonde alike on the
virgin forest and on the bush which has sprung up on sites already
cultivated and deserted. In the second case they are saved the trouble
of burning the large trees, these being entirely absent in the
secondary bush.
After burning this piece of forest ground and loosening it with the
hoe, the native sows his corn and plants his vegetables. All over the
country, he goes in for bed-culture, which requires, and, in fact,
receives, the most careful attention. Weeds are nowhere tolerated in
the south of German East Africa. The crops may fail on the plains,
where droughts are frequent, but never on the plateau with its
abundant rains and heavy dews. Its fortunate inhabitants even have
the satisfaction of seeing the proud Wayao and Wamakua working
for them as labourers, driven by hunger to serve where they were
accustomed to rule.
But the light, sandy soil is soon exhausted, and would yield no
harvest the second year if cultivated twice running. This fact has
been familiar to the native for ages; consequently he provides in
time, and, while his crop is growing, prepares the next plot with axe
and firebrand. Next year he plants this with his various crops and
lets the first piece lie fallow. For a short time it remains waste and
desolate; then nature steps in to repair the destruction wrought by
man; a thousand new growths spring out of the exhausted soil, and
even the old stumps put forth fresh shoots. Next year the new growth
is up to one’s knees, and in a few years more it is that terrible,
impenetrable bush, which maintains its position till the black
occupier of the land has made the round of all the available sites and
come back to his starting point.
The Makonde are, body and soul, so to speak, one with this bush.
According to my Yao informants, indeed, their name means nothing
else but “bush people.” Their own tradition says that they have been
settled up here for a very long time, but to my surprise they laid great
stress on an original immigration. Their old homes were in the
south-east, near Mikindani and the mouth of the Rovuma, whence
their peaceful forefathers were driven by the continual raids of the
Sakalavas from Madagascar and the warlike Shirazis[47] of the coast,
to take refuge on the almost inaccessible plateau. I have studied
African ethnology for twenty years, but the fact that changes of
population in this apparently quiet and peaceable corner of the earth
could have been occasioned by outside enterprises taking place on
the high seas, was completely new to me. It is, no doubt, however,
correct.
The charming tribal legend of the Makonde—besides informing us
of other interesting matters—explains why they have to live in the
thickest of the bush and a long way from the edge of the plateau,
instead of making their permanent homes beside the purling brooks
and springs of the low country.
“The place where the tribe originated is Mahuta, on the southern
side of the plateau towards the Rovuma, where of old time there was
nothing but thick bush. Out of this bush came a man who never
washed himself or shaved his head, and who ate and drank but little.
He went out and made a human figure from the wood of a tree
growing in the open country, which he took home to his abode in the
bush and there set it upright. In the night this image came to life and
was a woman. The man and woman went down together to the
Rovuma to wash themselves. Here the woman gave birth to a still-
born child. They left that place and passed over the high land into the
valley of the Mbemkuru, where the woman had another child, which
was also born dead. Then they returned to the high bush country of
Mahuta, where the third child was born, which lived and grew up. In
course of time, the couple had many more children, and called
themselves Wamatanda. These were the ancestral stock of the
Makonde, also called Wamakonde,[48] i.e., aborigines. Their
forefather, the man from the bush, gave his children the command to
bury their dead upright, in memory of the mother of their race who
was cut out of wood and awoke to life when standing upright. He also
warned them against settling in the valleys and near large streams,
for sickness and death dwelt there. They were to make it a rule to
have their huts at least an hour’s walk from the nearest watering-
place; then their children would thrive and escape illness.”
The explanation of the name Makonde given by my informants is
somewhat different from that contained in the above legend, which I
extract from a little book (small, but packed with information), by
Pater Adams, entitled Lindi und sein Hinterland. Otherwise, my
results agree exactly with the statements of the legend. Washing?
Hapana—there is no such thing. Why should they do so? As it is, the
supply of water scarcely suffices for cooking and drinking; other
people do not wash, so why should the Makonde distinguish himself
by such needless eccentricity? As for shaving the head, the short,
woolly crop scarcely needs it,[49] so the second ancestral precept is
likewise easy enough to follow. Beyond this, however, there is
nothing ridiculous in the ancestor’s advice. I have obtained from
various local artists a fairly large number of figures carved in wood,
ranging from fifteen to twenty-three inches in height, and
representing women belonging to the great group of the Mavia,
Makonde, and Matambwe tribes. The carving is remarkably well
done and renders the female type with great accuracy, especially the
keloid ornamentation, to be described later on. As to the object and
meaning of their works the sculptors either could or (more probably)
would tell me nothing, and I was forced to content myself with the
scanty information vouchsafed by one man, who said that the figures
were merely intended to represent the nembo—the artificial
deformations of pelele, ear-discs, and keloids. The legend recorded
by Pater Adams places these figures in a new light. They must surely
be more than mere dolls; and we may even venture to assume that
they are—though the majority of present-day Makonde are probably
unaware of the fact—representations of the tribal ancestress.
The references in the legend to the descent from Mahuta to the
Rovuma, and to a journey across the highlands into the Mbekuru
valley, undoubtedly indicate the previous history of the tribe, the
travels of the ancestral pair typifying the migrations of their
descendants. The descent to the neighbouring Rovuma valley, with
its extraordinary fertility and great abundance of game, is intelligible
at a glance—but the crossing of the Lukuledi depression, the ascent
to the Rondo Plateau and the descent to the Mbemkuru, also lie
within the bounds of probability, for all these districts have exactly
the same character as the extreme south. Now, however, comes a
point of especial interest for our bacteriological age. The primitive
Makonde did not enjoy their lives in the marshy river-valleys.
Disease raged among them, and many died. It was only after they
had returned to their original home near Mahuta, that the health
conditions of these people improved. We are very apt to think of the
African as a stupid person whose ignorance of nature is only equalled
by his fear of it, and who looks on all mishaps as caused by evil
spirits and malignant natural powers. It is much more correct to
assume in this case that the people very early learnt to distinguish
districts infested with malaria from those where it is absent.
This knowledge is crystallized in the
ancestral warning against settling in the
valleys and near the great waters, the
dwelling-places of disease and death. At the
same time, for security against the hostile
Mavia south of the Rovuma, it was enacted
that every settlement must be not less than a
certain distance from the southern edge of the
plateau. Such in fact is their mode of life at the
present day. It is not such a bad one, and
certainly they are both safer and more
comfortable than the Makua, the recent
intruders from the south, who have made USUAL METHOD OF
good their footing on the western edge of the CLOSING HUT-DOOR
plateau, extending over a fairly wide belt of
country. Neither Makua nor Makonde show in their dwellings
anything of the size and comeliness of the Yao houses in the plain,
especially at Masasi, Chingulungulu and Zuza’s. Jumbe Chauro, a
Makonde hamlet not far from Newala, on the road to Mahuta, is the
most important settlement of the tribe I have yet seen, and has fairly
spacious huts. But how slovenly is their construction compared with
the palatial residences of the elephant-hunters living in the plain.
The roofs are still more untidy than in the general run of huts during
the dry season, the walls show here and there the scanty beginnings
or the lamentable remains of the mud plastering, and the interior is a
veritable dog-kennel; dirt, dust and disorder everywhere. A few huts
only show any attempt at division into rooms, and this consists
merely of very roughly-made bamboo partitions. In one point alone
have I noticed any indication of progress—in the method of fastening
the door. Houses all over the south are secured in a simple but
ingenious manner. The door consists of a set of stout pieces of wood
or bamboo, tied with bark-string to two cross-pieces, and moving in
two grooves round one of the door-posts, so as to open inwards. If
the owner wishes to leave home, he takes two logs as thick as a man’s
upper arm and about a yard long. One of these is placed obliquely
against the middle of the door from the inside, so as to form an angle
of from 60° to 75° with the ground. He then places the second piece
horizontally across the first, pressing it downward with all his might.
It is kept in place by two strong posts planted in the ground a few
inches inside the door. This fastening is absolutely safe, but of course
cannot be applied to both doors at once, otherwise how could the
owner leave or enter his house? I have not yet succeeded in finding
out how the back door is fastened.
MAKONDE LOCK AND KEY AT JUMBE CHAURO

This is the general way of closing a house. The Makonde at Jumbe
Chauro, however, have a much more complicated, solid and original
one. Here, too, the door is as already described, except that there is
only one post on the inside, standing by itself about six inches from
one side of the doorway. Opposite this post is a hole in the wall just
large enough to admit a man’s arm. The door is closed inside by a
large wooden bolt passing through a hole in this post and pressing
with its free end against the door. The other end has three holes into
which fit three pegs running in vertical grooves inside the post. The
door is opened with a wooden key about a foot long, somewhat
curved and sloped off at the butt; the other end has three pegs
corresponding to the holes, in the bolt, so that, when it is thrust
through the hole in the wall and inserted into the rectangular
opening in the post, the pegs can be lifted and the bolt drawn out.[50]
MODE OF INSERTING THE KEY
With no small pride first one householder and then a second

showed me on the spot the action of this greatest invention of the
Makonde Highlands. To both with an admiring exclamation of
“Vizuri sana!” (“Very fine!”). I expressed the wish to take back these
marvels with me to Ulaya, to show the Wazungu what clever fellows
the Makonde are. Scarcely five minutes after my return to camp at
Newala, the two men came up sweating under the weight of two
heavy logs which they laid down at my feet, handing over at the same
time the keys of the fallen fortress. Arguing, logically enough, that if
the key was wanted, the lock would be wanted with it, they had taken
their axes and chopped down the posts—as it never occurred to them
to dig them out of the ground and so bring them intact. Thus I have
two badly damaged specimens, and the owners, instead of praise,
come in for a blowing-up.
The Makua huts in the environs of Newala are especially
miserable; their more than slovenly construction reminds one of the
temporary erections of the Makua at Hatia’s, though the people here
have not been concerned in a war. It must therefore be due to
congenital idleness, or else to the absence of a powerful chief. Even
the baraza at Mlipa’s, a short hour’s walk south-east of Newala,
shares in this general neglect. While public buildings in this country
are usually looked after more or less carefully, this is in evident
danger of being blown over by the first strong easterly gale. The only
attractive object in this whole district is the grave of the late chief
Mlipa. I visited it in the morning, while the sun was still trying with
partial success to break through the rolling mists, and the circular
grove of tall euphorbias, which, with a broken pot, is all that marks
the old king’s resting-place, impressed one with a touch of pathos.
Even my very materially-minded carriers seemed to feel something
of the sort, for instead of their usual ribald songs, they chanted
solemnly, as we marched on through the dense green of the Makonde
bush:—
“We shall arrive with the great master; we stand in a row and have
no fear about getting our food and our money from the Serkali (the
Government). We are not afraid; we are going along with the great
master, the lion; we are going down to the coast and back.”
With regard to the characteristic features of the various tribes here
on the western edge of the plateau, I can arrive at no other
conclusion than the one already come to in the plain, viz., that it is
impossible for anyone but a trained anthropologist to assign any
given individual at once to his proper tribe. In fact, I think that even
an anthropological specialist, after the most careful examination,
might find it a difficult task to decide. The whole congeries of peoples
collected in the region bounded on the west by the great Central
African rift, Tanganyika and Nyasa, and on the east by the Indian
Ocean, are closely related to each other—some of their languages are
only distinguished from one another as dialects of the same speech,
and no doubt all the tribes present the same shape of skull and
structure of skeleton. Thus, surely, there can be no very striking
differences in outward appearance.
Even did such exist, I should have no time
to concern myself with them, for day after day,
I have to see or hear, as the case may be—in
any case to grasp and record—an
extraordinary number of ethnographic
phenomena. I am almost disposed to think it
fortunate that some departments of inquiry, at
least, are barred by external circumstances.
Chief among these is the subject of iron-
working. We are apt to think of Africa as a
country where iron ore is everywhere, so to
speak, to be picked up by the roadside, and
where it would be quite surprising if the
inhabitants had not learnt to smelt the
material ready to their hand. In fact, the
knowledge of this art ranges all over the
continent, from the Kabyles in the north to the
Kafirs in the south. Here between the Rovuma
and the Lukuledi the conditions are not so
favourable. According to the statements of the
Makonde, neither ironstone nor any other
form of iron ore is known to them. They have
not therefore advanced to the art of smelting
the metal, but have hitherto bought all their
THE ANCESTRESS OF
THE MAKONDE
iron implements from neighbouring tribes.
Even in the plain the inhabitants are not much
better off. Only one man now living is said to
understand the art of smelting iron. This old fundi lives close to
Huwe, that isolated, steep-sided block of granite which rises out of
the green solitude between Masasi and Chingulungulu, and whose
jagged and splintered top meets the traveller’s eye everywhere. While
still at Masasi I wished to see this man at work, but was told that,
frightened by the rising, he had retired across the Rovuma, though
he would soon return. All subsequent inquiries as to whether the
fundi had come back met with the genuine African answer, “Bado”
(“Not yet”).
BRAZIER
Some consolation was afforded me by a brassfounder, whom I

came across in the bush near Akundonde’s. This man is the favourite
of women, and therefore no doubt of the gods; he welds the glittering
brass rods purchased at the coast into those massive, heavy rings
which, on the wrists and ankles of the local fair ones, continually give
me fresh food for admiration. Like every decent master-craftsman he
had all his tools with him, consisting of a pair of bellows, three
crucibles and a hammer—nothing more, apparently. He was quite
willing to show his skill, and in a twinkling had fixed his bellows on
the ground. They are simply two goat-skins, taken off whole, the four
legs being closed by knots, while the upper opening, intended to
admit the air, is kept stretched by two pieces of wood. At the lower
end of the skin a smaller opening is left into which a wooden tube is
stuck. The fundi has quickly borrowed a heap of wood-embers from
the nearest hut; he then fixes the free ends of the two tubes into an
earthen pipe, and clamps them to the ground by means of a bent
piece of wood. Now he fills one of his small clay crucibles, the dross
on which shows that they have been long in use, with the yellow
material, places it in the midst of the embers, which, at present are
only faintly glimmering, and begins his work. In quick alternation
the smith’s two hands move up and down with the open ends of the
bellows; as he raises his hand he holds the slit wide open, so as to let
the air enter the skin bag unhindered. In pressing it down he closes
the bag, and the air puffs through the bamboo tube and clay pipe into
the fire, which quickly burns up. The smith, however, does not keep
on with this work, but beckons to another man, who relieves him at
the bellows, while he takes some more tools out of a large skin pouch
carried on his back. I look on in wonder as, with a smooth round
stick about the thickness of a finger, he bores a few vertical holes into
the clean sand of the soil. This should not be difficult, yet the man
seems to be taking great pains over it. Then he fastens down to the
ground, with a couple of wooden clamps, a neat little trough made by
splitting a joint of bamboo in half, so that the ends are closed by the
two knots. At last the yellow metal has attained the right consistency,
and the fundi lifts the crucible from the fire by means of two sticks
split at the end to serve as tongs. A short swift turn to the left—a
tilting of the crucible—and the molten brass, hissing and giving forth
clouds of smoke, flows first into the bamboo mould and then into the
holes in the ground.
The technique of this backwoods craftsman may not be very far
advanced, but it cannot be denied that he knows how to obtain an
adequate result by the simplest means. The ladies of highest rank in
this country—that is to say, those who can afford it, wear two kinds
of these massive brass rings, one cylindrical, the other semicircular
in section. The latter are cast in the most ingenious way in the
bamboo mould, the former in the circular hole in the sand. It is quite
a simple matter for the fundi to fit these bars to the limbs of his fair
customers; with a few light strokes of his hammer he bends the
pliable brass round arm or ankle without further inconvenience to
the wearer.
SHAPING THE POT
SMOOTHING WITH MAIZE-COB
CUTTING THE EDGE

FINISHING THE BOTTOM
LAST SMOOTHING BEFORE

BURNING
FIRING THE BRUSH-PILE

LIGHTING THE FARTHER SIDE OF
THE PILE
TURNING THE RED-HOT VESSEL
NYASA WOMAN MAKING POTS AT MASASI

Pottery is an art which must always and everywhere excite the
interest of the student, just because it is so intimately connected with
the development of human culture, and because its relics are one of
the principal factors in the reconstruction of our own condition in
prehistoric times. I shall always remember with pleasure the two or
three afternoons at Masasi when Salim Matola’s mother, a slightly-
built, graceful, pleasant-looking woman, explained to me with
touching patience, by means of concrete illustrations, the ceramic art
of her people. The only implements for this primitive process were a
lump of clay in her left hand, and in the right a calabash containing
the following valuables: the fragment of a maize-cob stripped of all
its grains, a smooth, oval pebble, about the size of a pigeon’s egg, a
few chips of gourd-shell, a bamboo splinter about the length of one’s
hand, a small shell, and a bunch of some herb resembling spinach.
Nothing more. The woman scraped with the
shell a round, shallow hole in the soft, fine
sand of the soil, and, when an active young
girl had filled the calabash with water for her,
she began to knead the clay. As if by magic it
gradually assumed the shape of a rough but
already well-shaped vessel, which only wanted
a little touching up with the instruments
before mentioned. I looked out with the
MAKUA WOMAN closest attention for any indication of the use
MAKING A POT. of the potter’s wheel, in however rudimentary
SHOWS THE a form, but no—hapana (there is none). The
BEGINNINGS OF THE embryo pot stood firmly in its little
POTTER’S WHEEL
depression, and the woman walked round it in
a stooping posture, whether she was removing
small stones or similar foreign bodies with the maize-cob, smoothing
the inner or outer surface with the splinter of bamboo, or later, after
letting it dry for a day, pricking in the ornamentation with a pointed
bit of gourd-shell, or working out the bottom, or cutting the edge
with a sharp bamboo knife, or giving the last touches to the finished
vessel. This occupation of the women is infinitely toilsome, but it is
without doubt an accurate reproduction of the process in use among
our ancestors of the Neolithic and Bronze ages.
There is no doubt that the invention of pottery, an item in human
progress whose importance cannot be over-estimated, is due to
women. Rough, coarse and unfeeling, the men of the horde range
over the countryside. When the united cunning of the hunters has
succeeded in killing the game; not one of them thinks of carrying
home the spoil. A bright fire, kindled by a vigorous wielding of the
drill, is crackling beside them; the animal has been cleaned and cut
up secundum artem, and, after a slight singeing, will soon disappear
under their sharp teeth; no one all this time giving a single thought
to wife or child.
To what shifts, on the other hand, the primitive wife, and still more
the primitive mother, was put! Not even prehistoric stomachs could
endure an unvarying diet of raw food. Something or other suggested
the beneficial effect of hot water on the majority of approved but
indigestible dishes. Perhaps a neighbour had tried holding the hard
roots or tubers over the fire in a calabash filled with water—or maybe
an ostrich-egg-shell, or a hastily improvised vessel of bark. They
became much softer and more palatable than they had previously
been; but, unfortunately, the vessel could not stand the fire and got
charred on the outside. That can be remedied, thought our
ancestress, and plastered a layer of wet clay round a similar vessel.
This is an improvement; the cooking utensil remains uninjured, but
the heat of the fire has shrunk it, so that it is loose in its shell. The
next step is to detach it, so, with a firm grip and a jerk, shell and
kernel are separated, and pottery is invented. Perhaps, however, the
discovery which led to an intelligent use of the burnt-clay shell, was
made in a slightly different way. Ostrich-eggs and calabashes are not
to be found in every part of the world, but everywhere mankind has
arrived at the art of making baskets out of pliant materials, such as
bark, bast, strips of palm-leaf, supple twigs, etc. Our inventor has no
water-tight vessel provided by nature. “Never mind, let us line the
basket with clay.” This answers the purpose, but alas! the basket gets
burnt over the blazing fire, the woman watches the process of
cooking with increasing uneasiness, fearing a leak, but no leak
appears. The food, done to a turn, is eaten with peculiar relish; and
the cooking-vessel is examined, half in curiosity, half in satisfaction
at the result. The plastic clay is now hard as stone, and at the same
time looks exceedingly well, for the neat plaiting of the burnt basket
is traced all over it in a pretty pattern. Thus, simultaneously with
pottery, its ornamentation was invented.
Primitive woman has another claim to respect. It was the man,
roving abroad, who invented the art of producing fire at will, but the
woman, unable to imitate him in this, has been a Vestal from the
earliest times. Nothing gives so much trouble as the keeping alight of
the smouldering brand, and, above all, when all the men are absent
from the camp. Heavy rain-clouds gather, already the first large
drops are falling, the first gusts of the storm rage over the plain. The
little flame, a greater anxiety to the woman than her own children,
flickers unsteadily in the blast. What is to be done? A sudden thought
occurs to her, and in an instant she has constructed a primitive hut
out of strips of bark, to protect the flame against rain and wind.
This, or something very like it, was the way in which the principle
of the house was discovered; and even the most hardened misogynist
cannot fairly refuse a woman the credit of it. The protection of the
hearth-fire from the weather is the germ from which the human
dwelling was evolved. Men had little, if any share, in this forward
step, and that only at a late stage. Even at the present day, the
plastering of the housewall with clay and the manufacture of pottery
are exclusively the women’s business. These are two very significant
survivals. Our European kitchen-garden, too, is originally a woman’s
invention, and the hoe, the primitive instrument of agriculture, is,
characteristically enough, still used in this department. But the
noblest achievement which we owe to the other sex is unquestionably
the art of cookery. Roasting alone—the oldest process—is one for
which men took the hint (a very obvious one) from nature. It must
have been suggested by the scorched carcase of some animal
overtaken by the destructive forest-fires. But boiling—the process of
improving organic substances by the help of water heated to boiling-
point—is a much later discovery. It is so recent that it has not even
yet penetrated to all parts of the world. The Polynesians understand
how to steam food, that is, to cook it, neatly wrapped in leaves, in a
hole in the earth between hot stones, the air being excluded, and
(sometimes) a few drops of water sprinkled on the stones; but they
do not understand boiling.
To come back from this digression, we find that the slender Nyasa
woman has, after once more carefully examining the finished pot,
put it aside in the shade to dry. On the following day she sends me
word by her son, Salim Matola, who is always on hand, that she is
going to do the burning, and, on coming out of my house, I find her
already hard at work. She has spread on the ground a layer of very
dry sticks, about as thick as one’s thumb, has laid the pot (now of a
yellowish-grey colour) on them, and is piling brushwood round it.
My faithful Pesa mbili, the mnyampara, who has been standing by,
most obligingly, with a lighted stick, now hands it to her. Both of
them, blowing steadily, light the pile on the lee side, and, when the
flame begins to catch, on the weather side also. Soon the whole is in a
blaze, but the dry fuel is quickly consumed and the fire dies down, so
that we see the red-hot vessel rising from the ashes. The woman
turns it continually with a long stick, sometimes one way and
sometimes another, so that it may be evenly heated all over. In
twenty minutes she rolls it out of the ash-heap, takes up the bundle
of spinach, which has been lying for two days in a jar of water, and
sprinkles the red-hot clay with it. The places where the drops fall are
marked by black spots on the uniform reddish-brown surface. With a
sigh of relief, and with visible satisfaction, the woman rises to an
erect position; she is standing just in a line between me and the fire,
from which a cloud of smoke is just rising: I press the ball of my
camera, the shutter clicks—the apotheosis is achieved! Like a
priestess, representative of her inventive sex, the graceful woman
stands: at her feet the hearth-fire she has given us beside her the
invention she has devised for us, in the background the home she has
built for us.
At Newala, also, I have had the manufacture of pottery carried on
in my presence. Technically the process is better than that already
described, for here we find the beginnings of the potter’s wheel,
which does not seem to exist in the plains; at least I have seen
nothing of the sort. The artist, a frightfully stupid Makua woman, did
not make a depression in the ground to receive the pot she was about
to shape, but used instead a large potsherd. Otherwise, she went to
work in much the same way as Salim’s mother, except that she saved
herself the trouble of walking round and round her work by squatting
at her ease and letting the pot and potsherd rotate round her; this is
surely the first step towards a machine. But it does not follow that
the pot was improved by the process. It is true that it was beautifully
rounded and presented a very creditable appearance when finished,
but the numerous large and small vessels which I have seen, and, in
part, collected, in the “less advanced” districts, are no less so. We
moderns imagine that instruments of precision are necessary to
produce excellent results. Go to the prehistoric collections of our
museums and look at the pots, urns and bowls of our ancestors in the
dim ages of the past, and you will at once perceive your error.
MAKING LONGITUDINAL CUT IN
BARK
DRAWING THE BARK OFF THE LOG
REMOVING THE OUTER BARK

BEATING THE BARK
WORKING THE BARK-CLOTH AFTER BEATING, TO MAKE IT

SOFT
MANUFACTURE OF BARK-CLOTH AT NEWALA

To-day, nearly the whole population of German East Africa is
clothed in imported calico. This was not always the case; even now in
some parts of the north dressed skins are still the prevailing wear,
and in the north-western districts—east and north of Lake
Tanganyika—lies a zone where bark-cloth has not yet been
superseded. Probably not many generations have passed since such
bark fabrics and kilts of skins were the only clothing even in the
south. Even to-day, large quantities of this bright-red or drab
material are still to be found; but if we wish to see it, we must look in
the granaries and on the drying stages inside the native huts, where
it serves less ambitious uses as wrappings for those seeds and fruits
which require to be packed with special care. The salt produced at
Masasi, too, is packed for transport to a distance in large sheets of
bark-cloth. Wherever I found it in any degree possible, I studied the
process of making this cloth. The native requisitioned for the
purpose arrived, carrying a log between two and three yards long and
as thick as his thigh, and nothing else except a curiously-shaped
mallet and the usual long, sharp and pointed knife which all men and
boys wear in a belt at their backs without a sheath—horribile dictu!
[51]
Silently he squats down before me, and with two rapid cuts has
drawn a couple of circles round the log some two yards apart, and
slits the bark lengthwise between them with the point of his knife.
With evident care, he then scrapes off the outer rind all round the
log, so that in a quarter of an hour the inner red layer of the bark
shows up brightly-coloured between the two untouched ends. With
some trouble and much caution, he now loosens the bark at one end,
and opens the cylinder. He then stands up, takes hold of the free
edge with both hands, and turning it inside out, slowly but steadily
pulls it off in one piece. Now comes the troublesome work of
scraping all superfluous particles of outer bark from the outside of
the long, narrow piece of material, while the inner side is carefully
scrutinised for defective spots. At last it is ready for beating. Having
signalled to a friend, who immediately places a bowl of water beside
him, the artificer damps his sheet of bark all over, seizes his mallet,
lays one end of the stuff on the smoothest spot of the log, and
hammers away slowly but continuously. “Very simple!” I think to
myself. “Why, I could do that, too!”—but I am forced to change my
opinions a little later on; for the beating is quite an art, if the fabric is
not to be beaten to pieces. To prevent the breaking of the fibres, the
stuff is several times folded across, so as to interpose several
thicknesses between the mallet and the block. At last the required
state is reached, and the fundi seizes the sheet, still folded, by both
ends, and wrings it out, or calls an assistant to take one end while he
holds the other. The cloth produced in this way is not nearly so fine
and uniform in texture as the famous Uganda bark-cloth, but it is
quite soft, and, above all, cheap.
Now, too, I examine the mallet. My craftsman has been using the
simpler but better form of this implement, a conical block of some
hard wood, its base—the striking surface—being scored across and
across with more or less deeply-cut grooves, and the handle stuck
into a hole in the middle. The other and earlier form of mallet is
shaped in the same way, but the head is fastened by an ingenious
network of bark strips into the split bamboo serving as a handle. The
observation so often made, that ancient customs persist longest in
connection with religious ceremonies and in the life of children, here
finds confirmation. As we shall soon see, bark-cloth is still worn
during the unyago,[52] having been prepared with special solemn
ceremonies; and many a mother, if she has no other garment handy,
will still put her little one into a kilt of bark-cloth, which, after all,
looks better, besides being more in keeping with its African
surroundings, than the ridiculous bit of print from Ulaya.
MAKUA WOMEN

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Rhetorical Criticism: Exploration and

Practice- Inc.-2017, Ebook PDF Version

Reframing an Unwanted Transition:

10 Narrative Criticism 319

11 Pentadic Criticism 367

Circumvention of Power: A Pentadic Analysis of

12 Generative Criticism 411

Rhetorical criticism is not a process confined to a few assignments in a rhe-

first essay of criticism in my rhetorical criticism class in 2014, that he would

The Nature of Rhetorical Criticism

W e live our lives enveloped in symbols. How we perceive, what we know,

Humans as the Creators of Rhetoric

Symbols as the Medium for Rhetoric

The Nature of Rhetorical Criticism 5

Communication as the Purpose of Rhetoric

Another communicative function that rhetoric performs is that it con-

Systematic Analysis as the Act of Criticism

Acts and Artifacts as the Objects of Criticism

The Nature of Rhetorical Criticism 7

posted on a website, recorded on video, or preserved on canvas, it becomes a

Understanding Rhetorical Processes as the Purpose of Criticism

Doing Rhetorical Criticism

rhetorical processes—a song, a poem, a speech, a YouTube video, a webcam

Analyzing the Artifact

Doing Rhetorical Criticism 11

Formulating a Research Question

artifact adequately addresses an exigency in a particular situation.

Doing Rhetorical Criticism 13

Reviewing Relevant Literature

Identifying the Literature to Review

Working out the categories of literature to cover in your literature review

Doing Rhetorical Criticism 15

Coding the Literature

Creating a Conceptual Schema

Doing Rhetorical Criticism 17

A conceptual schema is not a chronological description of literature in

Writing the Literature Review

different ways of arranging them to create a miniconceptual schema that pres-

Writing the Essay

Doing Rhetorical Criticism 19

Description of the Artifact

Description of the Method

Report of the Findings of the Analysis

Doing Rhetorical Criticism 21

Bring in relevant literature as you explain your findings to elaborate on or

Contribution to Rhetorical Theory

ence’s perception that the rhetor is credible; this is a statement of relation-

Applying the Analysis in Activism

Doing Rhetorical Criticism 23

Assessing the Essay

Newala, too, suffers from the distance of its water-supply—at least

The water-supply of New Newala is in the bottom of the valley,

NATIVE PATH THROUGH THE MAKONDE BUSH, NEAR

MAKONDE LOCK AND KEY AT JUMBE CHAURO

MODE OF INSERTING THE KEY

With no small pride first one householder and then a second

Some consolation was afforded me by a brassfounder, whom I

SMOOTHING WITH MAIZE-COB

CUTTING THE EDGE

LAST SMOOTHING BEFORE

FIRING THE BRUSH-PILE

TURNING THE RED-HOT VESSEL