Rhetorical Gazes

Visual rhetoric is the use of images in order to grab attention, argue a point, or persuade to do certain things. As these images are directed toward specific audiences, they are classified as rhetorical gazes. Some of these gazes include familial gaze, national gaze, world gaze, consumer gaze, travel gaze, and political gaze.

Familial gaze is the most intimate gaze involving specific small groups of people such as close friends or family. This gaze is used to trigger close, intimate feelings, and memories.  National gaze would involve a much larger group of people that do not necessarily know one another, but share a common culture. This gaze can be used to unite a group of people who have a common way of life. World gaze is the broadest gaze including all people and is commonly used by the film industry in disaster movies(see below for example). Consumer gaze encompasses a specific group of people categorized by age, race, gender, etc., and used by advertising agencies to entice them to buy specific products.  Travel gaze is the use of images to attract tourists to visit destinations they may not have considered otherwise. And finally, the political gaze (see below for example) is directed toward voters to sway their opinion in a specific direction.

World gaze

Political gaze

Cause and Effect

Today in class we discussed Cause and Effect as a rhetorical tool.  Cause and Effect is used in every narrative.  It is the chain of events that leads to the culminating event. These are the events that help the audience to understand why something happened, how things happened, and what was going on. As Cause and Effect is used, it help us predict what will happen next. For example, we can look ahead of a story to  know what the outcome will be if a girl ventures all alone into a dark alley in a bad part of town with no protection.  She is going to get hurt, maimed, or killed.  The story would not make sense if there was no cause to the outcome.  She has to put herself in danger in order for that part of the story to relate to the audience.

 The beginning of narratives generally start with the least important element and advances to the most important element,using Cause and Effect to show the pathway leading from one event to the next. As the story advances, the Cause and Effect continually trade places showing how one event leads to another. For example, in Aesop's Fables, we learn of a tortoise and a hare who race each other. The initial cause is that the hare is a fast runner and wants to prove to the tortoise that he can outrun him.  They begin the race which is the initial effect. At the beginning of the race, the hare speeds far ahead, this is now the cause, which effect is to cause him to feel overly confident. This confidence becomes the cause of him laying down to rest which is now the effect.  Laying down to rest becomes the cause of him falling asleep, and so on throughout the story. Thus laying a chain of events leading to the culminating event of the tortoise winning the race through persistence.

Peer reviews are essential to the writing process. As an author, it is easy to understand what you are trying to convey, but it may not always translate to the audience. For example, if you are writing a autobiographical narrative, you have lived it and understand what happened. It would be easy to leave out details that are important to the story.  The person hearing or reading the story will be confused and not understand what was missed. This is where a peer review is so essential.  A peer can read through the story and bring attention to the missing details. They can also and give feedback on the flow of the narrative.

Peers are able to catch missed words that do not come up on spell check. For example, typing the word than and meaning to type the word that might go missed.  These small errors can be easily overlooked by the author but can be picked up by the peer reviewing the story.

Blog 3A

The rhetorical tools mutability or plasticity, piecemeal, windows of opportunity, and open-ended closure referred to in the Zambereno article are important to narratives as they give multiple options to your writing style.

Mutability or plasticity is the ability to shift or change the narrative for another purpose or audience.  For example, if you want to adapt a story to a younger audience, you can change the vocabulary and content to better fit the age group intended without changing the story.  Another example would be to change the direction of the intended story to offer a different conclusion.  Piecemeal is taking different sources of material and combining them into the narrative. This allows you to take many different ideas and combine them in various ways to create your own version of a story. Windows of opportunity are historical holes in the story that can be filled in with perspective or other narratives. Open-ended closure is basically drawing attention to something missing from the narrative to allow for future stories or discussion, or in other words, to be continued...

Narrative- The Use of Proper Tense and Characters

When writing a narrative, it is important to use proper tense.  As you write about something that has already happened and then jump to the present or future without changing tense it is confusing to the reader, and does not reflect the order in which the story happens. Staying in proper tense helps the reader to follow along and make sense of the story.

Another rhetorical element in narrative writing is the use of characters.  Any narration has to include characters.  It is not possible to write a story without characters wether they be human, animal, or things. These characters will either influence or be influenced by the plot or subplots.  For example, in the story "Cinderella", the prince is required to find a bride.  Each character in the story is either demanding he find a bride, helping him to find a bride, trying to help someone become the bride, or trying to become the bride themselves.  Each character  has a part that interacts with the plot giving the story high points, climax and resolution.

Narrative

Narrative helps the audience to understand what the main idea of the writing is about and if used well will help to prove a point. Narrative puts things in chronological order to help make sense of how things came about and why they are important to the Theme. A plot, or problem, gives direction and resolution to the story. Studies have shown that students who are taught comprehension strategies for narration are more successful in understanding and composing narrative writing. 

  

Characters, theme, setting, and plot can all be created to reach the desired audience by taking on characteristics similar to the audience and their experiences, helping them relate and connect with the writing.  For example, if the target audience is young children, characters could be of similar age interacting with other characters like caretakers, pets, friends, etc. Using these tools in this way will help to attract the target audience.