Rhetorical Audience Studies and Reception of Rhetoric: Exploring Audiences Empirically

341 Pages·2018·4.046 MB·English

by  Jens E. Kjeldsen (eds.)

RHETORIC, POLITICS AND SOCIETY
GENERAL EDITORS: A. Finlayson; J. Martin; K. Phillips
RHETORICAL AUDIENCE STUDIES
AND RECEPTION OF RHETORIC
Exploring Audiences Empirically
Edited by
Jens E. Kjeldsen
Rhetoric, Politics and Society
Series Editors
Alan Finlayson
University of East Anglia
Norfolk, United Kingdom
James Martin
Goldsmiths, University of London
London, United Kingdom
Kendall Phillips
Syracuse University
Syracuse, New York, USA
Rhetoric lies at the intersection of a variety of disciplinary approaches and
methods, drawing upon the study of language, history, culture and phi-
losophy to understand the persuasive aspects of communication in all its
modes: spoken, written, argued, depicted and performed. This series pres-
ents the best international research in rhetoric that develops and exempli-
fies the multifaceted and cross-disciplinary exploration of practices of
persuasion and communication. It seeks to publish texts that openly
explore and expand rhetorical knowledge and enquiry, be it in the form of
historical scholarship, theoretical analysis or contemporary cultural and
political critique. The editors welcome proposals for monographs that
explore contemporary rhetorical forms, rhetorical theories and thinkers,
and rhetorical themes inside and across disciplinary boundaries. For infor-
mal enquiries, questions, as well as submitting proposals, please contact
the editors: Alan Finlayson: [email protected] James Martin: j.martin@
gold.ac.uk Kendall Phillips: [email protected]
More information about this series at
http://www.springer.com/series/14497
Jens E. Kjeldsen
Editor
Rhetorical Audience
Studies and Reception
of Rhetoric
Exploring Audiences Empirically
Editor
Jens E. Kjeldsen
Department of Information Science and Media Studies
University of Bergen
Bergen, Norway
Rhetoric, Politics and Society
ISBN 978-3-319-61617-9 ISBN 978-3-319-61618-6 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-61618-6
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017954961
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018
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C
ontents
1 Audience Analysis and Reception Studies of Rhetoric 1
Jens E. Kjeldsen
2 The Argumentative Burdens of Audience Conjectures:
Audience Research in Popular Culture Criticism (Reprint) 43
Jennifer Stromer-Galley and Edward Schiappa
3 Assessing Audience Reactions to Winston Churchill’s
Speeches 85
Richard Toye
4 Audience Response to Mediated Authenticity Appeals 109
Magnus H. Iversen
5 Focus Group Studies of Social Media Rhetoric 135
Eirik Vatnøy
6 Think-Aloud Reading: Selected Audiences’ Concurrent
Reaction to the Implied Audience in Political
Commentary 161
Mette Bengtsson
v
vi CONTENTS
7 The Semiotics and Rhetoric of Music: A Case Study
in Aesthetic Protocol Analysis 185
Christian Kock
8 Competing Perspectives: Using Ethnographic Methods
to Study Embodied and Emplaced Rhetorics 213
Aaron Hess
9 The Audience and the Spectacle: Bodu Bala Sena
and the Controversy of Buddhist Political Activism
in Sri Lanka 237
Michael Hertzberg
10 Pandemic Rhetoric and Public Memory. What People
(Don’t) Remember from the 2009 Swine Flu 261
Kristian Bjørkdahl and Benedicte Carlsen
11 Icons, Appropriations, and the Co-production
of Meaning 285
Robert Hariman and John Louis Lucaites
12 The Rhetorical Power of News Photographs:
A Triangulatory Reception Approach to the Alan
Kurdi Images 309
Jens E. Kjeldsen and Ida Andersen
Index 335
L f
ist of igures
Fig. 3.1 Listener reactions to Churchill’s broadcast of 21 January 1950 102
Fig. 4.1 A scene of joy from Stoltenberg’s taxi cab 117
Fig. 4.2 Hareide interacting with a family having breakfast 118
Fig. 5.1 Example 1. From the “Hey Girl Audun Lysbakken” campaign,
April 23, 2013 144
Fig. 5.2 Example 2. From the “Hey Girl Audun Lysbakken” campaign,
April 23, 2013 145
Fig. 7.1 Elgar concerto responses: The score of the first movement
of Edward Elgar’s Cello Concerto in the composer’s own
version with piano accompaniment 192
Fig. 8.1 Tourists visiting the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe 228
Fig. 12.1 (a) A Turkish police officer looking down at the body of
Alan Kurdi. (b) A Turkish police officer carries the body of
Alan Kurdi away. (c) The body of Alan Kurdi lying on the
beach seen from front. (d) The body of Alan Kurdi away lying
on the beach seen from the back 315
Fig. 12.2 Appropriation of the photograph of Alan Kurdi, depicting
the boy sleeping in a bed 318
Fig. 12.3 Appropriation of the photograph of Alan Kurdi, depicting
the boy lying in the middle of a parliament 318
vii
L t
ist of abLes
Table 4.1 Relevant dimensions of proximity (from Daloz 2009, 286) 112
Table 4.2 Composition of focus groups 116
Table 4.3 Summary of themes, subthemes and codes 120
ix
CHAPTER 1
Audience Analysis and Reception
Studies of Rhetoric
Jens E. Kjeldsen
Without audiences, there would be no rhetoric. Understanding audiences,
therefore, is essential for understanding rhetoric. If we do not understand
when, how and why audiences are influenced by communication, or see
how they negotiate and reject rhetorical messages, then we do not under-
stand rhetoric. In light of this, it is surprising that rhetorical scholars have
paid so little attention to audiences—or to be more precise: to empirical
audiences. This book encourages researchers to do more studies of empiri-
cal audiences and their reception of rhetoric. The chapters offer examples
of central methods of understanding reception and empirical audiences:
historical approaches such as archival-historical methodology and histori-
ography, interviews and focus group research, protocol analysis, ethno-
graphic participation and observation, appropriation as reception and
finally triangulation, where the researcher applies several methods in uni-
son. While these methods are common in media studies, anthropology,
cultural studies and other fields of research, they are surprisingly rare in
rhetorical studies.
J.E. Kjeldsen (*)
Department of Information Science and Media Studies, University of Bergen,
Bergen, Norway
© The Author(s) 2018 1
J.E. Kjeldsen (ed.), Rhetorical Audience Studies and Reception of
Rhetoric, Rhetoric, Politics and Society,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-61618-6_1