Well it is safe to say at this moment in the semester my head is spinning. I don't know if it is the work load or the looming doom of finding a job, but I am starting to seriously doubt my ability to accomplish tasks and handle stress. This paper, while not unlike other papers I have done, is really freaking me out. Now if there is one thing I can do, it is write the shit out of a research paper. And I like this topic. So why the freaking out? I don't have the answers.
Anyway, as it stands I have read 5 articles that I think will help me. I have written notes out for two of the articles, and I need to go back and reread the orginal 3 I read and write notes out for those. I write my notes as I am reading in a word doc. This helps me translate the author's thoughts into my own, make connections between articles, and write out quotes so that when I go to write the paper I can copy and paste quickly so I don't lose my train of thought. What I am essentially doing is a mini literature review.
As far as organization of the paper I want to look in depth at specific elements of rhetorical theory in the memo. I will start my paper with the memo, give an introduction/abstract about what my paper will be about and then go into sections that will be preceded by subheads. The sections I want to do include elements such as audience analysis, exigencies, metaphors/figurative language, the rhetorical, situation, ethics, practicality/writing as a tool. If the subheads make the paper seem disjointed and choppy I will remove them and write transitions between paragraphs.
I need to find a few more sources and hopefully I will start writing this week so that I have something to work with for the progress report due next week.
Here are my notes:
The Holocaust: Theoretical Readings
By Neil Levi, Michael Rothberg
Contributor Neil Levi, Michael Rothberg
Published by Rutgers University Press, 2003
Article:
The Rhetoric of Hitler’s Battle
Kenneth Burke
Specifically this discusses Hitler’s initial rhetoric in Mein Kampf
-The element for unifying people in the Middle Ages was a common enemy- in that case the devil. Hitler used a common enemy (the Jews and others) to unite the German people, and this devil was also international (“the international Jew”). Another Christian theology- the conquest of inferior races.
-Hitler used a fake science to define a bloodline, a Positivistic/”T”ruth. In this way, Hitler “Materialized” the enemy. Burke calls it “inborn dignity”
-Hitler uses sexual symbolism. The masses are a woman who needs a dominating man to lead them. The Jews are the rival male, and if they win they will taint the Aryan bloodline. This can be by mating with Aryans or simply by influencing Jewish culture and tainting their spiritual purity.
-Projection, by handing over one’s “ills to a scapegoat” one can get “purification”
-There is a True cause, centered in race (a science) between people who were born moral. Once you establish the “facts” you can’t argue them, all you can do is prove them.
-Hitler was aware of the power of repetition , used it in slogans and propaganda.
-“The desire for national unity, in the present state of the world, is genuine and admirable. But this unity, if attained on a deceptive basis, by emotional trickeries that shift our the accurate locus of our troubles, is no unity at all.
-Hitler’s exigency: the loss of WW1 and the economy, people were more susceptible to his rhetoric. The situation created an exigency.
Rhetorical Functions of the Infestation Metaphor in Hitler’s Rhetoric
Steven Perry
Central States Speech Journal, 1983
http://www.willamette.edu/cla/rhetoric/courses/Rhetcrit/readings/Hitler.pdf
“…sought to understand metaphor within the stylistic canon of rhetoric, as an aesthetic entity to be judges more in terms of its formal qualities than in terms of its practical functions in discourse.”
“Figurative language as more than an element of style”
“Parasitism imagery” the figurative language is what Hitler used to create his argument of Jewish inferiority
Perry looks at one class of metaphors: disease/infestation of the “national body”
-Edwin Black: metaphors can contain shared attitudes and values and metaphoric logic can sustain such attitudes
-parasites and disease create horror and mystification of the “enemy”
“The strategy of re-naming one’s enemies in a conflict situation is a common one. It is done in order to de-personalize the enemy, to de-humanize him or her, and thus to ameliorate the prospect of extreme action against the enemy.”
-used metaphors as a logic or way to explain how the Jews were a threat, also explains how if the Jews were so inferior how could they pose a threat? Because they were parasites and Aryans were the host. This metaphor reiterates that Jews are biologically evil.
-implies “an end of means moral”
Euphemisms of Death: Interpreting a Primary Source Document on the Holocaust
Richard Kalfus
-What is important to the writer is making the most of time and making the process efficient
-de-humanizing language:
“merchandise” and “pieces” are Jews
-“Objective and dispassionate language of a business memo”
*the genre of a memo alone reinforces that there is a job to do and emotion/compassion are not common elements in business writing
-Just de-humanizing nouns but fails to or cannot dehumanize verbs
“natural tendency”, “screaming always occurs” screaming-“the most human of all actions”
-gassing vans were used to de-humanize the process of killing for the psychological benefit of Nazi executers b/c mass shootings became to emotional for them
-“there is no compromise when efficient time management is a major objective…Any interruption in the gassing process must be avoided”
“Technocratic mentality- sociologist Max Weber and Karl Mannheim…”functional rationality. Not concerned with long term results, but with cost effectiveness.
*A business/a production line. Getting work done. Writing as a tool.
-Memo written by Willy Just, a dispatcher and welder for the SS motor pool
to SS officer Walther Rauff, head of the office of technical affairs in charge of more than 4000 security police motor vehicles.
-not unusual language “they were a norm in a society set as its political goal the annihilation of the Jews” *a discourse community which would have excepted the language choices and content matter b/c they shared the goal.
The Ethic of Expediency: Classical Rhetoric, Technology, and the Holocaust
Steven B. Katz
-“by an formal criteria in technical communication, it is an almost perfect document.”
Begins with a “purpose statement” that makes an “assumption or goal shared by the audience” *audience analysis/awareness. Then he sets up a problem to be solved. He’s technically justified, and therefore must be right.
-follows the rules of good document design, divided into three numbered sections with white space for easy reading
-argument for changing the vans is “technically accurate and logically argued”
-using cause/effect enthymemes to logically argue for the reduction in load space and how the reduction of load would make the process more efficient (less people, more gas, the faster they die)
-in deliberative rhetoric the goal is expediency (what is advantageous, rather than what is right. A self-interest)
-ethos (the moral element of character) of technical writing is “objectivity logic, and narrow focus” is demonstrated to the max. Calls it the “ethos of expediency:
-de-humanizing language in addition an “ethos of expediency” facilitated the holocaust
-for a writer to perform well in an organization he must adopt the ethos of the organization, “responsibility is shifted from the writer to the organization they represent” by “using passive voice which obscures the role of the agent, and of subordinate clauses that separate subject from verb.”
-stylistic choices “communicate and reveal a group think, an officially sanctioned ethos grounded in expediency”
-Just isn’t just doing his job, he has adopted the ethos. The group think.
-“All deliberative rhetoric is concerned with decision and action. Technical writing, perhaps even more than other kinds of rhetorical discourse, always leads to action, and this always impacts human life.
-In The Rhetoric, Aristotle states “rhetoric is a combination of the science of logic and the ethnical branch of politics.” Rhetoric is a praxis ( a social action) meant to get people to do something, a tool. Phronesis- part of praxis, and it is “practical wisdom or prudence” *which should include ideally what is right and wrong, but if the moral of the society doing the action is unethical and amoral then rhetoric can be used as a means to an evil end and still be considered expedient and useful
-Expediency is always the good, Aristotle says “utility is a good thing” and “any end if a good end”. Progress is a virtue.
-“virture, like knowledge is socially constructed” Hitler made “truths” by creating the science of race and ethnicity. *The society expected it, so it became true.
-science and technology were (and are) the basis for powerful argument to carry out any program. They embody truth, power, capability and thus are logical and ethnical
“Hitler believed in the efficiency of science and technology…
Hitler said: “a movement like ours musn’t let itself be drawn into metaphysical digressions. It must stick to the spirit of exact science.” The ethos of technology is expediency.
-This is what can happen when technology becomes an ethos
-Hitler’s rhetoric was not made to generate conversation or debate, it was meant to indoctrinate, ex: propaganda
-Another example of amoral expediency- when gold filling were taken from the teeth of victims and melted down for the war effort
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
0 comments:
Post a Comment