1) Of all the methods we covered in class, I found the ideological, pentadic, fantasy-theme, and generic methods to be the most useful. Pentadic is a good method for determining the motivation of the rhetor, and for some artifacts (like political ones), the motivation for creation is very important. Ideological criticism is right up my alley; searching out the belief systems of the rhetor, nosing them out from where they might be hidden, is both challenging and entertaining. I love a good analysis, so digging through a piece and figuring out all the little details that make it work is actually fun for me. The fantasy-theme method is one that I can relate to very easily; it is based around symbolic convergence theory, or the idea of a shared consciousness among groups, which is basically the definition of a fanfiction community (to many of which I am hopelessly addicted). I like the generic criticism because it actually helps me to understand how genres work, and how they are created/identified; genres come up a lot in literature, so knowledge of them is helpful for an English major.
2) I liked analyzing different artifacts in the blog posts. It was very interesting to take the class material and apply it to something modern, something that hadn’t been analyzed before, something that didn’t have preexisting findings to tell me that my findings were wrong. It made the class relatable to life outside the university.
3) I actually found reading the book to be the most challenging part of this class. Rhetorical criticism deals with some fairly abstract issues, and some of the books explanations were fairly abstract too. It was hard to get my head around the concepts when I didn’t have a concrete foundation to build off of.
4) If I ever need to find out the motivation of something, I can use one of the methods I have learned. They are useful tools for analysis, and I both enjoy analysis and expect to see it in my chosen career path. Also, knowledge of fantasy-theme criticism relates directly to certain online communities in which I am actively involved; it’s fun knowing there’s an official name for a bunch of friends hanging out online and psyching out about the same stuff.
5) I need to know my friend’s opinion about something, but it’s an odd topic that I don’t want to ask about outright. To determine her opinion, I could either observe her actions, or draw her into conversation about a near subject. By paying close attention, I should be able to gather what she doesn’t say out loud, which will reveal her motivation for saying/not saying a certain thing, and therefore what she really thinks.