Ideology, knowledge and text: Pulling at the knot in Ariadne's thread

Cyphert, Dale

doi:10.1080/00335630109384347

Cited by 12 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 67 publications

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“…Among the categories of expression the two "critical rhetoricians" (p. 19) call "culture" are "architecture" and "music." Thus, for Ono and Sloop (1995, p. 20) "music" qualifies as vernacular discourse but does not rise to the level of "text," which is the privileged object of analysis for rhetoricians, as Ono and Sloop (1995, p. 19) themselves acknowledge (see also Cali, 2000;Chesebro, 1996;Cyphert, 2001;Goldzwig, 1998). By demonstrating how the chosen song-recordings work as texts, as opposed to treating them as "mere" cultural artifacts, the present undertaking has aimed to augment the efforts of those scholars who contend that the communication field must "account for the rhetoricity of forms of human communication" (Cyphert, 2001, p. 387) other than the public speech.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 92%

Mass Communication and Identity Construction: Theory and a Case Study of Song-Recordings by a Popular Musician

Wolfe

Loy

Chidester

2009

Journalism & Communication Monographs

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This study examines the role of mass communication in identity construction by focusing on song-recordings written and performed by John Mellencamp, a mass communicator who has consistently identified himself with the Midwest generally and rural Indiana particularly. This research argues that Mellencamp's album, Scarecrow, may be productively grasped as (1) communication that extends a tradition expounded by such Midwesterners as Mark Twain and Grant Wood and (2) as mythology. Focusing closely on two Scarecrow tracks, this study conceptualizes mythology as a "vital contemporary creator of meaning" (Campbell, 1991, p. 335). The tracks are then analyzed by attending to those musical details of each that either reinforce or contradict its linguistic/mythic meanings. While similar analyses of popular music are not unprecedented in communication research, no prior study has attempted to integrate mythological textual analysis and musicological analysis in an effort to advance understanding about how mixes of myth and music "foster cultural identification" (Sellnow & Sellnow, 2001, p. 396). A new rhetorical category of song is proposed.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 92%

Mass Communication and Identity Construction: Theory and a Case Study of Song-Recordings by a Popular Musician

Wolfe

Loy

Chidester

2009

Journalism & Communication Monographs

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“…Humans might individually use the full range of cognitive, communicative, and artifactual tools available to them, but effective group action requires that decision-making be constrained in some fundamental ways, balancing the individual and social identities of members, choosing between the contradictory output of holistic and analytical cognitive processes, and agreeing on a common mode of acceptable communication (Cyphert, 2001).…”

Section: An Evolving Rhetoric Of Corporate Ecologymentioning

confidence: 99%

In search of the corporate citizen: The emerging discourse of corporate ecology

Cyphert¹,

Saiia

2004

Southern Communication Journal

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Examinations of corporate discourse tend to dichotomize ethical stakeholder relationships and strategic business decisions, but when the ethical/economic conflict is cast in rhetorical terms, the apparent contradictions can be seen as a failure of traditional Western managerial discourse. Decision making within bureaucratic organizations has followed the traditionally rational, assertive forms of Western discourse, but management theorists increasingly urge corporations to adopt practices more appropriate for complex, adaptive, self-organizing communities. This emerging rhetorical form has practical utility in an adaptive, post-industrial "learning organization " but also allows a performance of organizational citizenship that integrates ethical and economic values in a discourse of corporate ecology.

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“…What, then, of the nature of critique? In addition to the developments outlined above, the 1980s and 1990s saw a heated transition in the nature and purpose of rhetorical criticism (see Cyphert 2001). The earliest manifestation emphasized what Philip Wander (1983) called the "ideological turn," an address of rhetorical constitutions of the political with the aim of critiquing dominant ideology.…”

Section: Critical Rhetoric and The Critique Of Vernacular Culturementioning

confidence: 99%

Constituting Folklore: A Case for Critical Folklore Studies

Gencarella¹

2009

Journal of American Folklore

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This article argues for the development of a critical folklore studies through an interweaving of folklore and rhetorical theory. Following paths set by Roger Abrahams, Kenneth Burke, and Antonio Gramsci decades ago, and drawing upon more recent contributions by Ernesto Laclau and rhetorical critics, it considers folklore as a constitutive rhetoric, the act of which establishes a "folk"-and their adversaries-as a political category. Identifying three articulations of critical folklore studies, it calls upon folklorists to intervene against (rather than strictly analyze) oppressive power formations through the production of overt criticism and related counterhegemonic practices. In her contribution to the special issue of the Journal of American Folklore, "Common Ground: Keywords for the Study of Expressive Culture," Dorothy Noyes suggests for folklorists a remarkable task. "We must still deal with that problem," she writes, "of how an 'imagined community' can be worth dying for; unhappily, we must also understand how it can be worth killing for" (1995:466). More than a decade later, and with the global stage no less fraught with confrontation, her call remains strikingly relevant. If folklore-its performance, exhibition, and analysis-faces a crisis today, it may lie not simply in questions of its academic survival but in its critical contribution to the politics of interpretation and in addressing issues of conflict and power. And while many folklorists have urged our community in the recent past to move toward a deeper examination of the communicative maneuvers by which folklore informs political identities and hegemonic and hierarchical social orders, we have not done so by drawing a significantly closer relationship with a related field of research that has long addressed these concerns: rhetorical studies. This article will pursue such a collaboration in order to take seriously Noyes's lament, and Giovanna P. Del Negro and Harris M. Berger's exhortation to "embark upon a critical inquiry into the ways in which everydayness, expressivity, and practice itself are constructed by us and by the people and texts we study" (2004:22). Forty years ago, Roger Abrahams (1968a, 1968b) first presented an argument for an alliance between folklore and rhetorical studies. He renewed this position in his latest book, Everyday Life: A Poetics of Vernacular Practices, which analyzes and makes a case

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Ideology, knowledge and text: Pulling at the knot in Ariadne's thread

Cited by 12 publications

References 67 publications

Mass Communication and Identity Construction: Theory and a Case Study of Song-Recordings by a Popular Musician

Mass Communication and Identity Construction: Theory and a Case Study of Song-Recordings by a Popular Musician

In search of the corporate citizen: The emerging discourse of corporate ecology

Constituting Folklore: A Case for Critical Folklore Studies

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