What is the definition of rhetorical criticism?
A form of criticism (or close reading) that employs the principles of rhetoric to examine the interactions between a text, an author, and an audience. Rhetorical analysis may be applied to virtually any text or image --a speech, an essay, an advertisement, a poem, a photograph, a web page, even a bumper sticker. Definition. The focused criterion of rhetorical analysis is to read an article keeping in mind the impacts that it produces on the audience. Hence it is the kind of analysis which calls for understanding and representing the views of the masses. Rhetorical criticism analyzes the symbolic artifacts of discourse — the words, phrases, images, gestures, performances, texts, films, etc. that people use to communicate. Rhetoric is the study of how writers and speakers use words to influence an audience. A rhetorical analysis is an essay that breaks a work of non-fiction into parts and then explains how the parts work together to create a certain effect—whether to persuade, entertain or inform. You can also conduct a rhetorical analysis of a primarily visual argument such as a cartoon or advertisement, or an oral performance such as a speech. In this handout we will use the word rhetorician to refer to the author of a speech or document or to the creator of an advertisement, cartoon, or other visual work. Rhetorical criticism is the analysis of a broad range of items related to using language to have an impact on an audience. This is often but not always applied to writing, where the author intends to have a certain effect on readers. Rhetorical criticism is the analysis of a broad range of items related to using language to have an impact on an audience. 1 Rhetorical criticism seeks simply to ascertain the particular posture or image that the author is establishing in this particular work in order to produce a particular effect on a particular audience.. ( 2 Edward P.J. Corbett, Introduction.. 3  Rhetorical Analyses of Literary Works, ed. by E. Corbett. 1 The Speech Teacher, 16, March 1967).  [ 2 R]hetorical criticism is a mode of analysis that focuses on the text itself. 3  In that respect it is like the practical criticism that the New Critics and the Chicago School indulge in. Rhetorical criticism studies and analyzes the purpose of the words, sights, and sounds that are the symbolic artifacts used for communications among people. The arts of Rhetorical criticism are an intellectual practice that dates from the time of Plato, in Classical Greece (5th–4th c. BC).
Rhetorical criticism is the analysis of a broad range of items related to using language to have an impact on an audience.