Barry Brummett
Biographic Data
| ID | 4908809 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Barry Brummett |
| GIVEN NAMES | Barry |
| FAMILY NAME | Brummett |
| SIGNATURE | BRUMMETT B |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 21 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 86 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 21 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1980 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Popular Culture and Religion
Extending previous studies using the method of homological analysis, the paper shows formal parallels between the Roman Catholic rite of exorcism and the popular cable show Dr. Pimple Popper. These parallels have rhetorical significance. Homologies between sacred and secular texts borrow the spiritual force of the sacred while the secular reinscribes sacred forms, often out of audience awareness. The paper suggests ways to expand the study of suc…
The Rhetoric of Enumeration in Roman Catholic Discourse
Scott’s Body
Research Article| December 01 2019 Scott’s Body Barry Brummett Barry Brummett Barry Brummett is Chair of the Department of Communication Studies and the Charles Sapp Centennial Professor of Communication at the University of Texas, Austin. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Rhetoric and Public Affairs (2019) 22 (4): 663–672. https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.22.4.0663 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter Li…
Form, Experience and the Centrality of Rhetoric to Pedagogy
What Popular Films Teach Us about Values
Values are general predispositions to thought or action that are generally understood to be encoded in language. But how can we understand texts that seem to be about values and yet are not exclusively linguistic? How can texts that are fantastic, such as science fiction or horror, advise people about which values to embrace? This article argues that values may be conveyed to an audience through the use of form. Using a method of homologies, deve…
Popular Communication After Globalization
The study of popular communication is carried out in many disciplines and many sites. It is often haunted by anxieties over high culture versus low culture and authenticity versus commercialization. Rejecting those binaries in favor of the dominance of the latter term in each, this article initially defines popular communication as objects widely circulated by mass media, texts to which people are widely exposed. Such texts are themselves commodi…
Rhetoric in Popular Culture
Preface Part I. THEORY 1. Rhetoric and Popular Culture The Rhetoric of Everyday Life The Building Blocks of Culture: Signs 2. Rhetoric and the Rhetorical Tradition The Rhetorical Tradition: Ancient Greece 3. Rhetorical Methods in Critical Studies Texts Influence through Meanings 4. Varieties of Rhetorical Criticism, part one An Introduction to Critical Perspectives Culture-centered Criticism Marxist Criticism Visual Rhetorical Criticism Psychoana…
Liberal and Radical Sources of Female Empowerment in Sport Media
This study of spectator groups viewing televised professional football revealed that spectators, particularly women, acted upon sport texts to empower themselves. Radical empowerment for women occurred when female spectators subverted the premises of the televised football spectacle, using irony, sarcasm, and limited commitment to the game to refuse the preferred (patriarchal) readings of the text. Liberal empowerment occurred when women (and men…
Toward a discursive ontology of media
Critical studies of communication have tended to assume a discursive ontology for all elements of the communication process except media, which are assumed to have a positivist ontology. Following McLuhan, this study argues that mediation is extension of the self along paths of social practice, discourse, and technology. The study argues that communication should be studied from that perspective, which is more consistent with the everyday experie…
Popular Economic Apocalyptic
Theorizing without totalizing
A theory must involve tradeoffs between an ability to describe the complexity of experience and an ability to generalize about categories of experience. Insufficient complexity leads to unwarranted totalizations, which has sometimes been the fate of theories of mass communication. This essay specifically indicts theories of specularity in cinema and television as risking totalization through unjustified generalizations about how the look function…
A eulogy for epistemic rhetoric
(1990). A eulogy for epistemic rhetoric. Quarterly Journal of Speech: Vol. 76, No. 1, pp. 69-72
Perfection and the Bomb
Using Burke's theory of perfection, this essay explores the vocabularies of nuclear weapons in US. public discourse and bow “the Bomb” as a God term “bas gained imbalanced ascendancy in centers of power.”
Types and Sources of Spectating Pleasure in Televised Sports
Although scholars have increasingly turned their attention to sport spectatorship, few have examined the particular appeals of television sports spectatorship. This study explains the pleasures of televised sports viewing by building on the work of media theorists. In particular, it argues that three types of specular pleasure (fetishism, voyeurism, narcissism) are found in televised sports. Further, it identifies discursive, technological, and s…
The homology hypothesis
In this essay, I develop the argument that texts may be especially rhetorically effective when the content, the medium used to convey the content, and real life experiences that make the content relevant are formally or structurally similar. I examine the work of several scholars from different traditions to show that many schools of thought have suggested that formal linkage creates rhetorical effect: some structuralists, Marxists, recent media …
Books reviews
MITEINANDER SPRECHEN UND HANDELN: FESTSCHRIFT FÜR HELLMUT GEISSNER. Edited by Edith Slembek. Frankfurt (Main): Scriptor Verlag, 1986; pp. 360. REALISM AND RELATIVISM: A PERSPECTIVE ON KENNETH BURKE. By Robert L. Heath. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1986; pp. xi + 270. $34.95. THE INVENTION OF ATHENS: THE FUNERAL ORATION IN THE CLASSICAL CITY. By Nicole Loraux, translated from the French by Alan Sheridan. Cambridge: Harvard University Press,…
Electric literature as equipment for living
Following Burkean critical theory, this essay examines five examples of films about haunted houses to determine their symbolic potential as “equipment for living.” These films help audiences to overcome feelings of anomie and disorientation. The essay studies ways in which film content and the cinematic medium engage issues of chaos. It is argued that both content and medium subject the audience symbolically to paradoxical conjunctions of realms …
Burke's representative anecdote as a method in media criticism
This essay argues that Kenneth Burke's concept of “literature as equip‐ment for living” is especially useful for media content criticism. An appropriate dramatistic method, the representative anecdote, is illustrated. Its application to selected fictional and nonfictional discourses of the Nineteen‐Fifties and late Seventies which exhibit public concern regarding automation, cloning, foreign affairs, and social regimentation is discussed. Paradig…
The forum
Gastronomic reference, synecdoche, and political images
Defining gastronomic reference or mention of what public figures eat, as synecdoche, this essay illustrates how synecdoche contributes to public figures, public images and argues that synecdoche deserves attention as an important political trope
Towards a theory of silence as a political strategy
This essay outlines a theory of strategic, political silence. That sort of silence directs public attribution of predictable meanings towards political leaders who unexpectedly refuse to speak in public. Those meanings are mystery, uncertainty, passivity, and relinquishment. The theory is illustrated in a criticism of President Carter's silence from 5 July to 15 July 1979
Rhetoric in Popular Culture
Preface Part I. THEORY 1. Rhetoric and Popular Culture The Rhetoric of Everyday Life The Building Blocks of Culture: Signs 2. Rhetoric and the Rhetorical Tradition The Rhetorical Tradition: Ancient Greece 3. Rhetorical Methods in Critical Studies Texts Influence through Meanings 4. Varieties of Rhetorical Criticism, part one An Introduction to Critical Perspectives Culture-centered Criticism Marxist Criticism Visual Rhetorical Criticism Psychoana…
Types and Sources of Spectating Pleasure in Televised Sports
Although scholars have increasingly turned their attention to sport spectatorship, few have examined the particular appeals of television sports spectatorship. This study explains the pleasures of televised sports viewing by building on the work of media theorists. In particular, it argues that three types of specular pleasure (fetishism, voyeurism, narcissism) are found in televised sports. Further, it identifies discursive, technological, and s…
Liberal and Radical Sources of Female Empowerment in Sport Media
This study of spectator groups viewing televised professional football revealed that spectators, particularly women, acted upon sport texts to empower themselves. Radical empowerment for women occurred when female spectators subverted the premises of the televised football spectacle, using irony, sarcasm, and limited commitment to the game to refuse the preferred (patriarchal) readings of the text. Liberal empowerment occurred when women (and men…
Towards a theory of silence as a political strategy
This essay outlines a theory of strategic, political silence. That sort of silence directs public attribution of predictable meanings towards political leaders who unexpectedly refuse to speak in public. Those meanings are mystery, uncertainty, passivity, and relinquishment. The theory is illustrated in a criticism of President Carter's silence from 5 July to 15 July 1979
A eulogy for epistemic rhetoric
(1990). A eulogy for epistemic rhetoric. Quarterly Journal of Speech: Vol. 76, No. 1, pp. 69-72
Theorizing without totalizing
A theory must involve tradeoffs between an ability to describe the complexity of experience and an ability to generalize about categories of experience. Insufficient complexity leads to unwarranted totalizations, which has sometimes been the fate of theories of mass communication. This essay specifically indicts theories of specularity in cinema and television as risking totalization through unjustified generalizations about how the look function…
The forum
Gastronomic reference, synecdoche, and political images
Defining gastronomic reference or mention of what public figures eat, as synecdoche, this essay illustrates how synecdoche contributes to public figures, public images and argues that synecdoche deserves attention as an important political trope
Towards a theory of silence as a political strategy
This essay outlines a theory of strategic, political silence. That sort of silence directs public attribution of predictable meanings towards political leaders who unexpectedly refuse to speak in public. Those meanings are mystery, uncertainty, passivity, and relinquishment. The theory is illustrated in a criticism of President Carter's silence from 5 July to 15 July 1979
Gastronomic reference, synecdoche, and political images
Defining gastronomic reference or mention of what public figures eat, as synecdoche, this essay illustrates how synecdoche contributes to public figures, public images and argues that synecdoche deserves attention as an important political trope
The forum
Burke's representative anecdote as a method in media criticism
This essay argues that Kenneth Burke's concept of “literature as equip‐ment for living” is especially useful for media content criticism. An appropriate dramatistic method, the representative anecdote, is illustrated. Its application to selected fictional and nonfictional discourses of the Nineteen‐Fifties and late Seventies which exhibit public concern regarding automation, cloning, foreign affairs, and social regimentation is discussed. Paradig…
Electric literature as equipment for living
Following Burkean critical theory, this essay examines five examples of films about haunted houses to determine their symbolic potential as “equipment for living.” These films help audiences to overcome feelings of anomie and disorientation. The essay studies ways in which film content and the cinematic medium engage issues of chaos. It is argued that both content and medium subject the audience symbolically to paradoxical conjunctions of realms …
Books reviews
MITEINANDER SPRECHEN UND HANDELN: FESTSCHRIFT FÜR HELLMUT GEISSNER. Edited by Edith Slembek. Frankfurt (Main): Scriptor Verlag, 1986; pp. 360. REALISM AND RELATIVISM: A PERSPECTIVE ON KENNETH BURKE. By Robert L. Heath. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1986; pp. xi + 270. $34.95. THE INVENTION OF ATHENS: THE FUNERAL ORATION IN THE CLASSICAL CITY. By Nicole Loraux, translated from the French by Alan Sheridan. Cambridge: Harvard University Press,…
The homology hypothesis
In this essay, I develop the argument that texts may be especially rhetorically effective when the content, the medium used to convey the content, and real life experiences that make the content relevant are formally or structurally similar. I examine the work of several scholars from different traditions to show that many schools of thought have suggested that formal linkage creates rhetorical effect: some structuralists, Marxists, recent media …
Perfection and the Bomb
Using Burke's theory of perfection, this essay explores the vocabularies of nuclear weapons in US. public discourse and bow “the Bomb” as a God term “bas gained imbalanced ascendancy in centers of power.”
Types and Sources of Spectating Pleasure in Televised Sports
Although scholars have increasingly turned their attention to sport spectatorship, few have examined the particular appeals of television sports spectatorship. This study explains the pleasures of televised sports viewing by building on the work of media theorists. In particular, it argues that three types of specular pleasure (fetishism, voyeurism, narcissism) are found in televised sports. Further, it identifies discursive, technological, and s…
Popular Economic Apocalyptic
Theorizing without totalizing
A theory must involve tradeoffs between an ability to describe the complexity of experience and an ability to generalize about categories of experience. Insufficient complexity leads to unwarranted totalizations, which has sometimes been the fate of theories of mass communication. This essay specifically indicts theories of specularity in cinema and television as risking totalization through unjustified generalizations about how the look function…
A eulogy for epistemic rhetoric
(1990). A eulogy for epistemic rhetoric. Quarterly Journal of Speech: Vol. 76, No. 1, pp. 69-72
Toward a discursive ontology of media
Critical studies of communication have tended to assume a discursive ontology for all elements of the communication process except media, which are assumed to have a positivist ontology. Following McLuhan, this study argues that mediation is extension of the self along paths of social practice, discourse, and technology. The study argues that communication should be studied from that perspective, which is more consistent with the everyday experie…
Liberal and Radical Sources of Female Empowerment in Sport Media
This study of spectator groups viewing televised professional football revealed that spectators, particularly women, acted upon sport texts to empower themselves. Radical empowerment for women occurred when female spectators subverted the premises of the televised football spectacle, using irony, sarcasm, and limited commitment to the game to refuse the preferred (patriarchal) readings of the text. Liberal empowerment occurred when women (and men…
Rhetoric in Popular Culture
Preface Part I. THEORY 1. Rhetoric and Popular Culture The Rhetoric of Everyday Life The Building Blocks of Culture: Signs 2. Rhetoric and the Rhetorical Tradition The Rhetorical Tradition: Ancient Greece 3. Rhetorical Methods in Critical Studies Texts Influence through Meanings 4. Varieties of Rhetorical Criticism, part one An Introduction to Critical Perspectives Culture-centered Criticism Marxist Criticism Visual Rhetorical Criticism Psychoana…
Popular Communication After Globalization
The study of popular communication is carried out in many disciplines and many sites. It is often haunted by anxieties over high culture versus low culture and authenticity versus commercialization. Rejecting those binaries in favor of the dominance of the latter term in each, this article initially defines popular communication as objects widely circulated by mass media, texts to which people are widely exposed. Such texts are themselves commodi…
What Popular Films Teach Us about Values
Values are general predispositions to thought or action that are generally understood to be encoded in language. But how can we understand texts that seem to be about values and yet are not exclusively linguistic? How can texts that are fantastic, such as science fiction or horror, advise people about which values to embrace? This article argues that values may be conveyed to an audience through the use of form. Using a method of homologies, deve…
Form, Experience and the Centrality of Rhetoric to Pedagogy
Scott’s Body
Research Article| December 01 2019 Scott’s Body Barry Brummett Barry Brummett Barry Brummett is Chair of the Department of Communication Studies and the Charles Sapp Centennial Professor of Communication at the University of Texas, Austin. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Rhetoric and Public Affairs (2019) 22 (4): 663–672. https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.22.4.0663 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter Li…
The Rhetoric of Enumeration in Roman Catholic Discourse
Popular Culture and Religion
Extending previous studies using the method of homological analysis, the paper shows formal parallels between the Roman Catholic rite of exorcism and the popular cable show Dr. Pimple Popper. These parallels have rhetorical significance. Homologies between sacred and secular texts borrow the spiritual force of the sacred while the secular reinscribes sacred forms, often out of audience awareness. The paper suggests ways to expand the study of suc…
Sociology (19 works) · Philosophy (12 works) · Political science (10 works) · Rhetoric and Communication Studies (10 works) · Epistemology (8 works) · Law (8 works) · Aesthetics (7 works) · Art (7 works) · Linguistics (7 works) · Psychology (7 works)