Final Draft
Jerome Vargas
City College of San Francisco
15 MAY 2022
Introduction
Happiness by Steve Cutts strongly criticizes the contemporary society where Cutts opts to represent humans using rats. The animation begins with rats that run in a white background as a song can be heard and it follows the video. Through the use of depressing comedy, heartfelt appeals to pathos and unique appeals to logos, the artist manages to effectively convince the viewer that happiness can be found purely through materialism. However, Bitzer’s rhetorical situation is a rhetorical theoretical lens that can be used to analyze this artifact. It constitutes of rhetorical exigence, rhetorical audience and constraints (Chidume, S. N., &Agbo, I. I. (2022), which can be used to convey a persuasive information to the audience.
Rhetorical Theoretical lens
Rhetorical situation determines the rhetorical devices to use, the complexity of discourse as well as the type of diction, which is appropriate. Therefore, when an individual wants to know what the rhetorical situation of certain artifact, they need to understand the nature of those context in which the artist develops rhetorical discourse, since rhetorical discourse presence indicates that rhetorical situation is presence ((Kitterman, J., 2020). Before, composing any artifact, the author should first understand their rhetorical situation.
Bitzer’s rhetorical situations involves audience, exigence and constraints (Cooper, T. B. (2019). The audience that are capable of being influenced are multiple, from optimists, cynicists, industrialists and environmentalists. According to Bitzer, rhetoric is usually persuasive, therefore persuadable audience are significant. ‘Happiness’ have multiple persuadable audience such as optimists, that Cutts is targeting. Exigence according to Bitzer, are the needs, which need to be addressed, they can be fixed (rhetorical) or not be changed or fixed (non-rhetorical. Cutts message is about the perception of happiness therefore exigence is people perception of ‘happiness’. Constrains consist of the events, objects relations and the persons that are part of any situation since they have the power to constrain actions and decision required in modifying exigence. Constrains include the images, rhetorical appeals such as pathos, beliefs, motives, documents, facts and traditions. In Happiness, the music where beats and rhythm of the song have the impact on the viewer’s emotions (Gries, L. 2019) and the rat and other images used are examples of constrain
Artifact analysis
The purpose of artifacts is to inform therefore, an information, context or ideas can be transmitted to the audience in various ways using artifacts such as videos or articles. Communication artifacts are developed as human thoughts expression and give way for information perception using various strategies. As such, Happiness uses persuasive devices and rhetorical situations to convey a percussive information to the audience.
Used persuasive devices to persuade the audience include rhetoric appeal such as logos to bring out materialism that makes people behave. This is brought out when a black Friday sale is shown and everyone begins attacking one another over simple items in the store as the store owner does not do anything since he is making profit(CUTTS, S. (2018). Pathos used include the music sounds and rats images that are appealing to the viewer’s emotions. Based on Bitzer’s rhetorical situation, Cutts makes use of powerful logos and pathos as well as short animation. As such, he manages to effectively persuade the audience that happiness cannot be found through materialism. Studying artifacts is important because they are significant aspects of nonverbal communication as the right or best artifact choice reflect about a particular thing. In addition, understanding artifact, one is able to learn how they give perception of social status, help in reducing cognitive dissonance and how they effective communication. Lastly, it is an important site of study because it gives an insight on how composers or writers persuade their audience.
Conclusion
Artifacts are significant communication tools, which use persuasive devices and rhetorical situation to convey their message to the audience. Happiness is a persuasive artifact, which can be analyzed using Bitzer’s rhetorical situation and it includes appeals to logic and other rhetorical appeals that help persuade the audience on ‘happiness’ cannot be found purely through materialism.
Reference
Chidume, S. N., &Agbo, I. I. (2022). Discourse-Rhetorical Strategies of Pauline Epistles: Rhetorical Situation Theory Approach to the Book of First Thessalonians. SAGE
Cooper, T. B. (2019). The impromptu rhetorical situation. Communication Teacher, 33(4), 262-265.
CUTTS, S. (2018). Happiness. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9dZQelULDk&gt
Gries, L. (2019). Advances in visual rhetorical analysis. The SAGE Handbook of Visual
Kitterman, J., Grant, T. D., & Adams, Z. (2020). Rhetorical Situations. Writing@ Saint Leo.
