Rhetoric in Popular Culture

by Barry S. Brummett

The Fourth Edition of Barry Brummett’s Rhetoric in Popular Culture provides readers with in-depth insight into the techniques of rhetorical criticism to analyze the full spectrum of contemporary issues in popular culture. From movies, magazines and advertisements, to social networking sites, music videos and television shows, Dr. Brummett presents key rhetorical concepts and applies them with critical analysis to a variety of exciting examples drawn from today′s popular culture. Moving from theory to practice throughout the text, Brummett links concepts in an easy-to-understand way. Rhetoric in Popular Culture covers the concept rhetoric, itself, as well as its place and dynamic change in history, and offers methods to effectively employ rhetorical criticism in daily life. The new edition includes pertinent critical essays and case studies that show readers how the critical methods discussed can be used to study the hidden rhetoric of extended texts, and more.

344 pages, Paperback

First published February 7, 2006

Reviews

[Zachary · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was very impressed with this as both a textbook and just a generally useful and comprehensive handbook for working in the communication/rhetorical fields. Brummett's writing and examples are fairly clear throughout (albeit a bit odd, sometimes), and he does maybe the best job I've encountered yet in defining what it means to be a critic, and what the goal of criticism actually ought to be. Throughout this book he provides a number of great perspectives on rhetoric, popular culture, and the work of criticism, and does so in a manner that is clear and concise without falling into the many pitfalls that many boring textbooks do. I'd highly recommend especially the first half of this book as a resource, and will surely be turning back to it myself for use in this way.

[Isabella · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read this for school, was interesting enough but also boring