Remembering

Family
Day 5
 Rhetoric: “How we perceive, what we know, what we experience, and how we act are the results of the
symbols we create and the symbols we encounter in the world.”

What is the Rhetorical Criticism: “We engage in a process of thinking about symbols, discovering how they work, and

Nature of trying to figure out why they affect us….Systematic investigation and explanation of symbolic acts and
artifacts for the purpose of understanding rhetorical processes.”

Rhetorical The power of rhetoric to shape the world: “Every symbolic choice we make results in seeing the world in

Criticism? one way rather than in another, and in contrast to animals, human experience is different because of the
symbols we use to frame it.”

“Reality is not fixed but changes according to the symbols we use to talk about it. What we count as real
or as knowledge about the world depends on how we choose to label and talk about things. This does not
mean that things do not really exist--that this book, for example, is simply a figment of your imagination.
Rather, the symbols through which our realities are filtered affect our view of the book and how we are
motivated to act toward it. ”
Who Wants
Whom to
Remember What
and Why?
Setting Up a rhetorical Analysis

01 02 03
Selecting an Artifact Analyzing an Artifact Formulating a
Research Question
Example:
The Oklahoma
Standard: What
Rhetorical Work is
Being Done?
What memories
do we want our
family to see?
Sedaris Questions: “Now We Are Five”
¬ How does family remember and mourn the loss of a loved one?
¬ Reviewing a box of things and the apartment Tiffany left behind.

¬ Telling stories: How do we talk about those who have died?

¬ Naming the beach house after Tiffany.

¬ Vacation the start and end of traditions (Sedaris’s mother paid for them and it ended when she died). How
do traditions start and end?

¬ Siblings get split up into generations, teams (3 oldest and 3 youngest divide).

¬ Finding out things about our family that we didn’t know when they were happening: Tiffany’s yearbook.

¬ Tiffany’s memories of being sent to disciplinary school create a permanent disconnect with the family.