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| From
the Editor: Our Roving Reporter, Stacey Stanfield
Anderson, went out in search of keen observations of the power
of persuasion in everyday life. Here’s what she found… |
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QUESTION:
"What
is the most rhetorically effective bumper sticker you've encountered
recently? If you were to teach this bumper sticker in class, what
is the single most persuasive element you would want to make sure
your students could identify?"
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| ANN
WATTERS
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| “I
saw this one the other day and it struck me because it utilizes
the appeal to authority (Einstein's image and presumably quote)
and the juxtaposition/contrast of prevent and prepare for strikes
me as memorable and effective.” |
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| JOHN
PETERSON
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A
friend mailed me a bumper sticker in December: "Enron/Haliburton
'04: http://www.whitehouse.org/." It's designed to look like
the Bush/Cheney stickers. I'd like students to explore the satire
at work and to reflect upon how much of the message depends on the
audience's awareness of the "counter-argument" bumper
sticker that is being made fun of. It seems the bumper sticker gives
the audience a lot of credit, as do most bumper stickers. They expect
the viewer to have a whole mother lode of sensitivity to the topic,
so that the words and images just tap into that waiting reaction.
In this case, the sticker also sends viewers to a website that is
named much like a government site, but turns out to be a satirical
send up of the White House home page. The economical reference to
a whole electronic dimension uses the bumper sticker rhetorical
logic (minimal language, big payoff) in a 21st century way. |
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REBECCA
WEBB
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I
recently saw a bumper sticker that caught my eye -- they usually
don't. It said "Never underestimate the power of stupid people
in large groups.” I think the most persuasive element in this
sticker has to do with how the reader will identify with it --obviously
not as a member of the "stupid" group. I thought it was
a fairly sly way of saying that the people (currently) in power
(i.e., the Bush administration) are members of the stupid majority.
Those who identify with the author of the sticker are, therefore,
the smart minority (i.e., the Kerry supporters). So what is the
moral of this rhetorical lesson? I think it's never underestimate
the role identity and self-perception play in a rhetorical situation. |
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MELISSA
MARCONI
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My
favorite bumper sticker of all times reads: “Your proctologist
called, they found your head.”
Before I started teaching rhetoric, I just thought
it was funny, end of story. But now that I look at it in light
of the argument is poses, I find it expertly crafter and hilarious.
In presenting
it to my students, I would ask them to explain the bumper sticker’s
argument. Those who could not get the sticker’s message,
I’d refer to a proctologist.
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ALYSSA
O'BRIEN
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Alyssa
O’Brien, on her morning walks into campus from the dish
to the quad, spotted a bumper sticker on a car that read “Stop
Mad Cowboy Disease.” She explains:
“There was a little cartoon
stick figure of a cowboy with guns, a bit like the image on the
left (from http://shop.store.yahoo.com/hemp-organic/stmadcodi.html).
It’s the cartoon figure that functions as an attack on the
President’s ethos and makes it so effective, while the words
suggest the logical extension of dementia from bovine to Bush.
But for me, the appeal is pure humos, a sort of pathos-infused
argument about all that’s insane in our world today.”
For a very different visual rhetoric
version of the bumper sticker, see http://www.cafepress.com/madcowboy.
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Writes Acquisitions Editor, Stacey
Stanfield Anderson, “Erik sent me his answer to the question
and it is way more than I ever expected anyone to write. I think
his response is worth including, especially because it offers
helpful classroom exercises.”
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