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Uncovering Hidden Rhetorics
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Uncovering Hidden Rhetorics
Social Issues in Disguise



January 2008 | 288 pages | SAGE Publications, Inc
The essays that compose this book explore how many of the texts we encounter in popular culture today are addressing social issues in ways that are not immediately apparent. The book's focus on "disguised rhetoric" helps students to think critically about entertainment media for their subtle processes of persuasion. The themes of these essays are meant to intrigue students even as the essays empower them to uncover the hidden rhetorics in other texts they may encounter.

Because it is important to know what we are doing if we engage social issues in talk, films, popular music, television, and so forth, understanding how social issues may be disguised in discourse is an important goal. If we need to disguise social issues we should do so with awareness, and we should especially be aware of how those issues may be disguised in the messages we encounter. This book is a collection of essays that explores a wide range of ways in which social issues may be disguised in the public talk of leaders, news media, and ordinary people as well as in the texts of entertainment and popular culture. The goal of the book is to give its readers some tools for seeing the hidden social issues in those texts. Whether you intend to produce public messages or, as is the case for most of us, consume them, knowing how to see through those disguises is important.

Barry Brummett
Social Issues in Disguise: An Introduction to Sneaky Rhetoric
Kristen Hoerl
Remembering and Forgetting Black Power in Mississippi Burning
Lisa Glebatis Perks, Luke Winslow, Sharon Avital
Limited Representation: A Homology of Discriminatory Media Portrayals of Little People and African Americans
Barry Brummett
Whispers of a Racial Past: Forms of White Liberal History in The Horse Whisperer
Lisa Glebatis Perks
The Evil Albino: Cinematic Othering and Scapegoating of Extreme Whites
Kathryn M. Olson
Detecting a Common Interpretive Framework for Impersonal Violence: The Homology in Participants? Rhetoric on Sport Hunting, "Hate Crimes," and Stranger Rape
Luke Winslow
Classy Morality: The Rhetoric of Joel Osteen
Angela J. Aguayo
The Re-Visioned American Dream: The Wildlife Documentary Form as Conservative Nostalgia
E. Johanna Hartelius
Weathering the Storm: Pirates of the Caribbean and Transnational Corporatism
Roger Gatchet
A Hystery of Colonial Witchcraft: Witch-Hunt Tourism and Commemoration in Salem, Massachusetts
Teresita Garza
Outing the Marlboro Man: Issues of Masculinity and Class Closeted in Brokeback Mountain
William Earnest
Making Gay Sense of the X-Men
 
References
 
About the Editor
 
About the Contributors
 
Index

"One of the most important benefits of this book is that Brummet and his contributors demonstrate interesting ways to read critically."

T.B. Dykeman
Fairfield University
CHOICE

An enjoyable text, linking perennial social issues with events and icons from popular culture. Definitely recommended for classes in media discourse.

Dr Aditi Bhatia
Department of English, City University of Hong Kong
September 8, 2011

Sample Materials & Chapters

Chapter 2

Chapter 8

Chapter 11


For instructors

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Paperback
ISBN: 9781412956925
£81.00

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ISBN: 9781412956918
£128.00