Rhetoric and Journalism
Code
722011078
Academic unit
Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas
Department
Ciências da Comunicação
Credits
10
Weekly hours
3 letivas + 1 tutorial
Teaching language
Portuguese
Objectives
a) understand media discourse from the pragmatic and argumentative standpoint;
b) scrutinise and analyse the argumentative categories and rhetorical devices that are used for journalistic discourse to construct media reality;
c) distinguish, in an analytical point of view, rational and emotional planes of journalistic discourse and manifest in a pragmatic and argumentative point of view, the existence of necessary connections between the two plans;
d) outline the criteria that underlie the claim of rationality of journalistic discourse, despite the antinomian nature of purposes that guide its exercise: to inform v / s to engage audiences.
Prerequisites
None.
Subject matter
It is a matter of Rhetoric, while General Theory of Persuasive Discourse, the primary function to satisfy the claim of rationality of journalistic discourse that we know teleologically directed towards the achievement of purposes so diametrically opposed like to \"inform\", which commits him to the truth, or to \"engage\" audiences, which will ensure their own survival.
If the media discourse presents itself split, in this dyad of purposes analytically conflicting, so the rhetoric, as a logo-technical instrument available for its critical construction and deconstruction, cant hide its inherent polarity between emotionality and reason.
It is this polarity that gives it, after all, enough competence to intervene in the grounds of a rational discourse that has in the arduous and delicate coexistence of value judgments and judgments of fact the secret of his performative effectiveness.
Identify and analyze the fine and necessary relations of rhetoric with informative media discourse can help us understand the discomfort, both inside and outside the media, due to its operation in terms of information, often marked by rampant trait of \"rhetorical devices\", of min game commotion, of confusion of \"gender,\" of the spectacle of the testimonies - practices and procedures that do not even dignify the rhetoric or journalism.
Bibliography
BORGES, Hermenegildo Ferreira (2007), Espaço Público e Retórica do Jornalismo, Retórica e Mediação da Escrita à Internet, Covilhã, UBI;
CUNHA, Tito Cardoso (2004), Argumentação e Crítica, Coimbra: Edições Minerva,Coimbra.
PERELMAN, Chaïm e TYTECA , Lucie Olbrechts (1992) ; Traité de L´Argumentation - La nouvelle Rhétorique, 5Î édition., Bruxelles: Éditions de L´Université de Bruxelles.
TOULMIN, Stephen (1993); The Uses of Argument, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
WALTON, Douglas (2007), Media Argumentation: Dialectic, Persuasion and Rhetoric, Cambridge, University Press
Teaching method
We seek to use a non-directive approach, encouraging and valuing, through discussion, active participation in each session. We seek to encourage participation of students through critical discourse analysis of journalistic discourse in pragmatic and argumentative point of view. Theoretical: 60%; Practical component: 40%.
Evaluation method
- Preparation, presentation and class discussion of a research project in theoretical and practical about one or more themes and issues raised throughout the course.
- Production and discussion of the final work of the Seminar.