Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

Advanced study in the theory and/or history of rhetoric. The course may be repeated for credit if a different topic is taught, though students who obtained credit for English 375 prior to Summer 2015 may not take this course for further credit.

COURSE DETAILS:

Humour and Rhetoric

From the Sophists of the fifth century BCE to twenty-first century stand-up comics, this course offers a selective historical survey of the relationship between rhetoric and humour. We will read from rhetorical theory and humour studies, and look at examples of humour in politics, literature, interpersonal communication, academic writing, and performance. Though definitions of rhetoric vary widely, all seem to agree that it has to do with using words or images effectively toward a particular purpose with a particular audience. As academic writers, we’re taught that “effective” means logical, unambiguous, appropriate, and serious. Since humour seems often to be none of those things, how can it be rhetorically effective? What can humour accomplish beyond amusement? Can it do things that “serious” language cannot? Alternately, when and why does rhetorical humour fail? If we consider the interaction of humour with the “rhetorical triangle” of text, speaker, and audience, we generate more questions:

• regarding the text: How do we determine if something is ironic? What does it mean to “get” a joke?
• regarding the writer or speaker: What are the benefits and the drawbacks of choosing to use humor?
• regarding the audience: If we laugh at something others deem offensive, what, if anything, does that say about us—and them? What power should the experience of offense, and the desire to avoid it, have in determining what can be written and spoken?

Over the millennia, rhetoricians have presented their theories about language and their practical suggestions on how best to use it, each theory entailing a certain attitude. So we’ll think too about what it means to deploy humor not only as a style or strategy but as a disposition, as a way of reframing—and perhaps even remaking—the social reality we inhabit and co-create.

Regarding the course content, be aware that humour almost always runs the risk of offending someone, and in some cases sets out to offend. Whether you will find yourself offended by any of the course material is yet to be determined, but do note that it’s a possibility. It will also be an opportunity to discuss issues central to the study of rhetoric: issues of reason and emotion, responsibility and judgment, citizenship and censorship.

COURSE-LEVEL EDUCATIONAL GOALS:

To increase one's tolerance for productive disagreement, and openness to being changed by the process.
To develop one's abilities--in thinking, speaking, and writing--in fearlessness and iconoclasm. As Mark Twain writes, "There is no humor in heaven."
To enjoy ourselves in the process.

Grading

Materials

MATERIALS + SUPPLIES:

All readings will be provided or available on-line, so there are no books to purchase. Among other things, we will discuss:

The Sophistic pedagogy of dissoi logoi; Cicero’s de Oratore; Kenneth Burke’s description of “perspective by incongruity;” some stuff from Freud; stand-up comedy by Richard Pryor, Joan Rivers, Margaret Cho, and Hannah Gadsby; The Daily Show; essays by Jonathan Swift and Dorothy Parker; political commentary by Anne Coulter and Alexandra Petri. We will also consider relevant items from the daily news.

REQUIRED READING: