Today’s Class

• Rhetoric in Everyday Life: Applying Skills Learned in COMM 260 to the Professional World (Part II)

• Social Status Culture, Cool Culture, and Upward Mobility

• The Rhetoric of Social Status in Corporate Marketing

• Images High, Middle, and Low Culture in Marketing

• Changing Notions of Producers and Consumers

• McCracken, Chapter 4 (“Status and Cool”); Chapter 5 (“Producers and Consumers”); Chapter 6 (“Building a Secret Sneaker Store”)

• Rapaille, Chapter 9 (“The Codes for Shopping and Luxury”), pp. 155-169

• Excerpts from Fussell, “About the House,” from Class: A Guide Through the American Status System, pp. 76-96

COMM 260 Final Exam

• Scheduled for Thursday, May 2 from 9-11 a.m. in this classroom (unless you hear otherwise)

• Will be worth 100 points; weighted 20 percent of final course grade.

• Will consist of multiple choice, true/false, matching, short answer, and essay.

• Final review sheet already passed out in class and copy is near the top of our class Moodle page.

• Will have online Moodle review session at time decided upon by the class.

Project Presentations

• Worth 50 points

• Presentations take place on Friday (April 12); Monday (April 15); Wednesday (April 17); Friday (April 19); Monday (April 22); Wed. (April 24); Friday (April 26)

• Four presentations per day; 5-6 minute presentations and will be timed.

• Focus on major research question; overview of topic; data analyzed; and conclusions.

• Class discussion included in presentation grade.

Guiding Questions1. How do people rhetorically use non-discursive

artifacts to establish status, power, and identity in public culture?

2. How do people use non-discursive objects to perform their class status, or the class status they wish to be perceived as having?

3. How does the American Culture Code for Luxury reflect how Americans rhetorically portray their class positions?

4. What is slow and fast culture? 5. How can companies use their understanding of

cultural currents to rhetorically impact us (the audience/consumers) through rhetorical vehicles such as advertising and new products?

Company Gurus

Chief Culture Officers (CCO)

• Corporations live or die by their connection to culture. Most people who are CCOs did not get there through professional study, but by live experience (p. 13).

• Their multiple jobs gave them deep cultural knowledge (McCracken, p. 13). They lived culture and came from that culture (pp. 13-14). But challenge is to keep finger on the pulse of culture because it changes so quickly (p. 14).

Beyond Stealth Culture (Role of CCS)

• Culture is large, complex, and dynamic body of understanding. Culture is a mystery and the guru’s role thus is indispensible. CCOsmay appear stealth, but culture is knowable. Companies need someone who understands the culture and the corporation (top of page 40).

• A CCO is a profession like others: The person must think systematically, consider options, explores alternatives, and makes careful choices (bottom of McCracken, page 40).

Fast Culture

Slow Culture

• Slow culture is less interesting, less fashionable, much less visible (McCracken, pp. 44-45). It is deep-seated in our culture and we have to root it out and ask consumer to talk about it.

• Slow culture helps decide whether consumers will embrace a new product, how they will use it, what they will use it for, and whether it is a keeper in an American household (McCracken, p. 45).

Slogan:

“Cookies so soft…they taste like they’re right from the oven.”

Non-Discursive Artifacts

• The meanings of symbols in our culture are socially constructed and are arbitrary.

• Non-discursive: involves symbols other than the printed or spoken word: films art, architecture, plays, music, dance, tastes, odors, sounds, advertisements, furniture, cars, and dress are all forms of rhetoric, public monuments, fashion are all non-discursive artifacts.

Non-Discursive Artifacts as Rhetoric

• Going back to Foss, Chapter 1, page 5: Non-discursive artifacts are forms of rhetoric. One of the communicative functions of rhetoric is that it tells us what reality is.

• In other words, we chose different symbols to talk about things, describe ourselves, and our experiences to others. The symbols that we use influence our interpretations of what we experience and also others’ interpretations.

Object Language

• Defined as “all intentional and non-intentional displays of material things, such as implements, machines, art objects, architectural structures, our clothes, and any other objects on our human body.”

• Our objects communicate our values, status, financial success, informing others of our identity and reinforcing our own sense of self.

Paul Fussell

• Born 1924. Cultural and literary historian, and professor emeritus of English literature at the University of Pennsylvania.

• Author of books on eighteenth-century English literature, the world wars, and social class, among others.

• Class, A Guide Through the American Status System (1983)

• Caste Marks: Style and Status in the USA (1984)

Class Conclusion• CCOs must know how to use rhetorical vehicles

such as advertising and new products to communicate their cultural knowledge, which taps into the audiences’ fast and slow cultures.

• Although it has become harder to distinguish social classes in American, we live in a society where culture and status matter.

• Non-discursive artifacts such as brands and consumer products function rhetorically to portray status images of ourselves to others.

• Through rhetorical strategies such as decorating our homes in certain ways or patronizing certain brands, we perform the status we aspire to and rhetorically manage others’ impressions of us.

Monday’s Class• Rhetoric in Everyday Life and Applying Skills Learned in COMM

260 to the Professional World (Part III)

• Posers and Hipsters

• The Roles of Empathy and Ethnography in Tracking Cultural Trends

• Branding and Design/The “Cool Hunter” and “Code Crackers”

• President Obama’s “Cool Hunters” and Facebook in the Presidential campaign

• McCracken, Chapter 7 (“How-To”); Chapter 8 (“Philistines”); Chapter 9 (“Conclusion”)

• Skim last section (“Bonus Feature B”) because you will need to know the major ideas to write Reading Practice Paper due today

• Reading Practice Paper (Rhetoric in the Professional World) DUE IN CLASS