Introduction - Wordplay and the Discourse of Video Games - page 4

negative connotation, often used to describe phenomena like talk without
substance, 'empty rhetoric,' or as part of a cover up of 'real' facts, like when
something is described as rhetorical posturing. In the popular vernacular,
rhetoric is often symptomatic of false, partisan words, like the 'mere rheto-
ric' of a politician's campaign promises. It is within this backdrop, a history
that stretches to classical times and contemporary misunderstanding of its
subject matter, that the academic discipline of rhetoric is set.
As could be expected of a discipline with this amount of history, there
is dif erence of opinion about how to defi ne the fi eld. In the interests of an
easily defensible starting point, Karlyn Korhs Campbell and Susan Schultz
Huxman state that “rhetoric is the study of what is persuasive.” 2 They
argue that “the discipline of rhetoric examines the symbolic dimensions
of human behavior in order to of er the most complete explanations of
human infl uence . . . rhetoric is the study of the art of using symbols.” 3
Rhetoric was initially used to understand and advance the study of oratory
and sought to explain what made particular appeals more or less ef ective.
In contemporary times, many rhetorical scholars have moved beyond the
study of speech, as speeches are less integral to contemporary culture than
they were in ancient Greece and mediated communication plays an increas-
ingly important role in how people are persuaded today. As such, rhetori-
cians have begun to analyze elements of communication like images, online
discussion, and video games.
Twentieth-century rhetoric of ers a number of modifi cations to classical
rhetorical studies that are worthy of note in the journey to reaching Camp-
bell and Huxman's defi nition. Defi ned primarily in terms of “persuasive
uses of language” 4 throughout its history, contemporary rhetorical studies
is marked by a meta-discourse focused on redefi ning the role of the fi eld to
better address how symbol use fi ts within our lives. Much of this introspec-
tion was driven by the work of Kenneth Burke, who argued that language
has a symbolic dimension and, given his belief that humans are defi ned as
symbol using animals, “the whole overall 'picture' [of reality] is but a con-
struct of our symbol system.” 5 For Burke, rhetoric is connected to language
use and language is “ a symbolic means for inducing cooperation in beings
that by nature respond to symbols .” 6 Burke adjusted the focus of rhetoric,
often preferring to study its role in creating structures of identifi cation and
division, rather than just the persuasive force of symbol use. In so doing,
he of ers up a means of analysis that is quite useful to the analysis of video
games because we can study the 'picture of reality' furthered by particular
symbolic elements of games and how they facilitate identifi cation with or
division from certain pieces of the discourse of games.
The study of language use is also addressed in the subfi eld of argumenta-
tion theory. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca contend that “there is no neu-
tral choice [in language]—but there is a choice that appears neutral . . .
What term is neutral clearly depends on the environment.” 7 This was a
shift in looking at language, as it was the beginning of an approach where