How films persuade: an approach to film rhetoric from multimodality

• Autores: Alfonso M. Rodríguez de Austria
• Localización: Entre pantallas y realidades: una travesía por el universo audiovisual / coord. por Javier Sierra Sánchez, Sheila Liberal Ormaechea, 2024, ISBN 9788448645328, págs. 707-720
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • The aim of this chapter is to set the foundations of a methodology for analyzing rhetorical devices in narrative films . We shall start outlining the semiotic theory developed by Ferdinand de Saussure and taken to the field of cinematography by Jean Mitry and Christian Metz. Once the framework of the system of meanings in narrative films is expounded, we will invoke Aristotle's Rhetoric to avoid the multisignification drift and the instability of meanings.

    For Aristotle, rhetoric "may be defined as the faculty of discovering the possible means of persuasion in reference to any subject whatever" (Rhetoric, 1355b 25-27).

    Persuasion is the concept by which rhetoric is differentiated from poetics. While both are based in the art of writing, the aim of poetics is to produce aesthetic pleasure in the audience, and the aim of rhetoric is to persuade the audience. While the core of poetic art are the stylistic devices, the core of the rhetoric art is the enthymeme, that is, a rhetorical device which may and often include a stylistic device. Justas in a speech or a written text we may find different rhetorical devices, in a filmed text we may find that intended persuasion is embodied in different forms or "modes"...