Barry Brummet's Rhetoric

Last month, all of my posts revolved around Barry Brummet, and I didn't really expound upon any of his basic ideas regarding rhetoric to begin with!  A lot of great information came from this man's book Rhetoric in Popular Culture, so I thought it'd be a good idea to backtrack for a moment, and explain what his ideas are.  Basically, Brummet believes that rhetoric isn't just words that can persuade us, but instead rhetoric is the way in which "signs" can influence us.  A sign can be anything really, any object or event that causes you to think of something else.  For example, this blog post can mean a number of things to me:  It's a reminder that I am behind schedule with my project as whole, it serves as inspiration to read more books since I whipped through Brummet's quickly, and it represents a grade for me as well.  No one else reading this post will have the same associations that I have with the blog-- instead, they may think of their own blogs that they post and how that blog is better than mine, it may remind them of Socrates or other rhetoricians, or maybe the reader has a deep hatred of video games, and this blog just serves as a tool to induce anger for them.  The possibilities are endless!

The way Brummet's ideas tie into video games, as I mentioned in last month's posts, is how cultures or groups within cultures can form shared meanings from signs.  That is the state of video games in the United States today-- there are both gamers and nongamers, where those who play video games view titles like WoW or Madden '12 in a different light than someone who has never played a game in his or her life.  Furthermore, the nongaming majority forms an idea of what the gaming community is like-- whether or not those ideas are actually correct do not matter to the masses, as the opinion becomes widely shared as a stereotype of sorts. 

That is why the contrast to South Korea is so sharp.  In the US, so little value is placed on this recreational activity, while activities that require physical gifts are turned into media circuses (I'm looking at you Super Bowl XLVI).  Both are games that children can play, but our culture has deemed that playing sports is a serious activity, one that warrants respect, and concurrently, wealth.  South Korea meanwhile feels that being able to master games like StarCraft, which requires hand-eye coordination and a lightning-quick mind in order to outmanuever one's opponent, is a serious form of play.  They didn't always feel this way, but a shift in culture led to a wide acceptance by the entire population.  There is nothing saying something like this cannot happen in the United States, specifically for educational purposes.  We've seen several examples of this throughout the blogs, which I will not rehash at this point.  But as more and more minds are expanded, and the younger population is exposed to these technologies in a constructive manner, video games in the classroom may ultimately become just as normal as airing StarCraft matches in South Korea.