H O W T O A N A L Y Z E A N D I N T E R P R E T A R T I F A C T S

John Tiedemann

Perhaps you’ve already gotten a paper back from one of sic class). In what sense is examining one of these things
your teachers with a comment something like this: like to dissecting a frog?
“This is mostly summary. Where’s the analysis?” Even though we don’t not literally pull apart ideas, events,
poems, etc., we do break them down into parts intellectu-
Or:
ally in order to understand them. It’s that intellectual proc-
“You cite ample evidence in support of your claims, but ess that concerns us here. To analyze in a philosophy class,
you don’t analyze it fully. Can you elaborate upon your or a history class, or a literature class, etc., is to break an
analysis?” object down into parts in your mind in order to understand
how, why, and to what effect that object works.
The ability to analyze is valued across disciplines. But what
does the term “analysis” mean? And how do you go Let’s call these objects artifacts.
about analyzing something? By artifact, I mean a humanly created object as distinct
In what follows, I’ll discuss analysis in general, then focus on from a natural one. A tree isn’t an artifact; grass isn’t an
the analysis of artifacts, specifi- artifact; the sky isn’t an artifact. All
cally, and, more specifically, upon of these are natural objects. But
Artifact: Any humanly created the oak desk that’s made from a
the analysis of rhetorical artifacts.
Very broadly speaking, the con- object. tree is an artifact, as is a land-
cept of analysis means something scaped garden, as is a painting of
Cultural artifact: Any artifact that the sky. All of these objects are
similar from one academic disci-
pline to another — from biology, intends to communicate. humanly made, and there are
say, to literary studies. However, many more besides: books, build-
each specific discipline conducts ings, boats, Batman movies — the
analyses in its own peculiar way. Hopefully, then, by ex- list goes on and on.
ploring the concept of analysis both in general and as its In humanities classes — such as philosophy, history, litera-
practiced in the specific discipline of rhetorical studies, ture, art history, etc., — we’re concerned with a specific
we’ll gain some insight into the complexity of this concept category of artifacts: namely, cultural artifacts. By cultural
and the challenge of applying it. artifacts I mean artifacts that intend to communicate
At its most basic, to analyze something is to take it apart. something. Poems, paintings, philosophical systems are
The English word analysis comes from the Greek ana, obvious examples of cultural artifacts, since they clearly
meaning “apart” + luein, meaning “to loosen.” To analyze intend to communicate. But other, less obvious artifacts
something, then, is to break it down into its component count as cultural artifacts, too. For example, an ancient
parts. So if you’ve ever dissected a frog, or taken a bicycle clay pot may communicate quite a bit about the people
apart, or eaten the creamy center of an Oreo first and the who used it. The capitol building downtown was designed
cookie part second, then you’ve performed an analysis. In to communicate something about the nature of the state
all of these cases, you’ve broken a complex whole into its and its government. Even Lady Gaga’s outfits “say” quite
component parts. a lot, over and above the lyrics of her songs.

In school, however, we don’t typically pull things apart just All of which is to say that objects are cultural artifacts to the
for the sake of it. Rather, we analyze things in order to un- extent that we treat them that way; it’s a matter of per-
derstand how they work: That is, we’re interested in the spective. When you treat the desk in your room as a con-
connections between the parts venient place to put your com-
and in what each part contributes Analysis: To break a whole into its puter and pile your books, it’s just
to the whole. We seek to under- that: a desk — a physical object
stand how, why, and to what ef-
component parts and examine their and an article of use. However, if
fect the whole works as it does. In interaction, in order to understand you were to examine your desk as
the case of frog dissection, we how, why, and to what effect the an instance of early 21st-century
might be trying to understand how whole works. American culture, one that tells us
a frog’s respiratory system works, something significant about the
or how its circulatory system works, people who used them, how they
or who its muscles, bones, and tendons interact so as to viewed themselves, and how they understood their world,
enable it to hop. By breaking the frog’s anatomy down then you’d be treating your desk as a cultural artifact: as a
into its component parts and figuring out what each part humanly made object that communicates.
contributes to the functioning of the whole, we come to But how do you discern what it is that a cultural artifact
understand froginess systematically. communicates? This brings us back to the idea of analysis.
Of course, physical entities such as frogs aren’t the only We discover what an artifact communicates by analyzing
things we’re called upon to analyze in college. We might it: that is, by using a conceptual system to break that arti-
be asked to analyze ideas (perhaps in a philosophy class) fact down (in our minds) into its components parts in order
or historical events (in a history class) or a poem, a painting, to understand how, why, and to what effect it works. It is
or a symphony (in a literature class, art history class, or mu- these conceptual systems that are the focus, typically, of
your classes — in the humanities and elsewhere. So in a

literature class you might be taught a set of terms and
concepts having to do with poetics, or narrative, or drama-
turgy, which you then apply to specific poems, novels, or
plays. And in a political science class you may be encoun-
ter a system of terms and concepts having to do with elec-
tions, or the law, or forms of government, which you then
apply to specific electoral competitions, or Constitutional
questions, or ruling regimes. In all cases, the conceptual
system enables you to understand how the object of your
analysis works by helping you to break that object down
into its component, interactive parts.
In the case of the conceptual systems we use to analyze
cultural artifacts, the “work” in question is communicative
in nature. That is, we want to understand what the artifact
means, how it creates that meaning, and what effect that
communication had or is likely to have on an audience. In
other words, analyzing cultural artifacts is a means of inter-
pretation: a way of developing an argument about the
meaning of the artifact in question.
To illustrate this point, let’s consider the analysis of rhetorical
artifacts. A rhetorical artifact is a cultural artifact whose
purpose is to persuade, i.e., to change the minds and/or
behavior of its audience. You are
already familiar with some of the Rhetorical artifact: A cultural artifact
conceptual systems that we use to that seeks to persuade, i.e., to
analyze rhetorical artifacts. Per- change minds or behaviors.
haps you’re familiar with what is
sometimes called “the Aristotelian
triangle,” which we use to break, say, a piece of oral or
written discourse (i.e., a cultural artifact) down into differ-
ent kids of “appeals:” i.e., appeals to ethos, appeals to
pathos, and appeals to ethos. By separating the discourse
into different kinds of appeals, we have, obviously, per-
formed an analysis: we’ve broken the artifact down (in our
minds) into parts. If we then take the next step, i.e., if we
consider how those appeals interact such as to persuade
(or fail to persuade) the audience for that discourse, we’ll
have completed the analysis and moved into interpreta-
tion: that is, an argument about how and why the dis-
course affected its audience as it did. Once again: To
analyze is to break an object
down into its component, interac-
tive parts in order to understand Making strange: To focus your
how, why, and to what effect it interpretation on a feature of the
works. In this example, the object artifact that surprises in some way.
is the written or spoken discourse;
the parts are the appeals that
make it up; and the question we sought to understand is
how and why does the object persuade or fail to per-
suade.
In class last week, we read an essay by Lloyd Bitzer titled
“The Rhetorical Situation.” Bitzer gives a different but com-
plementary conceptual system. For Bitzer, a rhetorical
situation — the whole — can be broken down into four ba-
sic components: the exigence (i.e., the set of circum-
stances that give rise to the discourse), the purpose or pur-
poses (i.e., the specific responses to the exigence put forth
by the parties to the debate), the rhetorical audience (i.e.,
the people involved in the situation, insofar as they have a
capacity not only to listen to the discourse of others but to
affect the situation’s outcome), and the constraints (i.e.,
the whole range of factors that influence the situation and
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hence the discourse that goes on within it, to the timing
of the situation, to its location in physical space, to the prior
reputations of the speakers/writers, to the rules governing
the discourse, etc.).
The first step in using Bitzer to perform a rhetorical analysis
of a specific artifact, then, is to determine what the exi-
gence is, what the purpose or purposes of the crea-
tor/creators of the artifact is/are, who the audience is, and
what the pertinent constraints are. There’s no point trying
to rush ahead and develop an interpretation without tak-
ing this first step. Your interpretation of the artifact will
emerge from your analysis of it. Analysis comes first; inter-
pretation comes later.
But let’s suppose that you’ve taken this first step and now
ready to interpret your object, i.e., to complete the analysis
and develop an argument about what, how, why, and to
what effect the artifact means. What’s the next step?
As we’ve discussed in class, the next step involves looking
for something strange.
What do I mean by “strange”? And why should we, as
artifact analysts, be on the lookout
for it?
By “strange” I mean some ele-
ment, aspect, or detail of the ar-
tifact that surprises you in some
way, that breaks with your expec-
tations, that you can’t immediately account for, or that
otherwise sticks out a bit (or a lot). We don’t always notice
these strange moments.
In our rush to extract basic information from the artifacts we
encounter, we often, if unconsciously, ignore these strange
details; we dismiss them as inessential to the “main point.”
However, from the point of view of an analyst, these odd,
curious features of the artifact are likely what’s most inter-
esting about the artifact, or a gateway to what’s most in-
teresting about it. Exploring them, pondering them, medi-
tating upon what these strange moments contribute to the
meaning of the artifact as a whole allows us to more fully
appreciate the complexity and
uniqueness of the artifact.
Consider one of the examples we
examined in class: Barack
Obama’s March speech on health
insurance reform. To analyze this
speech, we needed, first, to break it down into the parts
identified by Bitzer. The exigence, as we debated, can be
defined as either/both (1) the need to make health insur-
ance available to the uninsured and/or (2) the president’s
need for a legislative victory. The president’s purpose, we
largely agreed, was to move the House of Representatives
to vote that Sunday in favor of the legislation before them,
as it was written, rather than either voting against it or in-
sisting on changes to the language of the text that would
result in the need to craft (and debate) yet another version
of the bill. The rhetorical audience, as I and others argued,
could be defined broadly, so as to include both Houses of
Congress and the American electorate, but would proba-
bly be more accurately defined as the 10 or 15 members of
the House who had not yet committed to vote one way or

the other, and whose votes would determine whether the
bill passed or not. That is, these were the folks with the most
power to influence the final outcome of the situation. And,
finally, the president faced a number of constraints, from
the negative portraits of the bill and even of himself that
had been circulating for a year now to the fact that the
vote was scheduled to take place just a couple of days
after his speech, thus severely limiting his ability to mobilize
meaningful mass support.
That’s the first step: using the conceptual system that Bitzer
provides in order to break the artifact (i.e., the president’s
speech) down into its component parts. What about the
next part: the “making strange”?
Of course, we could simply itemize the various ways that
the president did what was expected of him in a situation
like this one. We could point out that buttressed his argu-
ment on behalf of health care legislation with expert testi-
mony, statistics, and other facts that support its passage.
We could point out the various ways that he presented
himself as a strong leader, thus enhancing his ethos. And
we could point out moments in the speech wherein he
made overt emotional appeals to patriotism, righteous an-
ger, or sympathy for the less unfortunate.
All of these are valid points, provided we back them up
with quoted evidence and explain how what we’ve
quoted bears out our larger argument.
But are they interesting?
Do they help us to see the complexity of Obama’s speech
and the artfulness of its construction?
Will they lead us to highly original, debatable, thought-pro-
voking arguments?
In short, will they help us to be inventive?
Well, probably not as inventive as we could be. That is,
while one could construct a more or less competent inter-
pretation of Obama’s discourse by focusing on the ways
that he did what one expects a president to do in such a
situation, a more inventive, more original, more debatable,
more thought-provoking argument is to be had by focusing
on one of the “strange” details we might otherwise ne-
glect.
I gave you two example of that kind of argument in class.
Admittedly, they’re not the most dazzling examples, but I
hope that they at least serve to illustrate my point, which is
that paying careful attention to curious and surprising de-
tails yields more inventive interpretive results than simply
itemizing the ways that our expectations were fulfilled.
Let’s review one of those examples, i.e., my argument
about the potential significance of the president’s re-
peated use of the words “George Mason” to address his
audience:
At several points during the speech promoting health care
legislation that he delivered on Friday, March 19, President
Obama addresses his audience as “George Mason.” Of
course, the university at which he delivered the speech is
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George Mason University, and so, on one level, he is sim-
ply using the name “George Mason” as shorthand for the
students, faculty, and other university employees who had
gathered to hear him. On another level, however, by repeat-
edly invoking the name of the historical figure George Ma-
son, Obama subtly characterizes his audience precisely as
his rhetorical purpose requires. The George Mason for
whom the university is named was one of the country’s
founders. He is remembered both for his insistence that the
rights of individuals be explicitly articulated in the Consti-
tution, thus earning him the sobriquet “Father of the Bill of
Rights,” as well as for his highly equivocal position on
slavery. A professed opponent of slavery but himself a
slave-owner, Mason advocated that the slave trade be abol-
ished but did not call for the immediate abolition of slave-
holding itself. To call for the outright abolition of slavery,
he feared, would prove too divisive for the young republic;
like others among the Founders, Mason preferred to defer
the abolition of slavery until later. By using the name
“George Mason” to address his audience, then, Obama
draws an implicit analogy. Americans today — and, more
specifically, members of the House of Representatives —
are faced with a comparable choice: Will they or won’t
they, as Obama puts it, “do something historic”? That is,
will they continue to defer action on health care — a moral
issue, as Obama defines it — just as George Mason de-
ferred action on the moral issue of slavery? Or will they, as
Mason did when he successfully advocated for the inclusion
of a Bill of Rights, summon the courage to, in Obama’s
words, “make history:” that is, to overcome the inertia of
tradition, habit, and entrenched interests in order to fashion
a new and better future? Obama’s subtle use of the figure of
George Mason forms part of his larger rhetorical strategy:
In order to get drum up sufficient Congressional support to
get health care legislation passed, he must persuade this
segment of his audience to see the issue not as a mere de-
bate about policy but as a profoundly moral struggle of long
historical standing, and he must persuade them to see them-
selves as agents of truly historical change.
You may or may not buy the argument. This is only an in-
troduction to it, and I’d certainly I’d need to do a good
deal more argumentative work in order to persuade a
skeptical reader that my interpretation is actually borne out
by the evidence. But I hope you’ll agree that by focusing
on a small, concrete, slightly strange detail, I’m off to a
more inventive start than I would have been had I simply
listed the all ways that Obama did the expected. Because
if I can not only support but further develop this line of ar-
gument — showing how Obama’s use of this historical fig-
ure is of a piece with his uses elsewhere in the speech of
other historical figures; demonstrating how this mode of
audience address forms part of a larger strategy for mov-
ing his audience; revealing how this seemingly offhand fig-
ure of speech allows him to turn time constraints to his rhe-
torical advantage — then I’d have crafted an interpreta-
tion that gives some genuine insight into the meaning of
the artifact that is its object.