Rhetorical Analysis of Media

Analyzing a music video, song, or piece of art is, in many ways, the same as analyzing a piece of text. With media, you are still being "spoken" to and must pay attention to various factors within it in order identify the message or purpose, but you are given more options than with text. In fact, I consider analyzing a type of media to be much easier than literature. For example, with a song or music video, you are able to hear the artist's voice and tone, allowing for a deeper understanding as to what message they are trying to portray. For a piece of text, you would normally have to rely mostly on diction and punctuation to help set the mood. In art, the colors that are being used can set the mood very effectively. Likewise, body language is an important factor to pay attention to (in both art and music videos). In literature, there's no way of analyzing the speaker/author's body language. Using rhetorical analysis on all types of media and writing, you can learn that many of the techniques used to analyze one things can often be used to analyze the other. However, you must always consider that other people may reach a different conclusion than you. Sharing your opinions after analyzing can broaden your horizons and open up a new world of understanding.