Uncovering Hidden Rhetorics

Social Issues in Disguise

The essays that compose this book explore how many of the texts we encounter in popular culture today are addressing social issues in ways that are not immediately apparent. The book's focus on "disguised rhetoric" helps students to think critically about entertainment media for their subtle processes of persuasion. The themes of these essays are meant to intrigue students even as the essays empower them to uncover the hidden rhetorics in other texts they may encounter.

Because it is important to know what we are doing if we engage social issues in talk, films, popular music, television, and so forth, understanding how social issues may be disguised in discourse is an important goal. If we need to disguise social issues we should do so with awareness, and we should especially be aware of how those issues may be disguised in the messages we encounter. This book is a collection of essays that explores a wide range of ways in which social issues may be disguised in the public talk of leaders, news media, and ordinary people as well as in the texts of entertainment and popular culture. The goal of the book is to give its readers some tools for seeing the hidden social issues in those texts. Whether you intend to produce public messages or, as is the case for most of us, consume them, knowing how to see through those disguises is important.