"As we go through life experiencing and enjoying music, clothing, architecture, food, and so forth, we are also participating in rhetorical struggles over what kind of society we will live in and what sort of people we will be. This book will empower you to see those struggles as well, so that you will be able to find the rhetoric in rage metal, the motivations on MTV, and the arguments in RV's."

—From the Introduction

Rhetoric in Popular Culture, Third Edition is the only textbook that joins together two vital scholarly traditions: rhetorical criticism and critical studies. Barry Brummett introduces the reader to techniques of rhetorical criticism specifically designed for the analysis of texts in popular culture. In Part I, students are introduced to rhetoric as a concept, to the history of rhetoric, and to a method for doing rhetorical criticism. In Part 2, sample critical essay/ca studies show how the critical methods discussed in Part 1 can be used to study the rhetoric of extended texts at length.

New to the Third Edition:

• Applies cutting-edge methodologies: With updated examples from popular culture throughout the text, this book enables students to apply the growing and cutting-edge methodologies of critical studies to the study of rhetoric and to link those new approaches to the rhetorical tradition.

• Includes new critical essays: These examine the rhetorical influence of hip hop music, on the film Groundhog Day, and on Internet user groups. Recent work in semiotics and cultural studies is drawn upon to apply critical methods to texts from popular culture (such as print ads, music videos, TV advertisements, and movies and television shows).

• Links rhetorical concepts with everyday life: Useful (and fun) questions and mini-assignments are provided throughout the text to help students understand the practical applications and relevance of rhetorical concepts in everyday life.