Abstract
Various methods have been attempted to analyze broadcasting programs, but each has advantages and disadvantages, which makes researchers keep exploring the methodology. Under these circumstances, the author examine whether “rhetoric” can serve as an auxiliary line to help analyze multifaceted texts for broadcasting programs. Since ancient Greek times, rhetoric has been studied as a method for expressing and communicating messages, and the system of classical rhetoric including metaphor, comparison, and repetition has been adapted in secondary education in Europe. The 19th century saw the demise of rhetoric, but rhetoric revived in the late 20th century as people realized rhetoric is deeply related to how people perceive things.Rhetorical analysis on television is said to be incorporated into semiotics analysis and cultural studies that became popular in the 2000s, but rhetoric is now expected to serve as an useful method to help understand the implicit and intellectual process of program production because it has been developed as a practical science for public speaking and expression and thus is easy to understand for people involved in program production. At the same time, since rhetoric has a potential to be expanded to the fields of semiology and epistemology, it can also serve as a common foundation that bridges production and academism.Rhetoric functions as grammar, especially in the world of visual expression, which allows program analysis focusing on rhetoric such as metaphor and metonymy. As better environment for analyzing individual programs is being developed by program archives, it is important to cultivate the potential of rhetoric as an auxiliary line.
