Contextual Analysis of Archetypal Metaphors & The Simpsons

Please read: Osbourne , Archetypal Metaphors (see attached)
Please read the rhetorical artifact analysis paper: The Simpsons (see attached)

Provide a summary of the relevant arguments from the Osbourne article, including quotes and key terms.

Then, in your next paragraph, explain how the findings in the rhetorical artifact analysis paper (The Simpsons)  help you respond to these arguments. Explain how you plan to respond: will your analysis offer additional support to the original argument, apply the claim/argument more widely or extent it to a new kind of artifact, disagree about the classification, point out an oversight or overgeneralization? In other words, explain how your analysis helps you talk back to that original argument. Provide some details and textual evidence to help your reader understand the point you’re trying to make. 

Here’s an example summary-and-response argument paragraph to give you a more concrete sense of what you’re aiming for: 

Source: Michael C. McGee, “The “Ideograph”: A Link Between Rhetoric and Ideology.” The Quarterly Journal of Speech 66.1 (1980): 1-16. Print.

-Summary Paragraph: In this article, McGee introduces the term ideograph. Usually a single word or short phrase, ideographs are one-term sums of ideology. More specifically, McGee argues that the ideograph is based upon a way of thinking that possesses both symbolic and material value, so it allows us to more clearly identify positive and negative frames in political discourse. McGee states that human beings are conditioned, not directly to belief and behavior, but to a vocabulary of concepts that function as guides, warrants, reasons, or excuses for behavior and belief…when a claim is warranted by such terms…it is presumed that human beings will react predictably and autonomically (McGee, 6).  Such a “vocabulary of concepts” is culturally specific; because cultures differ so vastly, no cultures ideographs or political discourse are exactly the same. Ultimately, McGee argues that ideographs both unite and divide us, and when an ideograph is not used in its normal manner, society will oftentimes inflict stigma upon those who stray from the norm. 

-Response Paragraph: In my analysis, I will apply McGees notion of the ideograph to analyze the notion of marriage. More specifically, I plan to equate the ideograph of equality with that of marriage  like equality, marriage is an ideograph that unites our society. Nearly everyone can say that they support it; however what equality (or marriage) actually means is ambiguous and ill-defined. The debate over the legalization of same-sex marriage is one of the most current and prominent issues of equality that our nation is facing, which, in turn, gives us a need to analyze the notion of marriage. I will use my analysis of my artifact (Rachel and Marys wedding) to argue that their union was an extremely powerful rhetorical performance that proved how the notion of marriage possessed characteristics of a socially constructed ideograph: marriage contains aspects of both materialism and symbolism, it is constantly changing, it warrants the use of power, and it conditions us to ideologies and sets of beliefs (for example, that lust is bad unless safely contained with marriage, and that people who are unmarried are dangerous, immature or irresponsible). I will argue that Rachel and Marys wedding shows in our evolving society we must and already are – re-examining the ways that we view and perceive the “ideograph of marriage”.