A Date with your Family - visual and aural elements (video)

Since the text being analyzed is a video, there are bound to be visual and aural elements that are used to enhance the meaning of the rhetoric. In the beginning, the video is introduced with a very generic introductory song that leads into the video like it would any tv show at the time. This aural element is used to attract more families and children to watch it, because it sounds as if one of their favorite shows is going to come on any second. Another aural component to the video is the speakers voice. I have mentioned this before; However, the speakers voice is very serene and calm so that doesn't provide any feelings of urgency or uneasiness, it keeps the atmosphere very calm, which is good to help the families feel positive about what they just watched.


As well as having aural elements, there are visual elements in this video that have a hand in the rhetoric, as well. Since it is a video, the whole video itself is a visual element- However, if we dissect this piece by piece we can understand why it is brought together so well as a whole. First off, the family is dressed very nicely and cleanly which is easy on the eye. When one member of the family looked dirty he was encouraged to change in clean up. Since they all dressed nicely it was easier to think about what was actually going on with the dinner. Also, to support good actions at dinner, there was well set-up table, a clean kitchen, and a well set-up house. All of these things were pleasurable to the viewers eyes, which keeps it more likely for them to remember what happened. Lastly, all of the actors in this video have sort-of overdone their acting. When they smiled, they smiled very largely, when they were annoyed, they showed that emotion very well too. By doing all these things the video together accomplishes the goal of educating the public on good table manners and dinner etiquette.


-Krishna Shah