Rhetorical Analysis of Gravestones

Why is a cemetery considered a "cultural landscape"?

• Only wealthy families are buried there

• It reflects change over time and a community's timeline of settlement and events

• It is typically located next to stripmalls

• It includes gravestones from all types of religions

The size of a stone can signify (more than one answer is acceptable)

• wealth

• age

• occupation

• gender

CONTEXT is crucial for analyzing/interpreting rhetoric because

• It helps you break the message down into parts

• It helps you to evaluate the message

• It provides important historical/socio-political information to explain the who, what, when, where, why of the message

• all of these

A key rhetorical pattern found in the "Gendered Language of Gravestones" study, comparing two cemeteries from western PA and Southwest VA from 1790 to 2014 is:

• The sizes of men and women's stones were consistently equal across time periods

• In 20th century stones, there was a decrease in the entire family's representation on one stone

• In older stones, the husband and wife's full names commonly appeared on their stones

• In older stones, men were typically represented with full names, while their wives' stones would include the first name and "wife of" with his full name

In Appalachia, death is commonly referenced on gravestones as:

• sleep or rest

• purgatory

• a journey

• the end of the road

In the absence of text or iconography, signifiers can be:

• The size of a stone

• Shape of a stone

• Position of a stone

• All of these

In the study of the private 19th burial ground in the woods, what did the GPR images of the burials index?

• gender

• age

• wealth

• race

What does an eastward facing stone signify? (More than one answer is possible)

• The Christian belief of Christ returning in the East-rising sun/son

• The African custom of facing burials toward the motherland

• "East" is short for Easter and most people died in the spring

• Eastern wind is less likely to cause damage over time to the stone

Where did "pyramid" or obelisk shapes first originate?

• Asia

• Christian whites in 18th century U.S.

• Africa

• Europe

As a rhetorical message, gravestones respond to what social concern?

• The need for a memorial space

• The need to do something with a corpse

• The desire to brag about wealth

• The belief that a body must be buried a certain way for the deceased to get into heaven