WorksheetsRhetorical Analysis of Gravestones
Total questions: 10
Worksheet time: 2mins
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
