Gaines: HE DID IT!
Hicks: A new world record!
Gaines: HE DID IT! HE DID IT!
[Michael] Phelps's hope's [are] alive!
Gaines: That might be the most incredible relay split I've ever
seen in my entire life. Not only was that the fastest in history -- it
BLEW AWAY the fastest in history.
1 Note on the extended audio
a news conference prior to the start of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games,
France's Alain Bernard stated: "The
Americans? We're going to SMASH them. That's what we
came here for." [emphasis added]
2 Five of the eight teams --
the United States (3:08.24), France (3:08.32), Australia (3:09.91),
Italy (3:11.48), and Sweden (3:11.92) -- beat the previous world
record of 3:12.23, established in a preliminary heat by the United
States at these same Olympic games. The latter achievement was
remarkable in its own right, as a group of relatively unheralded
American swimmers -- Nathan Adrian, Cullen Jones, Ben
Wildman-Tobriner, and Matthew Grevers -- beat the previous world
record set in 2006 by the United States at the Pan-Pacific
Championships, a team which included Michael Phelps and Jason Lezak.
Of the members who competed in the 2008 Olympic preliminary heat for
the United States, Cullen Jones' swam the fastest leg (47:61) and
thereby earned a spot in the final heat.
1. What impressions (cognitive and
affective) does the artifact above (text, audio, images, sound only)
produce in you? 2. What kind of
impressions do you think the artifact might produce in someone outside
the U.S.? In France? 3. The artifact
above (text, audio, images) can be interpreted as coordinating and
integrating momentum or movement to produce two different races.
Explain. 4. What role does image
color play in the interpretation of the artifact above. What is
the interpretive significance does the title/catch phrase "The/Le
"Split" and of its strategic placement?
The audio performances of Hicks and Gaines above have been described as
"manic" and "way over the top." Such judgments are, of course,
relative -- subjective, culturally-situated. However, there are
objective aspects to the performances from which subjective
judgments are calculated. Consider the following verbal attributes:
volume, rate (number of words per 10 second block of
time), pace (variation in rate across 10 second intervals,
including relatively longer and shorter pauses), enunciation,
pitch (vocal highness and lowness), staccato
("punching" of words and phrases) and their variation over the
length of the clip. Do the same with the French and British audio
clips for comparative purposes. What are the key objective
differences across the verbal performances? How do these
differences contribute to the relative perceptions and judgments of
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Restricted. The images in
this rhetorical artifact are subject to U.S. copyright laws and may
not be reproduced or republished without the written consent of the
photo from Wikipedia and used with permission by the copyright owner
under the terms of this
Creative Commons License.