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IX. Timeline of Demagoguery Scholarship: Notebook LM Version

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IX. Timeline of Demagoguery Scholarship: Notebook LM Version

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I gave ChatGPT and Notebook LM identical prompts: to use my bibliographical essay to create a visual timeline of scholarship on demagoguery. This is the Notebook LM version. I think, somewhere in the Notebook LM coding, someone has emphasized illustrations as integral to infographics. I think Notebook LM prioritizes visuals at the expense of accuracy and depth.

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VIII. Timeline of Demagoguery Scholarship: ChatGPT Version

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VIII. Timeline of Demagoguery Scholarship: ChatGPT Version

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I gave ChatGPT and Notebook LM identical prompts: to use my bibliographical essay to create a visual timeline of scholarship on demagoguery. This is the ChatGPT version. ChatGPT has the advantage here because I had just had it create other visualizations, and it used its prior knowledge about my preferences to create this one. Notebook LM does not seem to be able to hold on to preferences like that. But I like the depth of information and prioritization of sources, a thing I continually struggled to achieve in Notebook LM. I think, after using both, I like ChatGPT's visualization capability better because it is easier to edit and tweak the output.

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VII. Bibliographical Essay: The History of Definitions of Demagogs and Demagoguery

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VII. Bibliographical Essay: The History of Definitions of Demagogs and Demagoguery

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As I pondered the act/agency ratio over the semester, I realized that the means of action may yield different outcomes with subtle differences, even just tonal shifts. So I began looking for examples in the current political climate. It occurred to me that the selection of means of persuasion by a demagogue (or one who engages in demagogic rhetoric, a difference made clear in my bibliographical essay) can drastically alter the audience he appeals to, the action he incites them to take, the power he gains through their support and follow-through, and the choice of scapegoated group. I realized that demagogues throughout history (and...ahem...contemporary times) present some excellent examples of that kind of thinking, and once I started looking through the literature, I found that demagoguery was exactly the kind of term I was looking for: something withDemagoguery worked as a term because it had (a) ancient roots; (b) times throughout history when it both was and wasn't a popular thing to be writing about; and (c) positions, definitions, and perceptions have evolved over time.

I revised some typos and made minor changes to sentence structures. I also added to the concluding paragraph to include the post-submission realizations I came to about kind of a big idea that I think may distinguish between those who use demagogic rhetoric and those who practice demagoguery: demagogic rhetoric builds identification in its audience to bind them together into one voice through some common denominator, which may be high-minded and noble or more utilitarian. But the demagogic rhetoric of authoritarians, tyrants, and despots builds identification through the least common denominator: hatred of a common enemy, for example, or fear of the out-group.

This is also related to Dr. Blakesley's definition rhetoric: authoritarians, tyrants, and despots foster identification within their target audience by exploiting ambiguity (or difference) and foster division between the in-group and the out-group in the same way.

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XI. The Act/Agency Ratio: A Conversation with Kenneth Burke*

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XI. The Act/Agency Ratio: A Conversation with Kenneth Burke*

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*ChatGPT Version

This conversation provides the framework for how all the pieces of this project are connected to each other, as ways to define how the manner in which an action is taken impacts the way it is received. I used this conversation to explore a contemporary application of the pentad: to Pete Hegseth's testimony before Congress this week. It allowed me to understand the self-justificatory stance of the Trump administration as repeated attempts to use terminology to recast their own culpability.

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PooleE Conversations with Burke-Act:Agency Ratio

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* ChatGPT Version

This is a transcript of a long conversation I had with ChatGPT, which I asked to put on a KB-like persona in its responses. The conversation was very enlightening for me and helped me synthesize several really big concepts. Prior to this conversation, I understood justification to be making something just, rationalization to be making something rational, and moralization to be making something right. Those concepts were accessible and surface-level. But the chat helped me grasp that all of them are manifestations of an agent seeking consubstantiality with their own self-image. Justification seeks legitimacy. Rationalization seeks logical alignment. Moralization seeks purification. And all of it explains SO MUCH about modern society--about the MAGA movement, about religious zealotry, about entrenched mindsets that are difficult to dislodge. The conclusion of this chat gets to the heart of why we actively rewrite our own narratives--and why the integrating a broadened perspectives requires deep work because you have to overwrite the ways you told your own stories before the new light allowed you to understand them in a new way.

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III. Notebook LM's Lexical Analysis of Ass

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III. Notebook LM's Lexical Analysis of Ass

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Here was my prompt: "Create a comprehensive report that maps the various usages of 'ass' from the sources onto a three-axis scale. The horizontal axis (Inane to Malignant) should be linked to the anatomical 'arse' etymology. The vertical axis (Clever to Stupid) should be linked to the animal 'Equus' etymology. The depth axis (Overt to Covert) should distinguish between direct and idiomatic language. Provide specific examples from the sources for each quadrant and depth level, and explain how these origins inform the word's contemporary usage."

I've been thinking about the word "ass" for a long time--it has such linguistic breadth. When I settled on Burke's act/agency ratio as my terministic screen, I realized that "ass" is really a linguistic marker that encodes agency because it indicates how something was done. It is also an agency modifier--it indicates intensity (as in big-ass or cheap-ass). It indicates commitment and quality (as in half-assed). It indicates attitude (as in the dumbass, smartass, wiseass continuum). It indicates intelligence and capability (as in the weak-ass, badass, kick-ass continuum). And so much more. Is it silly? Absolutely. But is it related to the act/agency ratio? Also yes! The act/agency ratio is about the means an agent uses to bring about the act. And assery? Definitely a factor in the selection of means.

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PooleE Notebook LM Linguistic Analysis of Ass

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VI. Ass: A Deep Dive into Etymological History

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VI. Ass: A Deep Dive into Etymological History

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I am astounded at how well Notebook LM contextualizes and turns the dry definitions of the OED into a conversational exploration of the broad usages of the word "ass".

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V. The Emergence of Assery: A Historic Overview

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V. The Emergence of Assery: A Historic Overview

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ChatGPT led me to believe (by overtly saying to) that it could create an animation of the emergence of usages of "ass" through time, but when I pressed it to actually do it, it gave me this: a compilation of six still shots and instructions for how to do it myself in Canva. As I'm not certain yet what I plan to do with this project and I believe I still have some digging to do on word origins, I declined to build something that may have different parameters in the future.

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I worked with NotebookLM to come up with a visualization for this but was not satisfied with any of the results, so I took the refined parameters I worked on in NotebookLM and pasted them in ChatGPT to come up with this visualization. I still think it's cluttered, but I love the representation of the continuum of expression possible with just one little swear word.

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The whole idea of the act/agency ratio as a terministic screen began with trying to understand the idea of guilt and the capacity of people to act contrary to their own best interests or against the interests of their community.

Exploring the word will gave me the space to expand my understanding of what it means to act and how our actions are connected to motives.

With this revision, I tried to think deeply about how the idea of will as an expression of lack is manifested in the 21st century. Look for a new conclusion.

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My instructions to Notebook LM were to simplify, declutter, and modernize the design, prioritize certain sources, and make the whole thing easier to read for the audience. It took some refinement, but I'm much happier with this one that what I turned in the first go-round. In general, I experienced quite a bit of frustration with Notebook LM when it came to refining visualizations. It does will when synthesizing diverse texts, but I understand why the infographic function is still in beta.