on cultural artifacts

As you begin work on your Rhetorical Analysis of a Cultural Artifact project, keep in mind that you are responsible for ensuring that your chosen object, event, trend, or phenomenon rises to the level of the term's definition. 

For Barry Brummett (Rhetoric in Popular Culture), it is productive to explore the signs that make up messages, to consider “a subset of particularly powerful signs known as cultural artifacts," which include, for Brummett

1. an action, event, or object perceived as a unified whole,
2. having widely shared meanings, and
3. manifesting group identifications to us. (13).

Brummett provides several examples to help clarify these attempts to define his approach to identifying a “cultural artifact,” and you should feel free to explore this book and others of his works, or you may find alternative voices artifculating the dimensions of a cultural artifact to be of use. You may of course use the Fiske essay to help in your definition. You may want to step back further, to definintions of "culture." Raymond Williams is helpful, here (among many many culture theorists). Whatever the case, be sure to establish that your chosen artifact is “in range.”