Compare methods

	Rhetorical Analysis	Audience Reception Analysis
Field	Communication	Communication
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	2017	1980
Originator	Classical rhetoric (Aristotle); modern criticism systematized by Foss	Stuart Hall (encoding/decoding); David Morley (empirical reception)
Type	Interpretive analysis of how symbolic messages persuade and create meaning	Qualitative study of how audiences interpret and make meaning from media
Seminal source	Foss, S. K. (2017). Rhetorical Criticism: Exploration and Practice (5th ed.). Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press. ISBN: 9781478634898	Hall, S. (1980). Encoding/decoding. In S. Hall, D. Hobson, A. Lowe, & P. Willis (Eds.), Culture, Media, Language: Working Papers in Cultural Studies, 1972–79 (pp. 128–138). London: Hutchinson. ISBN: 9780415079068
Aliases	Rhetorical criticism, Rhetorical analysis method, Rhetorical critique, Retorik Analiz	Reception study, Encoding/decoding analysis, Reception analysis of audiences, İzleyici Alımlama Analizi
Related	4	4
Summary	Rhetorical analysis, or rhetorical criticism, is the systematic interpretation of how symbolic messages — speeches, texts, images, campaigns — work to persuade audiences and create meaning. Rooted in classical rhetoric and codified for contemporary practice by scholars like Sonja Foss, it examines the strategies a message uses, the situation it responds to, and the effects it invites, producing an argued interpretation rather than a count.	Audience reception analysis studies how real audiences interpret and make meaning from media texts, rejecting the idea that meaning is simply transmitted from message to receiver. Built on Stuart Hall's encoding/decoding model and David Morley's empirical work, it treats interpretation as an active, socially situated process and examines whether audiences accept, negotiate, or resist the meanings a text seems to prefer.