Echagarrua 1

Betsy Echagarrua

Professor Pierson

ENC 1101

15 November 2017

Embodied Rhetoric in the YouTube culinary community

Introduction to the Community

The global platform of YouTube has a vast array of content, with several communities

appealing to diverse interests and each accomplishing specific exigencies. Pertaining to this

research, the YouTube community that focus will be brought upon is the YouTube culinary

community. The YouTube culinary community consists of channels, which post instructional

cooking or recipe videos, often appealing to an audience with an interest in culinary,

gastronomy, or the arts in general. Due to the importance of exigencies in understanding the

needs of this Discourse community, it is important to note that the purpose of this unique

community is to provide an outlet for creative expression through culinary, allows

intercommunication amongst people with common interests, and for the audience to learn new

recipes and improve culinary skills, which includes learning about the lexis of culinary

terminology. Through the visual and auditory medium of video, the audience is able to have

these exigencies fulfilled. In addition, not just the literacy sponsors, or YouTubers, accomplish

this through video production, but also the audience themselves, by engaging in common literate

activities such as commenting on videos, rating, or giving suggestions to the YouTubers on what

video to do next. Being that this community is complex, in consisting of several elements that
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affect the overall rhetorical ecology, this research will mainly highlight how embodied rhetoric

affects the audience and success of a YouTube video and channel.

Introduction to the Text

The text in question that was analyzed was the YouTube cooking video, Binging with

Babish: Ratatouille (Confit Byaldi) from Ratatouille, part of the Binging with Babish channel. In

his videos, the rhetor, Andrew Reas, recreates special dishes unique to certain movies. Specific

to this text, he recreates a modern version of Ratatouille, otherwise known as Confit Byaldi, from

the Disney Pixar movie Ratatouille. This video functions as a form of content within the

community, with instructional and entertainment purposes. It is able to teach the audience,

through step-by-step narration, using culinary terminology, and demonstration, which aids in

increasing the audiences culinary knowledge and skill. In addition, while also having it

presented in a unique and clean format, for example, through not showing his face and solely

focusing on the food to draw attention to his cooking demonstration, for fulfilling the audiences

expectations of being entertained through a creative medium, while being able to learn about

culinary. In addition, in the rhetor providing content and allowing for commentary on the video,

he allows the audience to communicate with one another, sharing their values/interests with

members who also have common interests in movies or culinary arts. Through discussion in the

comments section, the video provides an outlet for the audience of the community to understand

their own values of culinary appreciation and members of the community better, through the

expression of a creative art form. In analyzing this text for embodied rhetoric, it is important to

note that a full understanding of these exigencies and the value/purpose of the text in this
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community was vital in fulling understanding the community, and thus, how embodied rhetoric

was applied as the analytic.

Methods

Being that visual and auditory presentation is a vital element in the YouTube community

in general, one which can fulfill the exigencies of the audience and determine success within the

community, it was determined that applying the analytic of embodied rhetoric would aid in

understanding how the way content is presented affects these functions. In analyzing Embodied

Rhetoric, it was important to first understand how the concept is found, in order to understand its

function and how it is applied. During this research, due to the text having a unique nature as a

video, and not an actual written journal or article, it was noted that it was essential to find articles

that investigated embodied rhetoric in media, video production, or YouTube. An article by John

Mark Jones, Embodied rhetoric: memory and delivery in networked writing, provided insight on

how communication in the virtual world was expressed differently and influenced a whole

network, especially its behavior, than with in-person, traditional interaction. Thus, it helped in

understanding how YouTube commentary affected the content that is being produced and how it

is being presented, as in the analyzed text, the rhetor used comments to determine which type of

dish he would recreate for his next video.

Since the community being analyzed was a community which values learning culinary

technique, it was also important to research on how the community fared in learning the

information, while it is being presented through a virtual medium. In the article Perfecting the

Culinary Arts via the YouTube way, it was understood that combining instructional modalities

(or delivery media) allowed for more effective and engaging learning, since it appeals to the
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different learning styles of a diverse audience (Razali et al.). Thus, in having visual, interactive,

and auditory mediums to present information, from which the audience could engage with, in the

cooking video, it was understood that the purpose for having diverse media presentation was to

engage interest and ease learning for the audience. Having a profound understanding of

Embodied Rhetorics function and how it is applied to the YouTube culinary community and the

analyzed text, after research, aided in the development of a thorough analysis of the text through

the analytic.

Analysis and Findings

Through applying the analytic of Embodied Rhetoric, it was noted that the intermodal

presentation of the video affected how the content is received and retained by the audience. In

regards to the visual mode, the video had clean, professional cinematography, while also being

creative in the presentation of the information by intertwining scenes of the actual movie within

the video. Even providing personal background to the rhetors childhood in the form of a

flashback, making it relatable and engaging for the audience. In addition, the rhetor does not

show his face throughout the whole video, with his demonstration of food as the sole thing in

frame, directing the focus of the audience to the techniques and steps being presented. This

enabled the audience to fulfill their need of obtaining new culinary information, to advance their

skills, and having this information presented through a creative way in which any member of the

community could understand.

In regards to the auditory mode of video, Reass step-by-step narration provided the

audience with more information on the culinary arts. In addition, his engaging and passionate

tone, with a side of dry humor, also engages the audience in wanting to pay attention to the
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information that he is presenting. In addition, including music from the Ratatouille movie gave

even more interest to what was being visually presented.

In Reass allowing for commentary on his video, it allowed the audience to also fulfill the

exigence to engage in an outlet that allowed for creative expression of the culinary arts, through

an interactive mode. Not only does it enable interpersonal communication with the audience of

the video, but in the audience understanding that their contribution to the commentary rhetoric

affects the presentation and production of the YouTuberss videos, they are more likely to

engage in the culinary community and shape the text that the community produces.

Through the presented data, as obtained by using the analytic of Embodied Rhetoric, it

was concurred that audience is heavily impacted by Embodied Rhetoric in the YouTube culinary

community, and that the success of a video directly correlates to the audiences impact by this

analytic, as evidenced in the text. Having an engaging, dynamic, and intermodal presentation,

appealing to a diverse audiences learning styles and tastes, leads to the YouTube culinary

community to reach a wider platform. Thus, in having a greater audience, who is engaged, or

continually following the channel and its content, who also have their exigencies met, this leads

to the ultimate success of a YouTube culinary video/channel.

Discussion and Meaning

As evident in the research, Embodied Rhetoric influences the YouTube culinary

communitys impact on its audience, which correlates to the success of YouTube culinary

videos. Intermodal presentation, for one, allows an audience to engage in the text, while having

their exigencies fulfilled. Thus, maintaining interest in the community, engaging in it, and having

understanding of its function. In having a greater audience, a YouTube video has more success,
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since this could provide a way for the rhetor to be sponsored by YouTube or other companies,

since they could note that their channel has a great following. It is interesting to note how

Embodied Rhetoric is applied to a visual, auditory, and interactive medium, such as video, rather

than a solely visual one, like that of scholarly articles or journals. Much of the YouTubes

general success, in part, is due to its intermodal nature of its instructional videos and

entertainment undertone. Whereas a solely written text might benefit those in the audience which

are visual learners, the nature of YouTube dynamic texts expands to engage a wider audience

and appeal to a broader array of learning styles. Mainly, it is interesting to see how Embodied

Rhetoric shows that providing a diversity of presentation styles, for a single text, proves to be

more effective in audience engagement than with the focus on a single style; in turn, correlating

to the success of the text in obtaining a greater reach in audience.

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Works Cited

Jones, J. M. (2010). Embodied rhetoric: Memory and delivery in networked writing (Doctoral

dissertation). Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/2152/ETD-UT-2010-12-2228.

Li, G., Hong, R., Zheng, Y., Yan, S., & Chua, T. S. (2010). Learning Cooking Techniques from

YouTube. In MMM (pp. 713-718). Retrieved from

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/978-3-642-11301-7.pdf#page=730.

Reas, A. (2017, March 2). Binging with Babish: Ratatouille (Confit Byaldi) from Ratatouille

[video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roCX0AfBseQ.