Rhetorical Analysis Paper - Paper 1

Rhetorical Analysis Paper

Genre: Academic Essay: Rhetorical Analysis
- Opinion

Audience: Educated, curious readers
; Writing 150 Professors

Learning Outcomes:  Rhetorical Knowledge; Critical Thinking; Reading and Writing; Knowledge of Conventions; Processes

Length: 750-1250 words. 

Due Dates:

    Monday, September 2 - Email RA article to hartridh@gvsu.edu

    Thursday, September 5- First Draft – Upload as a file to the Discussion Board for your Group on Blackboard (hopefully this will work).  Make sure you include these questions in your post:

      1. What you think works best in this paper

      2. What you think your weakest area is

      3. Any questions you have or areas you would like your readers to focus on.

    Monday, September 9: Writing workshop participation – Bring the the RA Peer Letters that you wrote for each peer.  Bring two copies.  Also make sure you bring the marked up copy of their text.

    Friday, Sept 13: Revised Instructor Draft due.

Your first major writing assignment in this class is a rhetorical analysis of an opinion piece (but not a letter to the editor).  This type of analysis is an argument for a probable or potential interpretation of text or image and perceived effectiveness.  In this case, your challenge is to analyze your choice of any opinion piece (that has been approved by me).  I suggest looking at the NYT Opinionator, Washington Post Opinion and LA Times Opinion pages.  

A rhetorical analysis has two main features: contextual analysis and textual analysis.

* A contextual analysis focuses on the text as a larger piece of a conversation and attempts to understand communication through the lenses of a specific environment.  You must always begin a contextual analysis by starting with a description of a rhetorical situation - what motivated this form of communication?  What is this text a response to?  Who is the writer trying to reach or persuade?  How can you tell?  

* A textual analysis discusses the different use of ethos, logos and pathos in the construction of an argument.  Look for areas of trustworthiness and credibility (ethos), persuasive good reasons that deal with values or emotional appeals (pathos) and good reasons that stem from intellectual reasoning (logos).  Keep in mind that this is often shown through interviews, quotations, arrangement (organization) and style (work choices and sentence structures).  

Remember to keep your tone and your references analytic rather than evaluative in emphasis; you can evaluate the rhetorical appropriateness of the argument and its rhetorical strategies. Support your points with direct quotes, references to tone, and other examples found in the text.

As you draft your rhetorical analysis keep these ideas in mind:

Analyze the context:

• Who is the author?  You should do a bit of research on this one if it is not readily known. 
• What motivated the author to write?  What is the author's purpose for writing this?
• Who is the intended audience?  How can you tell?
• How does the occasion and form for writing affect this argument?
• How would the argument have been written differently if it had appeared elsewhere?
• What motivated the newspaper/magazine to publish it?
• When did this argument appear?
• Why did it get published at this moment?
• What other concurrent pieces of "cultural conversation" (tv shows, other articles, speeches, web sites) does the item you are analyzing respond to?

Analyze the text:

• Summarize the argument.  What is the main claim?  What reasons are given to support this claim?
• How is the argument organized?  Why are they presented in this way?
• What is the medium/genre? (Medium = newspaper, scholarly journal, website.  Genre = editorial, essay, speech, advertisement)
• What appeals are used?  (Ethos = how does the writer present himself; does the writer have credentials or authority; do you trust the author.  Logos = facts and evidence.  Pathos = what emotional response is invoked; shared values)

As you begin writing make sure you:

Introduce the general and specific topic in such a way that generates some curiosity in your reader. Give us some clue about what you will be writing about - frame this discussion in the larger conversation.  This is a great place to include information on the text (where it was published, when, who wrote it, etc).

Summarize the author’s main points and what the text is trying to explain.  What is the point of this text (exigence)?

Analyze the context.

Analyze the text (rhetorical appeals).

Make sure you are continuously illustrating how the author makes those points, with examples.

Discuss the intended audience and what kind of relationship the writer establishes – or does not establish — with that audience. What strategic and rhetorical choices does the writer make that seem particularly keyed to the intended audience? 

Make sure you hit all of the elements of a rhetorical analysis: Use of ethos, logos, pathos - be specific. How exactly is it used?  How do all of the elements that we discussed in class work together to create an effective (or not effective) web page?

Pay attention to word choice, phrasing, text placement, images, etc.  How do the different components of the text add to the main point?

Conclude by tying the text into the larger conversation.  What new ideas are brought forth?  As a whole, does the text do what it hoped to accomplish? 

This paper will have at least one in-text and works cited citation: the article you are analyzing.  For this assignment MLA is an appropriate form. You may need to include more sources, especially if you do a bit of research regarding the author of the piece.