Rhetorical Analysis Essay

What IS a Rhetorical Analysis and Why Do I Have to Write One?

The purpose of this essay is to analyze a text’s contextual issues and the writer’s rhetorical strategies to help you understand what makes something an effective (persuasive) piece of writing; and, to help you see how other writers persuade an audience.

Rhetorical analysis is the analysis of a text–oral, written, or visual–as a strategic presentation of particular ideas.  By strategic, we mean that writers strategically use words and images in an attempt to make us feel, think, or do something (to persuade).  Rhetorical analysis is a means to analyze how writers use words and images to make us feel, think or do something, and to analyze how effective their strategies are.  Therefore, a rhetorical analysis basically explains how a piece of writing has been produced, and how effective the writing is at persuading us readers.

Why is this an assignment in a first year composition class?

In your future college classes, your papers will be primarily persuasive essays.  Therefore, it is essential to learn how authors use persuasive tools to convince their audiences.  That way, you can apply these same tools to your own writing.

The Rhetorical Analysis Essay Assignment

Requirements: 2-3 full pages, and a Works Cited page with your chosen essay listed.  Works Cited will not count as one of the required 2-3 pages.

Audience:  You are writing for an academic audience, so use language appropriate for professors and students.

Topic:  Analyze one of the essays that you read in Unit 2 to show that the essay is either successful or unsuccessful in making its point.  You will base this on rhetorical modes:

Is this an effective and convincing persuasive essay?

Is the author successful in making his/her argument?

You must be specific in your answers, citing examples from the text you are analyzing (using direct quotes, summaries, and paraphrases correctly as we learned in this unit).

To assist your readers in understanding your analysis, be sure to include the following:

Include a clear thesis statement and forecasting statements to guide the readers.

Explain the context (historical background, original audience, etc.) and its connection to the essay.

Analyze how the author’s specific writing choices help fulfill the author’s purpose.

Use quotes or paraphrase portions of the essay.  If you write about the “example in the second paragraph,” the readers will not understand the reference.

Do not use more than 6 quotes in this paper.

Quotes cannot be more than 2 lines long. This means that you will have to choose carefully.

Some contextual issues to consider as you read include:

The historical background.

The purpose.

The intended original audience.

The author’s ethical principles/values, ideology, beliefs, ideas, assumptions, etc.

Some rhetorical strategies that you might consider (these are not mutually exclusive categories, and you may need to consider one category in relation to another) include:

Writer’s use of emotional (pathos), logical (logos), or ethical (ethos) appeals.

Organization of the information.

Selection and omission of information.

Privileging and/or excluding various positions or voices.

Kinds and use of evidence/sources.

Language/Style.

Tone.

The paper will use MLA style as outlined in your syllabus.

DO NOT use 1st or 2nd person in this essay.

If you choose to do the required minimum of two pages for this essay, the second page MUST go all the way to the bottom of the page in order to be a complete paper.  If you find that the paper is not long enough, then it is also not fully developed.  Go back and add more examples to support your point.

The final page of your paper, in addition to the paper length requirement, MUST be a Work Cited page which will list the essay you used for your paper.

Rhetorical Analysis Thesis

Your paper’s thesis will make a claim about the author’s effectiveness and about the key contextual issues and rhetorical strategies you plan to discuss in your paper.

This means that your introduction must make it clear which essay you will be writing about and who the author is.

The thesis will evaluate the effectiveness of the essay.  For example, you might state that the author makes a sound argument through her use of logos, pathos, and ethos.  The paper would then go on to discuss these three elements.

Important:  What to Avoid

This is often a tough paper for students because they want to agree or disagree with the topic of the essay they read.

This paper is NOT about the topic.  It is about the strategies that the author uses to make his or her point.

For example, if the essay you were writing about was trying to persuade the reader that solitary confinement as a punishment in the prison system is wrong, you would not talk about whether or not it is wrong or right.  Rather, you would explain to the reader whether or not the author argued well to make his or her point.

The thesis, therefore, would not be

“The author of this essay has a good point because solitary confinement is inhumane.”

A good thesis would be

“The author of this essay uses excellent rhetorical modes to make a very persuasive point about solitary confinement.”

OR

“The author of this essay is very convincing because is very aware of her audience and chooses language appropriately, using logos, ethos, and pathos to her benefit.”

In these cases, you would use the author’s name rather than “the author.”  Also, notice that there is no 1st or 2nd person in these thesis statements.

Do I Need a Works Cited page?  YES

Whenever you quote, paraphrase, summarize or use ideas or examples from a source, you must have a works cited page.  In this case, you will have only one source listed, so it will be a Work Cited page (no “s” because there is only one work).  This will be excellent practice for the Works Cited pages in the next  paper.

please Note this info from the Lecturer:

Happy Monday!

I hope you enjoyed your spring break. This week, we will develop the draft of our Rhetorical Analysis Essay. We have chosen the article that we want to analyze when we completed our two discussion forums. Use this same article to analyze for the essay.

You will also use the information you developed in your 2.1 and 2.2 Discussion forums to help develop your essay. For example, you have already discussed how the author chose to appeal to the audience and if the article was persuasive. You also developed a thesis statement and highlighted how the author used rhetorical and persuasive appeals. I will grade your two discussions this week, so you have more guidance on how to develop this essay.

Additionally, remember that we have an example of a Rhetorical Analysis Essay in Unit 2 under the submodule titled “Practicing Rhetorical Analysis.”