We will use rhetorical analysis to examine how political commentators attempt to achieve their purposes in opinion-editorials and analyses. In your essay, you will identify strategies and analyze how the speaker uses them to represent his or her position. You will consider how the speaker constructs his or her ethos as credible to the audience. You will also need to assess how the speaker appeals to the audience’s emotions, values, or experiences. Finally, as you consider how the speaker attempts to achieve his or her purpose on this occasion with this audience, you will want to examine the evidence and claims that are made about the topic. The persona of the author, the attitudes of the audience, and evidence about the topic provide three types of appeals:
1. Ethos (How does the writer establish expertise and moral authority?)
2. Pathos (What appeals are made to the read¬ers’ emotions?)
3. Logos (What arguments and evidence are used?)
The introduction will likely begin with one or two opening paragraphs of several sentences that do the following:
Place the essay in a broader context (e.g. the issue, history, etc.).
Introduce the essay by characterizing the writer and the reason he or she wrote the essay in the first place.
Identify the audience and situation for which the essay is intended.
Describe the writer’s purpose. To do this, you might answer the fol¬lowing questions for yourself before you write: What does the writer want to achieve with his or her readers upon this occasion? What does she or he want these particular people to think and/or do?
Identify the rhetorical strategies that you have decided to discuss and indicate, in general terms, how they function to promote the writer’s purpose in relation to the intended audience.
The body will include paragraphs that will have their own topic sentences developed with specifics from the essay. You may want to focus each paragraph on one rhetorical strategy, or you may focus on different parts of one strategy. In either case, be careful of being too predictable; for example, avoid simply repeating key terms.
Useful strategies for developing paragraphs include:
Defining the rhetorical strategy.
Quoting or paraphrasing examples to illustrate the writer’s use of the strategy (two or three examples generally suffice).
Explaining how the example illustrates the strategy and how the strategy contributes to the writer’s purpose.
The conclusion serves the purpose of briefly summarizing the main points of the analysis and explaining the significance of your analysis. The significance of your analysis may be suggested by asking questions such as these:
How do the rhetorical strategies that you discussed explain the effects the speaker achieved with his or her audience?
Why were the strategies effective or not effective with the speaker’s core constituency and with other audiences?
What do the rhetorical strategies suggest about the political agendas and varied constituencies of the campaign?
Necessary Elements:
1. • An attention-getting title
2. • 400-700 words
3. • An introductory paragraph with a hook (or attention getter) and a well-written thesis statement
4. • Ample and well-developed supporting paragraphs
5. • A conclusion that does more than merely restate the earlier paragraphs.
6. • A Works Cited page listing the source of the essay you analyzed
7. • Adherence to all formatting guidelines and MLA rules (Refer to the MLA Guidelines under the Table of Contents on Brightspace.)
Sources:
• • You must adhere to all MLA guidelines (Refer to Keys for Writers). You may also use the MLA 8th Edition handout I provided under MLA Guidelines (#7 above)
• • You must use in-text citations every time you directly quote, summarize, or paraphrase the text. The handout I provided will cover this area, as well.
• • Provide an introduction or attribution (transition) for each quote. You must integrate your quotes smoothly. (I will provide you with a handout on using sources.)
• • You must also provide an MLA-style work-cited page, although the only entry on it will be the story.
Due Date:
• Final Draft –Submit to dropbox in Brightspace by the due date on the Plan of Instruction.