Overview
The purpose of this assignment is to introduce you to some key aspects of rhetoric and to encourage you to think deeply about how persuasion works. The identification and analysis of how rhetorical tools and strategies (like ethos, logos, pathos, kairos and ideology, to name a few) work in a text will set us on our way to becoming more skilled rhetoricians ourselves.
Requirements
Find an advertisement, billboard, website, department store display, or some other type of text that you deem to be rhetorically interesting and complex and that has a persuasive aim. Write an analysis that will help your readers understand how the text works to persuade its audience(s).
You initially might want to ask: How might the piece target, respond to, and/or construct an audience? How does the text’s style make meaning? Where did the text appear, and how is this significant? Why is the text arranged as it is? How are logic and emotion deployed to persuade? How does ethos function in the text?
Then, you might ask some deeper questions: How do cultural or historical contexts inform the text’s meaning and how is the text rhetorically situated? What ideologies does the text seek to re-inscribe or create? What sort of world does the text desire/reflect?
Sift through these questions and shape them into a central claim about the piece. Link the rhetorical aspects of the piece to distinct ideological subtext(s) you identify in the text that make the persuasive argument float.
In other words–and though this sounds a bit abstract–identify what argument or commonplace the piece first has to present or draw upon (say, about the nature of women, a certain quality of a celebrity) to persuade us in a more specific way.
The paper need not address every aspect of every proof–if the whole paper focuses on one proof, that’s fine. Your essay will probably be 4-6 pages long.
Objectives and Criteria for Success
There are many criteria for success (and pitfalls to avoid) with this essay. Here is a short list (we will discuss more in class):
1. Be interesting. And this is big – go beyond the obvious.
2. Make a strong thesis claim about the piece and support it thoroughly.
3. Present a context or rhetorical situation for the piece.
4. Show a strong capacity for rhetorical analysis and reveal the piece’s ideological subtext(s) or underpinnings.
5. Write in a lively, memorable style (utilize strong verbs, avoid clich�).
6. Expand/challenge/transform the audience’s understanding of the text.
The Rhetorical Analysis Speech – Overview
The aim of this 4-6 minute speech is to apply the concepts and principles learned thus far in the course by carefully analyzing the rhetorical situation of a particular advertisement or campaign (which may or may not be the same as your essay).
To begin, choose a particular advertisement or campaign and examine it by using one or two of the rhetorical concepts we have covered thus far (ideology, power, kairos, exigence). A speech might, for example, describe why this ad is constructed as it is in this moment (kairos). It might sift through various competing or complementary values (ideologies). Or it can come up with any other combination of concepts.
Consider interesting and innovative ways to incorporate your chosen text(s) into your speech. Think hard about how you will connect with your audience (your fellow students). How can you make your content relevant and interesting to them? What proofs/rhetorical strategies will you use to convince them that your analysis is valid, interesting and worthwhile? What body language/gestures/techniques will you use to capture your audience’s attention?
Links and Resources
Sample Paper – “A Wrinkled View of Beauty”
Sample Paper – “Way of the RAoC”
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