Retorical analysis

English 135 Rhetorical Analysis Assignment

Due: Mar. 13

th

Length: c. 500-700 words

Course Value: 20%

Goals: The goals of this assignment are:

 To study the format, genre, tone, and style of an academic article

 To introduce you to the basic elements of citation and proper documentation of sources.

 To demonstrate the critical reading and writing skills you have been honing

Instructions: You will write a short academic (rather than personal—limit your use of

“I”) response to one of your choice from the articles listed on the reverse of this sheet

(you may only choose from those articles). Try to aim for objectivity in your response.

Focus on the formal qualities of the articles: tone, use of outside sources, and/or how the

writing is organized. Discussing the content of the article is a useful skill, but you should

be writing about how the writing works (the method), rather than what it is about. How

does the author or do the authors present the information?

You will offer a formal rhetorical analysis that considers the effectiveness of the

persuasive strategies used by the author or authors. You will suggest how effective the

article or articles are by explaining to your reader how these authors make use of appeals

to ethos, pathos, and logos to persuade their intended audiences (you might organize your

analysis around these appeals). Read (or reread) Henderson on rhetorical analysis, and

consider the questions he poses concerning rhetoric as a guide for your own analysis.

Who, for example, is the intended audience for the article, and how do you know from

the text of the article? You should focus on rhetorical appeals and Henderson’s series of

questions.

Your main task will be to argue which article is more effective by explaining to your

reader how your authors make use of appeals to ethos, pathos, and logos to persuade their

intended audiences. Because this paper will include a number of different elements, you

will need to think carefully about arrangement strategies. Will you discuss appeals to

logos, ethos, and pathos in turn, or will you arrange your discussion based upon the

relative importance and strength (or even presence) of a given rhetorical appeal. You

might structure the paper around the three appeals, taking them in turn.

In order to analyze texts – and to convince readers that your analysis is accurate – you

need to offer evidence to support your claims about the effectiveness of how various

appeals have been deployed. This evidence will take the form of quotations, paraphrases

and summaries of sections of text selected from the article. Remember, though, that when

you show evidence, you need to analyze that evidence (and to cite it).

Format: Please double-space and staple your essay, with the usual information at the

top left of the first page (name, student number, course number…), and your last name

and the page numbers running on the top right throughout. 10% will be deducted from

essays not double-spaced and stapled. You will need a bibliography, either at the bottom

of your essay or on an attached page, depending on how much room you have.

Information on citation format is in your texts, if you need to refresh your memory from

class. Cite the article from Henderson as a “selection in edited work” (see p.151).

Essay Options

Pick one of the follow for your analysis:

 Jeremy Foote, “Speed that kills: The role of technology in Kate Chopin’s ‘The Story of an hour,’” Explicator 71.2 (2013) in Active Reader, 346ff.

 Youssef Hasan, et al, “The more you play, the more aggressive you become,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 49 (2013) in Active Reader,

329ff.

 Laurie Ouellette, “Reality TV Gives Back: On The Civic Function of Reality Entertainment,” Journal of Popular Film and Television 38 (2010) in

Active Reader, 266ff.

 Leslie Regan Shade, “Missing in action: Gender in Canada’s digital economy agenda,” Signs 49.4 (2014) in Active Reader, 235ff.