Kim Woods

Paper

Aristotelian Analysis Paper:  50 points

Write a short (2-3 page double-spaced) Aristotelian rhetorical analysis of a political ad of your choice. Most likely, you will want to choose the ad you used in your chart and sample paragraph, but you are free to change if you like. Please don't use any ad that was discussed in the class lectures. There are still plenty of ads to choose from. Make sure to include a direct link to your ad in your paper.

Introduction: Context of the Ad.

Before we break down an ad, we need to know its Rhetorical Situation. This may be a discussion of what was going on at the time, who the target audience was, or anything else that isn't in the ad itself that might be important to know. Your thesis will likely be at the end of your introduction. Your thesis is your main claim about what rhetorical strategies the ad uses and why. The basic pattern of the thesis will be something like: The (name of your ad) advertisement uses (these rhetorical strategies) to achieve (this desired goal).

For example in the ad, "Fine?", my thesis might be: "The political advertisement "Fine?" paints President Obama as callous and out of touch by setting up a sound bite where he says "the private sector is doing fine" and then using stylized testimonials to disprove the idea with a series of tales of personal woe from average people."

Body Paragraphs:

Since this is an analysis paper, your body paragraphs will focus on the two basic elements of analysis-- breaking down, and putting back together. You may cover all three terms: Ethos, Pathos, or Logos, or you can focus on only one or two if that is where the rhetorical strategies of the advertisement are the most apparent. Each body paragraph should prove a point with observations, inferences, and explanation. The length and number of body paragraphs is up to your discretion. Since we have three terms and the standard five paragraph essay has three body paragraphs, some students choose to have a body paragraph for each of the appeals (ethos, pathos, logos), but you do not have to organize your paper in that way.

Conclusion:

Summarize the main analysis of the paper. The conclusion is a place where you may also need to do more of the "putting it back together" part of your analysis.