Rhetorical analysis account

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RHETORICAL STRATEGIES

Rhetorical strategies are tools that help rhetors craft language so as to have an effect on their audience. Strategies are means of persuasion—ways of using language to get the audience’s attention and agreement.

In your writing or discussion about a rhetor’s argument, you will need to ask and answer certain questions. Why does the rhetor choose to use a certain strategy in a specific place? What does he or she want to evoke in the audience? How do these strategies help the rhetor build his or her argument? How do these strategies emphasize the claims the rhetor makes or the evidence he or she uses?

When describing why a strategy is used, you may also want to consider alternative strategies, and think about how they would work differently. It might be helpful to consider what would happen if the strategy were left out—what difference would it make to the argument? This may help you figure out why the particular strategy was chosen.

Remember that any type of evidence can be explained by way of a rhetorical strategy, and the Aristotelian modes of persuasion (ethos, pathos, logos) can be developed by rhetorical strategies.

When discussing rhetorical strategies, remember to: 1. Identify rhetorical strategies in the text. 2. Describe how the strategies work. 3. Describe why the strategies are used—what purpose do they accomplish? 4. Always include a discussion of how the strategy helps the rhetor develop and support his or

her argument.

The following is a list of commonly used rhetorical strategies and questions that will help you consider why the rhetor may have chosen to use each strategy.

ANALOGIES, METAPHORS, AND SIMILES An analogy is a comparison of two parallel terms or situations—often one relatively familiar and concrete and the other less familiar and concrete—in which the traits of one situation are argued to be similar to another. This allows the rhetor to use concrete, easily understood ideas to clarify a less obvious point. Similarly, metaphors and similes help the rhetor frame the argument, to pay attention to some elements of a situation and ignore others, or to assign the characteristics of one thing to another.

• What two things are being compared? • How does this comparison help the audience view the argument in a new way? How does

this frame or shape the argument?

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ARGUMENT FROM CONVERSION When the rhetor uses a conversion process (either the rhetor’s or someone else’s) as a measure of the power of the argument or specific claim. This helps to develop ethos.

• Does the rhetor explain that he or she has been converted to the argument or specific claim being discussed?

• Does the rhetor use another’s conversion to support the argument or specific claim being discussed?

AUTHORITIES OR “BIG NAMES” When the rhetor references or quotes from a famous person or well-known authority on the topic being discussed.

• How does this appeal to authority build trust in the rhetor’s argument? • How does this appeal to authority make the rhetor’s claims appear to be credible (ethos)?

CAUSE AND EFFECT ANALYSIS When the rhetor analyzes why something happens and describes the consequences of a string of events.

• Does the rhetor examine past events or their outcomes? • Is the purpose to inform, speculate, or argue about why an identifiable fact happens the way

it does?

COMMONPLACES Also known as hidden assumptions, hidden beliefs, and ideologies, commonplaces include assumptions—many of them unconscious—that groups of people hold in common.

• What hidden assumptions or beliefs does the speaker have about the topic? How is the speaker or author appealing to the hidden assumptions of the audience?

• Who is the intended audience of this piece? What are some assumptions of this intended audience?

COMPARISON AND CONTRAST When the rhetor discusses similarities and differences.

• Does the text contain two or more related subjects? • How are these subjects alike? How are they different? • How does this comparison further the argument or a specific claim?

DEFINITION When rhetors define certain words, these definitions are specifically formulated for the purpose they have in mind. Additionally, these definitions are crafted uniquely for the intended audience.

• Who is the intended audience? • Does the text focus on any abstract, specialized, or new terms for the audience? • What effect might this definition have on the audience, or how does this definition help

further the argument?

DESCRIPTION When the rhetor details sensory perceptions of a person, place, or thing.

• Does a person, place, or thing play a prominent role in the text? • Does the tone, pacing, or overall purpose of the text benefit from sensory details? • What emotions might these details evoke in the audience (pathos)? • How does this description help the rhetor further the argument?

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DIVISION AND CLASSIFICATION When the rhetor divides a whole into parts or sorts related items into categories.

• Is the rhetor trying to explain a broad and complicated subject? • Does it benefit the text to reduce the subject to more manageable parts to focus the

discussion?

EKPHRASIS A vivid, powerful description that recreates something or someone before the audience’s eyes.

• What effect does this description have on the audience? • How does this work to persuade the audience?

EXEMPLIFICATION Provides examples or cases in point.

• What examples, facts, statistics, cases in point, personal experiences, interview questions, etc. does the author add to illustrate claims or illuminate the argument?

• What effects might these have on the audience?

HYPERBOLE AND UNDERSTATEMENT A hyperbole is when the rhetor exaggerates (makes a mountain out of a molehill). An understatement is the opposite of a hyperbole—when the rhetor downplays the significance of an issue (makes a molehill out of a mountain).

• Is the rhetor overemphasizing the importance or severity of a certain issue? How does this exaggeration push the rhetor’s argument forward?

• Is the rhetor underemphasizing the importance or severity of a certain issue? How does this trivialization further the rhetor’s argument?

IDENTIFICATION This is rhetorician Kenneth Burke’s term for the act of identifying with another person who shares one’s values or beliefs. Many rhetors try to identify with an audience or convince an audience to identify with them and their argument.

• How does the author build a connection between himself or herself and the audience (ethos/ eunoia)?

METADISCOURSE Metadiscourse can be described as language about language. It announces to the audience what the rhetor is doing, helping the audience to recognize the rhetor’s plan. Metadiscourse can be used both to announce the overall project or purpose of a text and to announce its argument. It also provides signposts along the way, guiding the audience to what will come next and showing how that is connected to what has come before.

• Metadiscourse can signal the tone the rhetor wants to convey. What is the rhetor’s voice in this text? How does he or she enter in and guide the audience through the text?

• What role does the rhetor adopt? What voice does he or she use?

MOTIVE When the rhetor references his or her motives, or the motives of his or her opponents.

• Why should we trust the rhetor’s argument? • Why shouldn’t we trust an alternate or opposing argument?

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NARRATION When the rhetor recounts an event.

• Is the rhetor trying to report or recount an anecdote, an experience, or an event? Is the rhetor telling a story?

• How does this narrative illustrate or clarify the argument or a specific claim? • What effect might this story have on the audience?

PRECEDENT When the rhetor argues from precedent, he or she references a previous situation—or a current situation that is working somewhere else—that can be compared to the rhetor’s situation.

• Does the rhetor reference any historic instances—or current situations that are working elsewhere—that he or she claims are similar to the one being discussed?

• What details about these instances or situations help the rhetor’s argument?

PROCESS ANALYSIS When the rhetor explains to the audience how to do something or how something happens.

• Were any portions of the text more clear because concrete directions about a certain process were included?

• How does this help the rhetor develop his or her argument?

PROLEPSIS When the rhetor anticipates the opposition’s best argument—or the audience’s possible doubts —and addresses them in advance.

• Audiences interact with texts, and often that interaction includes disagreement or asking questions of the text.

• Rhetors can counter disagreement by anticipating opposition by introducing it within the text and then responding to it.

RHETORICAL QUESTION A question designed to have one correct answer. The rhetor leads the audience into a position, rather than stating it explicitly.

• What is the most obvious answer to this question? • Why is it important to have the audience answer this question themselves? How does it help

the rhetor persuade the audience?

TRANSITIONAL QUESTIONS These questions lead the audience into a new subject area or area of argument.

• What role do these questions play? How do these questions lead the direction of the argument?

• How is this helpful for the audience?

TURNAROUND When the rhetor converts an opponent’s argument into his or her own, pulling the rug out from under the opposition’s feet.

• Does the rhetor turn the opposing view into something that supports his or her argument? • How does this turnaround help to persuade the audience?