Rhetorical
Analysis of a Persuasive Text
Assignment: Analyze a speech in order to identify and understand the
various rhetorical moves it makes in order to persuade its audience.
The purpose of this assignment is to draw your attention to the rhetorical
aspects of the speech to understand how these aspects impact the
message. In your analysis, your focus will not be so much on the argument
itself, but rather how the argument is conveyed and why the
speaker chose the strategies that he or she did.
Audience: Other humanities scholars interested in how persuasion
works in speeches.
Citation & Paper Format: MLA style
- Some specifics: 12-point font, Times New Roman, 1-inch
margins, and numbered pages;
Length: 5-7 pages, double-spaced
Due Dates:
Rhetorical Analysis
Worksheet: Thursday,
March 27
10pm
Outline:Sunday, March 30
Final
Copy: April 6 (first 3 pages due April 2)
Focus:
Your focus will be on the way
a person attempts to persuade his or her audience, not so much on the
merits of the argument itself. Your goal is to analyze the rhetorical
features of the speech and to examine why the speaker makes certain
rhetorical moves in the speech. You want to avoid making an argument
based on whether you agree or disagree with the speech.
You will need to consider who the
intended audience is and how specific aspects of the speech are intended to
affect or speak to that particular audience (or those audiences, as the case
may be).
In order to perform this kind of analysis,
you will need to provide detailed examples and thorough explanations of the
points you are making. These examples will come from direct
textual support in the form of quotations, paraphrases, and summaries.
Where the sciences are interested primarily in what is said (the
information itself), humanities scholars are also particularly interested in how
information is being conveyed. Since this is the case, you will want to
examine, among other things, the specific language being used by the speaker.
Placing the Speech Within a Larger
Context
Depending on your speech, it may
help you to place the speech within the larger context of its topic in order to
better analyze the persuasive moves the speaker makes.
- For example:
Say that you’re analyzing a politician’s speech about the war in
Afghanistan. It may be helpful for your analysis if you know that
this politician once voted in a way that was contrary to the speech he is
making now, because that may help you understand why the politician is
highlighting or downplaying certain details related to that war and/or the
situation around the previous voting. What a speaker highlights and
what a speaker downplays are among an array of potential rhetorical
strategies that might be worth examining closely. If the politician
is a military veteran, or if the politician has a child who is in the
war—these are details that might also be relevant to the rhetorical
strategies used in the speech.
- For another example:
The date on which the speech is given might be important symbolically for
the point that is being made. If it’s a speech about gun control
(pro or con), it would be important to know whether the date of the
speech is the anniversary of a particularly violent shooting or the
anniversary of a previous restrictive gun law, for instance. Timing
can be an important rhetorical strategy.
Placing the speech within a larger
context like this may require some additional outside research from reasonably
reliable sources (such as reliable news sources).
Structure:
Introduction
In your introduction, you should:
- Explain the context of the speech, including identity
of the speaker, where and to whom the speech is being made, and the date
of the speech. You should also explain the context in terms of
relevant world events at the time the speech was given (you could mention
this in your introduction, then go into more detail in the body of your
paper).
- Include a thesis statement that establishes the claim
or argument that you are making about the persuasiveness of the speech.
- Your thesis should not be concerned with
whether you agree or disagree with the speech. Rather, your thesis
should focus on how persuasive the speech is or is not, based primarily
on the rhetorical strategies used and how well they fit the rhetorical
situation.
Body
In your analysis, you should:
- Describe and analyze various aspects of the speech in
keeping with the instructions listed above. In writing your
analysis, you should keep your central argument in mind, and make sure
that the focus of your analysis is geared toward the argument you are
making about the persuasiveness of the speech.
Conclusion
In your conclusion, you need to:
- Reflect a bit on what you have found. There are
various ways of doing this, but some general questions you could answer in
a conclusion are: What has been learned, particularly about strategies for
a persuasive speech? What new questions are raised by this?
What does this mean in the bigger picture?
- While you should in some way restate / rephrase your
thesis in the conclusion, you should avoid simply repeating the
points of your argument. Restate / rephrase your thesis with an eye
toward why your argument should matter, and build your conclusion around
that.
Rhetorical
Analysis Worksheet
WHAT the Author Does WHY the Author
Does It
|
Author’s Thesis/Main Idea:
|
Why
did the author choosethis thesis, or idea tostudy?
|
|
What
is the author’s purpose? To persuade, inform, criticize? Something else?
|
Why
does the author choose this purpose?What effect does it create?
|
|
Who
is the author’s intended audience?
|
Is
there a reason the author chose to write forthis particular audience?
|
|
How
did the write arrange his or her ideas?Chronologically?
|
Did
the arrangement of ideas, or way the authordeveloped them create some sort of
an effect?What purpose does it serve? Whydid theauthor arrange his/her ideas
this way?
|
|
What
diction does the writer use? Informal orformal language? Technical vs. slang?
Wordchoice, word arrangement, accuracy? Arecertain words repeated?
|
Why
does the author use this type of diction?What effect does it create?
|
|
What
sentence structure does the author employ? Are there fragments or run-ons?
Arethe sentences imperative, declarative, exclamatory?
|
What
effect does using this type of sentencestructure have?
|
|
Does
the writer use dialogue or quotations?
|
Why
does the author includedialogue/quotations?
|
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Any other important rhetorical
features or strategies you noticed?
|
Why
were these used?
|
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