Rhetorical Analysis Essay
Overview
For this assignment, you will examine the rhetorical strategies used by a variety of texts and authors.
Length
5-6 Pages (12-point font, 1-inch margins, double spaced) plus any images you choose to include.
Due Dates
First Draft: April 15th
Final Draft: May 1st
Assignment Prompt
- Choose four works from the five genres we have explored this semester: poetry, essay, short story, editorial, and video. After selecting your works, write an essay comparing them. The essay should explore the rhetorical devices unique to each genre.
2. Choose four texts of scholarly analysis for a minimum of 7 sources. These scholarly texts should support your arguments about rhetoric and genre.
Assignment Requirements
- Your paper will be 5-6 pages (12 pt font, 1 inch margins, double-spaced)
- Any images will be in addition to the minimum page requirements
- MLA citation within the body of your essay
- Works Cited page
Note: About half of the essay will be your source work (summary, paraphrase, and quotations). The other half will be your interpretations, ideas, examples, transitions, connection making, and claims about your source work.
Questions to Ask Yourself
1. What do we expect when we read a particular genre? What do we expect when we read a short story as opposed to a poem, an essay, or an editorial? Similarly, what do we expect when we watch a video?
2. What are the rhetorical devices central to each genre?
3. Why do artists choose one genre over another when trying to convey a message?
What Will Your Purpose Be?
- Your purpose will be to examine how artists achieve the effects they achieve. If we are moved, angered, persuaded, enlightened, motivated, or alarmed, how were we made to feel these emotions? Why were we successfully manipulated into a specific response?
Include the Following Writing Strategies in Your Essay:
1. Make some persuasive rhetorical “moves.”
Consider your own goals alongside your audience’s needs and expectations: What will capture their interest? What sorts of evidence will they find credible/persuasive? What tone will appeal to them? What sorts of claims will be welcome or cause alarm? What sort of conclusion will compel them? How much do you want to adhere to or defy audience expectations?
Remember: You decide the order, tone, style, and language you’ll use. You’re welcome to draw on your “native,” “home,” or “other” languages, literacies, and ways of being as you so choose.
2. Summarize, paraphrase, and quote.
Introduce each source in your paper by providing a brief (1-3 sentence) summary of the rhetorical situation (the audience, genre, publication, purpose, and context) and the overall argument. Strike a balance between paraphrasing and quoting key ideas/passages from sources.
3. Take a Stance.
Whatever it is, it’s important to make your stance clear throughout your essay. Any claims you make should be relevant, explicit, specific, qualified, and complicated.
4. Signpost.
Provide “signposts” (or “metacommentary”) throughout your essay, aka topic sentences, transitions, and other “guiding” language aimed at helping your reader follow along and make sense of what connections exist between sources, ideas, examples, you, and your claims.
Assessment Rubric
1. Thoroughness of Rhetorical Analysis
How accurate, comprehensive, and extensive is the rhetorical analysis of the works you examine? How insightfully do you compare and contrast them? To what extent do you demonstrate an understanding of different rhetorical techniques and genre conventions?
2. Source Use
How effectively are ideas and sources delivered and developed in the essay? How specific and appropriate are the examples and passages used? How effectively and accurately does the essay introduce and summarize the rhetorical situations and main ideas from each source used? How effectively are specific ideas/passages paraphrased and/or quoted?
3. Stance
How relevant, explicit, specific, qualified, and complicated are the claims throughout the essay? How effective is the relationship between stance and evidence? Are the claims made supported sufficiently by the evidence? That is, are appropriate/relevant ideas pulled out from the source use to establish the writer’s thesis/stance?
4. Signposting
How effectively are readers “guided” throughout the essay so that ideas, sources, and different claims are clearly attributed and distinguished from one another? Are the perspectives and relationship across texts named explicitly? That is, are ideas from across texts shown as supporting, extending, complicating, and/or challenging one another?
5. Revision, Editing, and Formatting
Does the essay show evidence of thoughtful revision and editing? Has the essay been effectively formatted, including the title, in-text citations, and Works Cited page?
6. General Requirements
Were all general requirements for length, source use, and due date met?
