Write a Rhetorical analysis.In this writing project assignment, you will choose a text and analyze it through a rhetorical lens. This assignment is intended to provide you an opportunity to evaluate and analyze the rhetorical context and rhetorical moves/strategies of your chosen text. For your analysis, you may choose a political speech, a newspaper opinion piece, an academic essay, a song′s lyrics, or a political advertisement. You may need to address these questions: What historical/social/political situation does the author respond to? What are the author’s purposes? What message does the author hope to convey? Who is the intended audience? What effects does the text have on the reader? What specific rhetorical strategies does the author use to establish her ethos/credibility and to appeal logically and/or emotionally to the reader? How do these strategies/textual features help the author deliver her message? How successfully does the author communicate her ideas to the reader? When you analyze your chosen text, read the text closely, identify its rhetorical strategies, and do some research to find out its social, historical, cultural contexts and the author’s background. You may quote specific phrases/sentences to help support your interpretation of the text. Examine in detail how and why the writer uses specific words, phrases, sentences, images, and statistics. Think about how the author arranges words, including the order in which they appear and their function in specific sentences. Providing thorough explanations of how your textual examples connect to your observations is key to an in-depth analysis. You should use the analytical tools we have been practicing in class, your class notes about the rhetorical framework, sample student essays (see Chapter 3 and Chapter 4 in An Insider’s Guide to Academic Writing), and your weekly short writings to help you develop your essay. As I read your essays, I will consider the following questions: Does the essay have a clear controlling idea thoroughly developed throughout the essay? Does the essay provide a detailed analysis of the rhetorical context/situation of the chosen text? Does the essay situate the text in its social, historical, and cultural context? Does the essay examine the major rhetorical strategies used by the author?
