What should be in a rhetorical analysis

Once you have done this basic, rhetorical, critical reading of your text , you are ready to think about how the rhetorical situation Section 6. Skip to content Increase Font Size. Chapter 6: Thinking and Analyzing Rhetorically. Previous: 6. Next: 6. An artistic proof is created by the rhetorician and encompasses the appeals, canons, and most of the techniques given below.

An inartistic proof is a proof that exists outside the mind of the rhetorician such as surveys, polls, testimonies, statistics, facts, and data.

Either type of proof can help make a case. An appeal is an attempt to earn audience approval or agreement by playing to natural human tendencies or common experience. There are three kinds of appeals: the pathetic, the ethical, and the logical. An everyday example of this is a minister, rabbi, priest, or shaman—individuals who are followed because they have established themselves as moral authorities.

Writers using ethos may offer a definition for an obscure term or detailed statistics to establish their authority and knowledge. The logical appeal uses reason to make a case.

Academic discourse is mostly logos-driven because academic audiences respect scholarship and evidence. Rhetoricians using logos rely on evidence and proof, whether the proof is hard data or careful reasoning. Remember that a single document, speech, or advertisement can make all three appeals. Rhetoricians will often combine techniques in order to create a persuasive argument.

A good place to start is to answer each of these considerations in a sentence or two on a scratch piece of paper. The next step is to identify examples of these uncovered techniques in the text. What do you know about the audience? What assumptions can you make? Why was the text written for that specific audience? Questions to ask: What is the purpose of the author? How does the author choose to convey the main message?

How does the text make you feel? Questions to ask: What is the main idea or topic? What does the author reveal about the subject? What is the underlying message? When is the subject revealed? How does the author present the subject?

Questions to ask: What words does the author use? What emotions are you left with after reading the text? What are the literary tools the author uses to set the tone?

Once you have individually analyzed each of the above elements, gathered the answers and made your notes, it gets easier to begin the writing process. According to Aristotle , any spoken or written communication that intends to persuade the audience contains three elements - ethos, pathos and logos. In the name of God, do your duty. She would be sorry someday—maybe when it was too late. Ah, if he could only die temporarily! Logos appeals to logic and aims to convince the reader through logical reasoning and facts:.

Do note that the author can use more than one mode of persuasion in the text. The best way to read is to go paragraph wise, have the list of SOAPSTone questions by your side and answer them as you go. Just like other academic essays, even a rhetorical analysis essay requires a well-defined thesis statement.

This statement should reflect your stance or interpretation of the text. Make sure you write an arguable and precise thesis statement which you will need to justify and prove in the following paragraphs with evidence and examples from the text. Making an outline of the essay before writing is integral. So, spend some time putting together the outline and jotting down your points in the respective sections.