Rhetorical Analysis Essay
Whatever the appeal may be, we as critical thinkers must look beyond the chosen appeal and examine the argument closely. Keep this information in mind as you continue to write essays for this class and others. Your next essay will be a rhetorical analysis.
Chapter of our Inquiry to Academic Writing text lays it out for us clearly:
When you study how writers influence readers through language, you are analyzing the rhetoric (available means of persuasion) of what you read. When you identify a writer’s purpose for responding to a situation by composing an essay that puts forth claims meant to sway a particular audience you are performing a rhetorical analysis—separating out the parts of an argument to better understand how the argument works as a whole. We discuss each of these elements—situation, purpose, claims, and audience.
There are certain steps to accomplish when examining a text for rhetorical analysis;
- Identify the situation
- Identify the writer’s purpose
- Identify the writer’s claims
- Identify the writer’s audience
Whether creating a rhetorical analysis on a book, text or paragraph, IAW recommends you do the following:
Read [the] passage, making notes on its rhetorical situation, purpose, main claim, and audience. You may want to underline passages where the writers make the following points explicit:
- the situation to which they are responding
- the purpose of their analysis and argument
- their main claim or thesis
- who they believe their audience is.