A rhetorical analysis

Discussion: A rhetorical analysis is a piece of writing that seeks to tear apart a piece of text, investigate the methods the author used to create it, and interrogate its effects (both intended and unplanned) on the audience. The term “text” is very broad and can include some unlikely things like political ads, bumper stickers, t-shirt graphics, amateur and professional photos, sculpture or cartoons, performance art, individuals’ presentation of self, in addition to some of the more commonplace types of text like blogs, magazine or newspaper articles, novels, nonfiction, and speeches. Really, anything that can be interpreted is open to being a text worthy of rhetorical analysis. This is really where the fun begins! However, for the purposes of this assignment, we will be limiting ourselves to some heavy thinkers from Frederick Douglass to Aristotle to Friedrich Nietzsche.
Your task with this particular essay is to write a rhetorical analysis that compares two texts from our reading unit. Your rhetorical analysis will need to take into account the rhetorical triangle components (audience-situation-purpose) for both texts and the effect each writer’s rhetorical choices has on the reader so that you can determine which writer was more successful.
PROMPT:
Select two texts from our unit in Ethics and Morality and write a rhetorical analysis comparing and contrasting the two texts in order to arrive at an evaluation of which text was more successful in accomplishing the author’s purpose.
Possible Topic Suggestions (not limited to these topics):
Henry David Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience
Frederick Douglass’s from Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave Friedrich Nietzsche’s Morality as Anti-Nature
Iris Murdoch’s Morality and Religion
Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Letter from Birmingham Jail
Kwame Anthony Appiah’s The Case against Character
Michael Gazzaniga’s Toward a Universal Ethics
Aristotle’s “The Aim of Man”
Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”
CAUTION: Whereas with the last essay (your explication) I suggested you read the sections about the writer’s rhetoric that preceded the text itself, this time I strongly suggest you NOT read this section, at least not at first. Since a great part of the class is to learn to read complex texts, you do yourself a disservice by reading the writer’s rhetoric section prior to trying to figure it out yourself first. If after you have read the text and then are curious about what you might have missed, then check out the rhetoric section. However, be sure not to allow that section to do your thinking for you!
Getting Started: First, choose texts you find interesting and complex. The more complex the texts, the easier your job of analyzing it will actually be. Second, consider all elements of the text. You should focus on those elements which you feel best accomplish the writers’ purposes. Third, your thesis should reflect the focus of rhetorical elements you are using as a point of comparison and contrast and say something about how those rhetorical features work in concert to create (or fail to create) an effect for the audience, as well as which text best accomplishes its writer’s purpose by using those strategies.
Resources: Of course, it should not have to be said, but you are not allowed to use someone else’s rhetorical analysis of the text you are writing. You should also ALWAYS avoid Wikipedia and any Wiki sources or About.com . For this exercise, I want you to engage your own critical thinking skills and engage closely with the writer’s methods and ideas. However, I also want you to be able to begin to incorporate outside sources, too. So, you should use up to two outside sources, but these sources should be from scholarly or peer-reviewed journals. You can access these through the Mesa Library’s website. Of course, you must document the source text. We will be using MLA style for both paper formatting and documenting sources.
Evaluation: RubricfoundonBlackboard.
Specifics:
•     Clear, focused, argument-based thesis
•     5-6 typed (1500-1800 words) pages – this means a FULL five page minimum
•     MLA-style formatted (see your syllabus)
•     Works Cited page including four sources (the two texts whose rhetoric you are analyzing,
as well as your two outside scholarly or peer-reviewed sources)

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