Rhetorical analysis

Monday, March 2, 2015

Elbow Partners

Sit with a partner whom you have not

worked with this semester!

What is rhetorical analysis?

deconstructing nonfiction texts –speeches, essays, editorials,

etc.— and evaluating how the author creates meaning, establishes

and proves his/her claim

making judgments about whether or not an author has succeeded

in his or her purpose

Rhetoric—Analyzing techniques that make persuasion possible

Audience/

Readers(Pathos)

Subject/Topic/

Message

(Logos)

Purpose

ContextContext

Context

Speaker/Writer(Ethos)

It’s not just for essays

“What Aristotle and Joshua Bell can teach us about

persuasion” by Conor Neill

Ethos- credibility of the speaker

Writers/speakers ask the audience to

o trust them (intelligence, goodwill and virtue)

o believe them

o to bear with them

o to listen to them

Readers/Audiences must question the speaker’s

authority, trustworthiness, motives.

You must consider the writer’s integrity and

attitude towards his/her audience.

Establishing Ethos

1. Demonstrating knowledge about the topic

o position, job title, experience, etc.

2. Establishing common ground with the

audience through respect and concern

3. Demonstrating fairness and evenhandedness

4. Displaying confidence

5. Presenting yourself in a suitable manner—

physical appearance

6. Connecting your beliefs to core principles that

are widely respected

7. Using appropriate language for the audience,

neither speaking above nor below their

capabilities.

8. Citing credible, reliable sources

9. Admitting limitations, exceptions, or weaknesses

of your argument. Making these concessions

(anticipating the potential rebuttals of your

audience) makes the audience belief that you

have respect for them and that you have carefully

considered your position.

Logos-logic of the argument

“word” or “reason”

Rational argument

Logic behind the arguments

Examples:

factual evidence for support

“Nine out of ten doctors agree…”

Examples of evidence:

statistics, charts, graphs, definitions, surveys, polls,

examples, narratives, personal testimonies, etc.

Evaluating Polls

There are three important aspects to consider when

evaluating polls:

1. The source —who commissioned the poll, who

published it, and any associated bias.

2. The statistical methodology—who was

interviewed, how they were interviewed.

3. The questions —how were they asked, in what

order, with what language?

Pathos– evoking emotions

PATHOS—the quality or power of evoking the audience’s emotions

Primarily achieved through the use of strong emotional diction (evocative words)

Powerful images that evoke emotions

Anecdotes —stories

Immediacy contributes to the effectiveness of emotional appeals

Pathos appeals to the heart and to one’s emotions.

Pathos—Examples

Stories or testimonials

Personal anecdotes or stories

Personal connections

Imagery and figurative language that provokes an

emotional response

Visual images or words that inspire you to empathize or

have compassion towards the idea/topic

Powerful words, phrases, or images that stir up emotion

See Handout pg. 7

1) ethos

2) pathos

3) Logos

See Handout pg. 7

Identify the rhetorical appeals

Does the commercial or advertisement (mainly)

use ethos, logos, or pathos?

Taylor Swift, a Diet Coke, & a cat.

ETHOSPeople tend to trust the choices

famous people make, so celebrity

endorsements help establish

credibility with the audience.

The Real Cost of Smoking

The Real Cost of Smoking

PathosThere are several emotionally charged words:

contract, relinquish, freedom, bound; repetition of

“you” to underscore control supposed to evoke

a sense of helplessness from the audience.

What else did you notice?

Kevin and the Train

Kevin and the Train

LOGOSThis platform safety PSA displays several facts about

the situation as it’s unfolding. It is a logical argument

to not jump onto the tracks to save your phone

because a life > a phone.

Style– Author’s choice

refers to the choices one makes that involve words, phrases, and sentences.

should be appropriate for author’s purpose and affects the way that a reader reacts to a piece.

Four aspects of style:

Diction

Imagery

Syntax

Figures of speech

Diction (…ary)

This is word choice:

General vs. Specific words.

Formal versus Informal

Denotation and connotation.

Monosyllabic words and polysyllabic words.

See handout p. 2

Diction—Charged Words

Charged words are words with strong

connotations beyond their literal meaning that

are likely to produce an emotional response.

Tyranny—evokes a feeling of fear, suggests living in a state

of terror

Liberty—suggests an ideal life characterized by freedom

Justice—can be associated with freedom and equality

Honor—evokes a sense of morality and dignity

Declaration of Independence

“[King George] is at this time transporting large

armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the

works of death, desolation, and tyranny,

already begun with circumstances of cruelty

and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most

barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head

of a civilized nation.”

Charged Words

He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign

mercenaries to complete the works of death,

desolation, and tyranny, already begun with

circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely

paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally

unworthy the head of a civilized nation.

The Effect of Charged Words

“Grandmother Arrested in Pot Sting”

The fact that the person is a grandmother has no relevance to the

fact that she was arrested on a drug charge. It may not even

reflect the fact that she is old, since I’ve known grandmothers as

young as 32. But the use of the term conjures up an image of a

sweet, gentle person, and juxtaposed against the crime, elicits far

more outrage than if the headline was …

“Local Woman Arrested in Pot Sting”

Imagery

Imagery is words that appeal to the senses.Visual - “There are black clouds of God’s wrath now hanging

directly over your head” (Edwards)

Auditory – the wind whistling through the trees, the rumbling waves rushing past

Tactile/Emotional – “How awful it is to be left behind at such a day! To see so many others feasting….” (Edwards)

Oral – the puckering twang of lemon juice

Olfactory – wet dog after a morning rain shower

Syntax

Syntax—construction of sentences.

Syntax discusses:

Sentence type: complex or simple?

Sentence length: short or long?

Active vs. passive sentences

Pacing. Sentence construction can speed up the

reading of a passage or slow it down.

View handout p. 2

Restatement

Repeating an idea in a variety of ways, using

different words to reinforce a point.

Anaphora

Repetition of the same word or group of words at the beginning of successive clauses, sentences, or lines.

“This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle, This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, This other Eden, demi-paradise, This fortress built by Nature for herself Against infection and the hand of war, This happy breed of men, this little world, This precious stone set in the silver sea…”

-John of GauntShakespeare's Richard II (2.1.40-51; 57-60)

See handout p. 3

Anastrophe… (SVO)

Inversion: anastrophe occurs whenever normal syntactical arrangement is violated for emphasis:

The verb before the subject-noun (normal syntax follows the order subject-noun, verb): Glistens the dew upon the morning grass. (Normally: The dew glistens upon the morning grass)

Adjective following the noun it modifies (normal syntax is adjective, noun): She looked at the sky dark and menacing. (Normally: She looked at the dark and menacing sky)

The object preceding its verb (normal syntax is verb followed by its object): Troubles, everybody's got. (Normally: Everybody's got troubles.)

Epistrophe

Is the reverse of anaphora; repetition of

same word or group at the end of clauses.

They saw no evil, they spoke no evil, and

they heard no evil.

Asyndeton (uh-SIN-du-ton)

Omission of conjunctions between related clauses

I came, I saw, I conquered.

deliberate use of conjunctions between each clause

in a series of clauses

This year I am taking math and English and history and

gym and physics and Spanish and creative writing and

creative photography.

Polysyndeton

Antithesis

opposition, or contrast of ideas or words in a balanced or

parallel construction. The idea is that they enhance one

another, kind of like two halves of the perfect whole:

yin and yang

sweet and sour

Good cop / Bad cop

Sink or swim.

Black or white.

“It can't be wrong if it feels so right.” --Debbie Boone

Chiasmus & Antimetabole

Arrangement of ideas in the second clause is a

reversal of the first.

1. Chiasmus is, specifically, the reversal of grammatical

structures in successive phrases or clauses:

It is hard to make money, but to spend it is easy.

2. Antimetabole is, specifically, the repetition of words, in

successive clauses, in reverse grammatical order:

“Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for

your country.” --JFK

Chiasmus & Antimetabole

When the going gets tough, the tough get going.

Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! -Isaiah 5:20

Rhetorical Question

A question posed by the speaker or writer

not to seek an answer but instead to affirm

or deny a point by simply asking the

question

Do I really need to ask you to clean your

room again?

Parallelism

Similarity of structure in a pair or series of related words, phrases, or clauses.

parallelism of words: She tried to make her pastry fluffy, sweet, and delicate.

parallelism of phrases: Singing a song or writing a poem is joyous.

parallelism of clauses: Perch are inexpensive; cod are cheap; trout are abundant; but salmon are best.

Juxtaposition

A poetic and rhetorical device in which normally

unassociated ideas, words, or phrases are placed

next to one another.

Light and dark images

Life and death

Cold and hot

Rhetorical Devices & Figurative Language

Alliteration Assonance

Consonance Simile

Metaphors Personification

Onomatopoeia Hyperbole

Understatement Litotes

Paradox Oxymoron

Pun Irony

Sarcasm Allusion

Synecdoche Metonymy

Zeugma Conceit

Litotes

Deliberate understatement, especially when expressing a

thought by denying its opposite.

She was not unmindful of the fact that she still owes me

twenty dollars.

Since he’s no small man, perhaps he should reconsider the

skinny jeans he likes so much.

Conceit

An extended metaphor. Popular during the Renaissance and typical of John Donne or John Milton.

Marke but this flea, and marke in this,

How little that which thou deny'st me is;

Me it suck'd first, and now sucks thee,

And in this flea our two bloods mingled bee;

Confesse it, this cannot be said

A sinne, or shame, or losse of maidenhead,

Yet this enjoyes before it wooe,

And pamper'd swells with one blood made of two,

And this, alas, is more than wee would doe.

-- “The Flea” John Donne

Allusion

A reference to mythological, literary, historical, or

Biblical person, place or thing

Anecdote

A brief narrative offered to capture the audience’s

attention or to contribute to the overall purpose

Synechdoche

A whole is represented by naming one of its parts

The rustler bragged he'd absconded with five hundred head of longhorns. Both "head" and "longhorns" are parts of cattle that represent them as wholes

Listen, you've got to come take a look at my new set of wheels.

He shall think differently," the musketeer threatened, "when he feels the point of my steel."

See handout p. 5

Metonymy

Reference to something or someone by naming one of its attributes.

The pen is mightier than the sword. The pen is an attribute of thoughts that are written with a pen; the sword is an attribute of military action

We await word from the crown.

The IRS is auditing me? Great. All I need is a couple of suitsarriving at my door.

Speaker

MessageAudience

Rhetorical TriangleSoaps method

Subject—the general idea, content and ideas

Occasion—time, place, context, or current situation for the writing.

Consider what events prompted the writing.

Audience—the target audience (try to be specific—education

level, beliefs and values, predisposition towards the speaker)

Purpose—what the author hopes the reader will take from the

piece.

Speaker—evaluate the ethos of the speaker

Activities

Woooh! Now you can work with your partner.

Speeches

“Inch by Inch”– Al Pacino

Braveheart– Mel Gibson