Terms for Rhetorical Analysis
Fealy 1
TERMS FOR RHETORICAL ANALYSIS
Rhetoric – the art of using language effectively or persuasively.
Rhetorical situation consists of the writer, the occasion, the purpose and audience, the genre and the context.
Context – the larger social or cultural context and the ongoing conversation on the topic. Reading the articles one should pay attention to the larger sense of culture, politics, and history in which the article appears; potential bias or point of view; place of publication; how the ongoing conversation affects what you think; how your own cultural, political, ethnic, or personal background affects what you believe.
Rhetorical Analysis – an examination of how well the components of an argument work together to persuade or move an audience.
Rhetorical Trinity: Writer, Audience, Context are the corners of a triangle with text in the middle. The focus of rhetorical analysis are the questions about WHO is claiming WHAT and the PURPOSE of the claim.
Samples of Rhetorical Strategies: (These are all used in Jonathan Edwards’ “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.”
Three Types of Appeals
ETHOS – the self-image a writer creates to establish trustworthiness, authority, and credibility with the reader, the author’s ethics and moral values
PATHOS – a strategy in which a writer tries to generate specific emotions (fear, envy, anger, pity) in an audience to dispose it to accept a claim
LOGOS – a strategy in which the writer uses facts, evidence, and a chain of logical reasoning to make audience accept a claim.
Figurative language (look at the following):
Metaphors: A metaphor makes an implicit comparison between dissimilar ideas or things without using
like or as
Similes: A simile is an explicit comparison between two essentially different ideas or things that uses the word like or as to link them.
Analogies: Analogies usually involve explaining one idea or concept by comparing it to something else. An analogy is typically a complex or extended comparison.
Personification: the writer attributes human qualities to ideas or objects. (Blond October)
Hyperbole - a figure of speech which is an exaggeration. "I nearly died laughing,"
Sarcasm:a sharp and often satirical or ironic utterance designed to cut or give pain
Ironyis an implied discrepancy between what is said and what is meant.
1. Verbal ironyis when an author says one thing and means something else.
2.Dramatic ironyis when an audience perceives something that a character in the literature does
not know.
3.Irony of situationis a discrepancy between the expected result and actual results.
Other rhetorical strategies/devices used:
Imagery--images; descriptionsAllusion--references to things of historical, cultural, etc., significance
Connotative language--words with loaded meaningsDiction--word choice
Syntax-sentence structureTone--writer’s attitude towards subject
Questions for Rhetorical Analysis
- Who is the writer/organization? Any bias?
- What is the major claim?
- Who is the audience?
- What is the purpose – To explain? To inform? To anger? Persuade? Amuse? Motivate? Explore? Sadden? Ridicule? Anger? Is there more than one purpose? Does the purpose shift at all throughout the text?
- What is the context - the larger social or cultural context and the ongoing conversation on the topic? Reading the articles one should pay attention to the larger sense of culture, politics, and history in which the article appears; potential bias or point of view; place of publication; how the ongoing conversation affects what you think; how your own cultural, political, ethnic, or personal background affects what you believe.
- What appeals does the argument use – emotional, logical, ethical?
- What evidence does the writer use – facts, experts’ testimony, personal experience?
- What claims are advanced in the argument – fact, definition, cause-and-effect, value, policy?
- How is the argument presented? What is its organization and structure? What is the logic of its order? How does this structure create and/or constrain the text’s meaning? How does it shape the text and its argument?
- How does the language, style or tone of the argument work to persuade an audience? The basics of style are word choice, figurative language (similes, metaphors), sentence structure, and paragraphing. How does the writer use qualifiers? (To qualify their thoughts writers use such qualifiers, for example, as sometimes, often, presumably, unless, almost) Does the writer use irony, humor, or sarcasm to be persuasive? Does the writer use a very formal tone, a highly technical vocabulary, or an impersonal voice to signal that an argument is for experts only?
- Does the writer present his/her claim fairly addressing the opposition and providing counter arguments for their major claims?
- What values and believes does the text promote and how they shape the argument and limit or expand the rhetorical strategies available to the writer?