According to rhetoricians Longaker and Walker, rhetorical analysis accomplishes

According to rhetoricians Longaker and Walker, rhetorical analysis accomplishes two goals:
Analyzing rhetoric helps us become better judges of the ways people use communication to persuade, influence, interact, and cooperate with others.
Analyzing rhetoric helps us become better, more ethical, and more productive communicators.
For this activity, you will read a sample rhetorical analysis and judge its content. To do this, you should ask the following questions:
Is the author’s argument clear?
Are claims about rhetorical strategies sufficiently supported by evidence from the speech such as direct quotes or detailed descriptions?
Are the author’s interpretations of the effects of rhetorical strategies (that is, the purposes that different strategies serve) sufficiently supported with detailed explanations that show how the speaker achieved those effects?
Is the author’s argument valid? To check the validity of their argument, you may wish to review the questions for validity provided on the argument handout Download argument handout.
Has the author sufficiently cited their source(s)?
Does the analysis help you to become a better, more ethical, or more productive communicator? If so, how so? If not, why not?
Analyzing Another’s Rhetorical Analysis
Choose ONE of the following sample rhetorical analyses and then write a post in which you answer the questions above.
Taylor Kantner, “Rhetorical Analysis Essay” (Links to an external site.) — a student paper written for a speech class at Penn State that applies the rhetorical triangle to analyze the song
“Where Is the Love?” by the Black Eyed Peas (Links to an external site.)
Emily Badger and Kevin Quealy, “Trump Seems Much Better at Branding Opponents than Marketing Policies” (Links to an external site.) — an article in The New York Times that evaluates the effectiveness and ineffectiveness of Trump’s communication strategies
John Doe, “Old Spice Advertisement: The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” (Links to an external site.) — a student paper written for an intro college writing class that analyzes
the Old Spice commercial “The man your man could smell like” (Links to an external site.)