Rhetorical Analysis Assignment Sheet Purpose: the purpose for writing a rhetori

Rhetorical Analysis Assignment Sheet
Purpose:
the purpose for writing a rhetorical analysis is to explain how an author attempts to influence an audience. That is, we use specific evidence from the text to establish a generalization (thesis) about the text’s rhetoric (how it persuades its readers).
Context: All of the texts we’ve read so far this semester illuminate the process of doing research—of finding sources, interpreting them, and building arguments and telling stories—as a fraught and interpretively slippery enterprise. Moreover, the texts are themselves arguments about the research process—how it should work, who has a stake, what is a valid use of evidence, and so on. As such, these texts have particular audiences in mind, they consider multiple points of view on a particular issue, they make appeals based on their interpretations of evidence, and they lay bare the values that inform those interpretations. How these texts make their arguments, and make them effectively, are your central concerns in this assignment.
Assignment Guidelines:
1. First, choose either the Brooke Jarvis essay OR the Elizabeth Jarvis essay.
2. Then, in a 3 page double-spaced essay in 12 point Times New Roman font with one inch margins, write rhetorical analysis of how these authors convey scholarly studies to non-academic audiences.
Your analysis will help your readers understand how either Jarvis or Kolbert work to persuade their respective audiences using scholar sources and other forms of data and methodologies. Your focus should be on what you do take to be the Jarvis or Kolbert’s claims about the validity and authority of scholarly sources and how they support those claims.
Introduce the text and identify its basic claim/thesis. Arrange the body of your paper so that the readers move through it in an orderly way. Also, make a judgment about the text’s rhetorical effectiveness. Remember, everything you write in this class should be argument driven and have a strong thesis statement.
Brainstorming: Below are some basic questions. These questions are not meant to provide an outline for the paper; rather, they simply help you to think about the rhetorical aspects of the text. Keep in mind that you will not have time to cover them all in a 3 page paper. Instead, you should narrow your topic and construct a cohesive argument.
• What is the rhetorical situation?
• Who is the writer’s audience?
• What is the writer’s purpose?
• Where did the article appear? This may help you to determine the purpose, audience, and scope of the text’s argument.
• How so popular media writers construct and appeal to various audiences?
• How these writers translate scholarly peer reviewed research for non-academic audiences?
• What other forms of evidence they use in addition to the Van Klink and Fabry scholarly studies?
• In what ways do experiences, background, and biases of a particular writer or speaker inform an interpretation (and whether that influence is productive or problematic—and how)?
• How do style issues such as tone and diction affect how information is conveyed?
Throughout your analysis, you need to provide evidence. You should directly quote from the text. Choose concise, powerful passages and provide parenthetical citations. Do not offer quotations and assume that their significance is self-evident. We will not intuitively grasp the value they hold in supporting your thesis. Explain how this evidence works to support your claim about the essay.
Note: Your analysis should not simply paraphrase or summarize what the author says. The reader has already read the text and knows what it contains. Your purpose is to provide a way of understanding how the text persuades its audience.
Remember to follow correct MLA format. Also follow my syllabus instructions under “Formatting policy.” Use parenthetical citations and provide a work(s) cited page. All work must be uploaded to Blackboard. Papers will not be accepted by email.