Rhetorical Analyses provide insight into a specific issue or text by examining it through the work of one or more theorists. Rhetorical Analyses should be approximately 2,000 words (not including bibliography). They should draw upon and cite the work of at least one rhetorician we have read in class and one external source (such as a primary document, secondary commentary, the work of an additional author, etc.). Rhetorical Analyses should be in MLA format.

The purpose of this assignment is to use theory to gain insight into contemporary practical matters. This means that your work must identify a discrete issue or text to analyze. You will have a start in this process because our Reading Responses ask you to connect our readings with current events. The Rhetorical Analysis tasks you with developing those germinal thoughts into a formal document with an introduction that establishes your topic, a contestable thesis, evidence for your assertions, and a conclusion.

Keep in mind that your task is not to discover the true, essential nature of your chosen issue or text. (Rhetoric theory would suggest that such a goal is likely impossible.) Your task is to find productive insight, which does not preclude the validity of other insights, even those that are contrary to your assertions. Accordingly, your analysis should not explicitly advocate a polemical position. As an analyst, you will not claim that something is morally right, wrong, perfect, or worthless. Your overt task is to use the rhetoric theory you have encountered to help explain how your chosen issue or text operates. You might examine:

• its unseen effects and how it causes them
• the premises that one must accept in order for it to function
• the internal contradictions that are present in it
• its construction of ethos
• its connection to other issues or texts
• or other lines of inquiry

We will generate a list of potential current issues and texts in class. Your Rhetorical Analysis draft is due on Oct. 11 for the class draft workshop. The final Rhetorical Analysis is due on Oct. 16 as a .pdf file attached to an email sent to me.   

Tips:

• Focus tightly on a manageable subject by selecting a brief, concrete text or a discrete issue. Resist the lure of broad, ambiguous, clichéd subjects and stick to immediate events and works. When it comes to subjects, it's more effective to start narrow and build outward than to start broad and focus inward.
• Don't write in sequential order from introduction to conclusion. Establish a working thesis and then address the middle of your work by providing support for your claim. Revise your working thesis as you go. Once you have a grasp of the middle move on to the conclusion and then the introduction. If you try to write in sequential order your work likely will have an overly general introduction and a weak structure. This is because it is very difficult to set up what you are going to say before you know what that will be.
• Make sure to forward an appropriate thesis. "Thesis Statements: How to Write Them in Academic Essays" from Dennis Jerz's Literacy Weblog can help you with this.