- Length matters. Don’t bite off more than you can chew by selecting a long or overly complex text for analysis. Keep in mind that your analysis will involve explaining the context from which the text is created and reflecting upon the writer’s specific compositional choices. Identifying these choices and explaining their importance in your essay requires attention to detail and careful contemplation, not hasty observations. A single-panel advertisement or a short opinion essay in your local newspaper is the sort of text that often works well for this assignment.
- Choose an accessible and shareable text. You will need to send me a copy of the text for approval and include a copy of it with your rough and final drafts. So you will need to choose a text that can be sent as an attachment or viewed online.
- Consider context. The more accurately you can identify the context from which the text emerges (the contemporary or historical moment, the issue or need the text responds to, the place of the text’s publication or distribution, the addressed audience), the more information you will have that can inform your analysis. Most of your analysis essay should focus on analyzing the text. (This isn’t an exercise in writing a history paper or debating an issue!) Nevertheless, understanding the context of a rhetorical situation to some degree typically leads to a more well-informed and interesting rhetorical analysis.
What Your Analysis Should Include
Your analysis should explain how a text works rhetorically for a specific purpose and as part of a rhetorical situation.
As you begin your analysis, you will want to ask yourself questions such as the following:
- Who is the intended audience for this text?
- What is the context from which this text emerges? What specific problem, issue, or need does it address?
- What is the text’s major claim or goal?
- What parts of the text indicate, or offer evidence for, that claim or goal?
- What genre has the writer chosen and why does that genre seem to be a fitting or poor choice?
- What appeals (ethos, pathos, and logos) does the author use?
- What parts of the text indicate, or offer evidence for, the use of these appeals?