This assignment takes off from one you already undertook in English 110 or FIQWS. From that earlier experience, you should remember that a rhetorical analysis is not a traditional argumentative essay on a subject, but rather a special type of analytical essay that describes how another piece of writing (or visual document or object) works. A rhetorical analysis looks not so much at what another work says as at how it says it. Instead of making an argument about content, rhetorical analyses try to understand everything that frames the content and brings it to others, such as method, purpose, audience, genre, language, tone, etc. Rhetorical Analyses look at what essays, articles, spoken word pieces, photographs, cartoons, videos, infographics, web pages, and web sites are trying to do and how they are trying to do it, rather than what they are trying to communicate.

For this assignment, you will choose a work in the sciences on a topic that interests you and write a 750-1000-word rhetorical analysis of it. You can choose work in just about any genre that appeals to you and that concerns science—a scholarly article, a newspaper or magazine or online article, an opinion piece, a speech, or an editorial—and you can choose visual works as well—infographics, web sites, videos, documentary photography projects. (Some students, anticipating their work later in the semester, have used this assignment to analyze public awareness campaigns.) The point is to find some piece of communicative work—preferably one that resonates for you and that you think you might want to use yourself anyway—and describe it in an objective way so you are confident that you know what it is and what it is trying to accomplish.

Timeline:
February 3 – Use Library session to find additional articles
February 5 – Post link to chosen work to Blackboard by Noon
February 10 – Final approvals for posted works
February 19 – Post First Draft to Blackboard by Noon (peer review)
February 26 – Upload Final Draft to Blackboard by Noon

Length: 750 to 1000 words excluding citations — about 4 Pages

Font: 12 Point Times New Roman

Line Spacing: Double

Submission: First Draft to be posted to discussion board on Blackboard;
Final Draft to be uploaded to assignment module on blackboard

Evaluation Rubric (tentative):
Understanding of assignment 15%
Inclusion of rhetorical concepts 25%
Evidence to support claims 25%
Organization 10%
Follow MLA Guidelines with in-text citations and end notes 10%
Synthesis of ideas in final paragraph 15%

Choice of work
The success of any piece of writing depends on the degree to which you find the work meaningful. If it interests you and seems to connect to parts of your life beyond the immediate assignment, you will consider it at a higher level. The trick, therefore, in choosing a work to analyze for this assignment is to remember the aspects of science or of science writing that you find personally meaningful and try to honor them with your choice of subject. Don’t rush to choose an article or video right away, but consider several, not only on different subjects but in different genres, and think about and live with the uncertainty for 24 hours before making your final choice.

Suggested Organization:
A general introduction, that tells the reader what your subject is and how you are going to approach it

A rhetorical analysis of how your chosen subject works, using the rhetorical terms and giving evidence to support the claims you make about your subject. This middle section can be organized in any way you like; the point is to use the rhetorical terms to make claims and support your claims with quotations and examples from throughout your text.

A conclusion synthesizing your thoughts about the relationships among the rhetorical elements and making inferences about what the chosen work is and what it is trying to accomplish,

Rhetorical Terms: A Review
As you will remember from English 110, writers generally use very specific rhetorical terms to help describe how communicative works function. These terms include:

• rhetorical situation
• author and audience
• tone and purpose
• genre and medium
• stance and language

Although you can click on any of the terms above to be reminded about it in greater depth, the general point is that using these terms—and using all of them—ensures that you will analyze a work in the most complete way. The terms are closely linked, yet each describes a different aspect of a work. For example, an author will choose the genre best suited to accomplish their purpose. The author will try to use language to create the tone that is most in keeping with their stance toward their subject and their audience. The author will choose the medium that is most appropriate for the chosen genre and that they think would have the most success in reaching the chosen audience.

By describing, and showing through examples and quotations, the ways these rhetorical terms apply to the chosen work, you will make yourself stronger and more convincing as a writer and analyzer of texts and visual materials. Your own audience for your own writing will have more confidence that you know what you are talking about.

Thoughts on Genre, Medium, and Audience
In doing a rhetorical analysis using the rhetorical terms, it is important to remember how interdependent the terms are. Each genre, for example, requires a medium through which its message can be experienced. Choice of medium narrows the audience who will receive the message.  If you publish an opinion piece in a newspaper or magazine, or on a blog, the people who receive your message will be limited to the demographic of the consumers of that particular newspaper or magazine or blog. The audience for the New York Post, for example, is different from the audience for the New York Times. And the audience for either of those newspapers is different from the audience for the popular magazine Scientific American or the scholarly journal Nature.

An audience can be thought of as those who, in response to your writing, could perform an action. For example, if you publish an opinion piece in the New York Times decrying President Trump’s removal of Obama-era regulations on greenhouse gas emissions, you might hope that the generally more liberal readers of the Times would respond to your piece in such ways as a) writing to their government representatives urging the reinstatement of such regulations; b) voting for political candidates who promised to reinstate the regulations; or c) if they are elected representatives, sponsoring legislation to reinstate such regulations.

One way to come to an understanding of audience is to consider the medium through which the author intends to reach the chosen group—down to the name of the medium, its circulation or reach or followership if you know it, and any more specific parameters if you can find them. These same concerns apply not just to genres in writing—scholarly reports, newspaper and magazine articles, opinion pieces and editorials, and speeches—but also to visual genres, from the infographics on public awareness campaign web sites to photographs, posters, videos, and cartoons.

Visual Rhetorical Analysis
Analyzing visual works is both similar to and different from analyzing texts. Although the same rhetorical terms can be applied to a photograph, say, as to a newspaper editorial, the particular descriptive elements will be different. For example, it is common to talk about depth of field, focal length, exposure etc. when describing the tone and language of a photograph, whereas with a piece of writing one might talk about the diction and syntax. Each visual genre will present its own descriptive elements. A good place to start in considering a visual rhetorical analysis (and we will be doing some of it in class) is the Purdue OWL’s very own guide to visual rhetorical analysis. When at the Purdue OWL site, also try clicking on elements of analysis and organization of analysis for further ideas about analysis of visual documents.

Questions to ask as you begin:
Genres are not rigid and stable, but they are generally recognizable. They contain certain elements (think of the genre of the FB post) and they only make sense in certain contexts.

• Who is the audience?
• What’s the purpose?
• What’s the author’s stance toward her material? Skeptical? Supportive? Some of both?
• What’s the medium?
• What’s the rhetorical situation?

Linguistic and grammatical elements also inform the text’s meaning, so consider

• Language–formal or informal? A combination? Does the author use “I”?
• The mode or modes–narrative (a story), expository (an explanation), descriptive, argumentative, or a combination? Is the overall aim of the essay informational or persuasive?
• How is it arranged? How does it open? Are there section headers? How much white space is on the page?
• Is there a claim/support structure? If so, how does the author arrange these elements? What sort of evidence is used as support? Do the authors rely more on emotional, ethical, or logical appeals?

Questions to ask before handing in your work:

Did you summarize your source, and tell the reader how the source relates to your subject of interest?

Did you analyze the source using the rhetorical terms: rhetorical situation, author and audience, tone and purpose, genre and medium, stance and language?

Did you use the rhetorical terms correctly? Did you demonstrate an understanding of the terms?

Did you back up your claims with evidence from the text, including examples and quotations?

Did you synthesize your findings, describing the relationships among the rhetorical elements in the article and drawing conclusions about how it works?

Did you edit your essay, eliminate typos, and remove grammatical errors?

Did you include a separate Work Cited page and check your citations (both in-text citations and Work Cited) against the Purdue OWL website to make sure they follow the MLA format? https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/08/