Genre: Rhetorical Analysis in an Academic Essay format
Audience: Educated, curious readers
Length: 750-1000 words
Background: St. Martin’s e-Handbook:
- “Analyzing Arguments” (Part 2.8)
- “Integrating Sources into Your Writing” (3.13)
- “A student’s rhetorical analysis of an argument” (2.8g)
- Oxford English Dictionary
Due Dates:
- Weeks Two and Three: Rhetorical précis (5)
- Thursday 1/23: Preview
- Thursday 1/30: First Draft
- Tuesday 2/4: Editorial Peer Reviews
- Thursday 2/6: Final Draft
We’ve been practicing a method known as a rhetorical précis: a highly structured summary that explicates what a writer is arguing, how she does it, why she does it, and for what intended audience. Your first major writing assignment in this class is a rhetorical analysis, which draws on those skills in an extended format. A rhetorical analysis is an argument for a probable interpretation of a text, based on its rhetorical strategies and features.
In our case, your challenge is to analyze any persuasive piece from the Sunday, 1/26 Sunday Review section of the New York Times. If you identify another persuasive essay elsewhere in the Sunday paper — and they do appear in the Sunday Magazine, the Style section, Business, etc. — feel free to run it by me as an alternative.
Support your points with references to rhetorical appeals, drawing on direct quotes, references to tone, and other rhetorical features found in the text.