Rhetorical Analysis

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Rhetorical AnalysisClarity in writing

• Eng 105 Th. Oct 13th

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Your Questions
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Ethos, Pathos, Logos

• Do ethos, pathos, and logos need to be related to
  the thesis?
• Yes - If you think the author did a good job
  using e/p/l to effectively make their point,
  youll be supporting that claim and giving
  example from that standpoint.
• And vice-versa for ineffective arguments
• An argument can be effective but still have some
  bad points - most will. Dont hesitate to talk
  about those.

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Lack of ethos, pathos, logos

• What if my paper doesnt have any
  ethos/pathos/logos?
• If there is an argument, there is logos -
  somewhere. If there is an author, there is ethos
  - somewhere. If there are words other than cold,
  academic speech - obliterated where something
  less loaded could be used, that is pathos

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Effective or Ineffective?

• How do I know if an argument is or isnt
  effective?
• Need to put aside personal opinion - that can
  easily taint your judgementµ
• Go by the use of appeals. Is it TOO emotional?
  Is ethos as glaring as a president putting on a
  blue collar shirt and rolling up his sleeves to
  appeal to the working class? Or is it legitimate?

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Which is easier?

• Is it easier to analyze something you agree with
  or something you disagree with?
• If you agree with it, you will be less likely to
  notice problems - preaching to the choir.
• If you disagree, you may find flaws where flaws
  do not exist

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Having problems with Ethos

• Anything that makes the author sound good
• Any titles, history, MA MFA PHD, Etc.
• Anywhere the author tries to relate his/her
  experiences to the readers in any way
• Any words that appeal to a certain group
• Words like us, we, fellow Americans, etc.
• Conversational tone rather than academic

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Fallacies

• Dont focus the paper only on fallacies
• Talk about fallacies in the Logos/Logical
  argument section - you may also mention them near
  your thesis if the author uses many of them and
  it really hurts/helps the paper
• They can add to an argument - many effective
  papers use terrible logic. Productive use of
  fallacies is a fine art that has gotten many
  people into positions of power.

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What if there is very little of one argument type?

• There should be at least two of each in your
  paper
• Talk some about what the author should have done
  in this case
• Talk about how this helped/hurt the argument -
  perhaps not appealing to the audience helped make
  a very logical argument more powerful by drawing
  more attention to statistics

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Idea Generation - Length!

• Go through your article line by line before you
  write - mark up a list on the article itself of
  the ethos, pathos, logos, audience, author, tone,
  bias, fallacies, argument type, etc.
• Dont force yourself to write sequentially - NO
  great writer/author writes perfectly from Once
  upon a time to The end.
• Force yourself to find at least 2-3 examples of
  each appeal. You may think its silly, but you
  may surprise yourself!

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Why the hell are we writing this?

• Critical thinking skills
• Skills/Ideas will be used in other 105 papers
• Skills/Ideas will be used in ALL classes that
  need papers - and many will.
• Helps with awareness of media, culture,
  advertising, politics, internet, etc.

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Editing for Clarity

• P. 339/Section 10 in spiral bound book

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Redundancies

• Students living in close proximity in the dorms
  need to cooperate together if they want to live
  in harmony.
• Students living in the dorms need to cooperate to
  live in harmony.

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Repetition

• The children enjoyed watching television more
  than they enjoyed reading books
• The children enjoyed watching television more
  than reading books

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Wordy to Concise

• It is a common desire to use long,
  academic-sounding phrases in place of single-word
  alternatives but in reality, the concise choice
  is the best choice
• At this point in time Now
• In order to To
• For the purpose of to
• In the event that If

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Missing words

• Missing words can change the meaning of a
  sentence - make sure subjects, verbs, etc. all
  agree
• The gang members neither cooperated nor listened
  to the authorities
• The gang members neither cooperate with not
  listened to the authorities

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Misplaced Modifiers

• The hikers watched the storm gathering force from
  the cabins porch
• Leaking in the basement, I found a pipe
• From the cabins porch, the hikers watched the
  storm gathering.
• I found a pipe leaking in the basement

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Be assertive

• This seems like it might be an example of a
  logical fallacy
• This is a logical fallacy.

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Author in the paper

• Do not use I
• The papers existence implies an author already,
  as well as an opinion
• Therefore, you dont need In my opinion either.