Analysis of Article due M Sept 21
For this assignment, you need to write an analysis of the journal article that you summarized. Your analysis must be at least 500 words.When attempting to rhetorically analyze a journal article, you must pay close attention to four things:
The intended audience
The purpose of the author
The big picture
The rhetorical situation
Thus, your rhetorical analysis should demonstrate how a text does or doesn't fulfill its purpose given the audience, context, and larger purpose. The audience for your rhetorical analysis paper will be me and your classmates.
Things to consider while writing your analysis:
You must think about the issues of purpose, audience, and context in terms of the writing choices the author made. This is what will make up the bulk of your analysis. Focus on writing strategies (perhaps ones pertaining to rhetorical appeals we learned in class: ethos, logos, pathos) that you wish to analyze in the text. Don't try to write about all the elements and rhetorical choices, or your paper may be too broad and provide shallow analysis. The idea here is for sustained and detailed analysis. This process should make you should how several elements of the various analysis categories work together (i.e., how audience effects expression, how context effects content, etc.).
For this essay, it is essential that you come up with your own thesis statement about the essay you are rhetorically analyzing. This does not mean you simply restate the original author's thesis, as you did with your summary but that you create a thesis of your own in which you attempt to analyze whether the author was successful or unsuccessful in fulfilling her larger purpose and why you have come to this conclusion. This analytical thesis statement must address the overall design of the essay you are rhetorically analyzing, with an emphasis on particular strengths or weaknesses of the author's writing technique.
The rest of your paper should focus on supporting the assertion in your thesis statement, with each paragraph devoted to explaining and supporting a particular part of your argument. This is where you need to expand on all the separate elements that contribute to (or hinder) the author's overall goal. Be sure to provide textual examples from the essay. You will need to paraphrase, quote, and/or describe particular sections of the text to make your analysis sound and convincing but make sure you are also analyzing and not just summarizing the article. Be sure to make connections with your thesis statement in your supporting paragraphs by using transitions. (If you do not provide a thesis statement of your own, it will be nearly impossible to determine what your supporting paragraphs are supporting).
Conclude your analysis by reiterating (not simply repeating) your main ideas about the rhetorical analysis of the essay. During the course of your analysis, your analytical thesis statement has gathered momentum, so you should be able to make a final, insightful observation without veering off into ground not covered earlier in your paper.
Any questions, please email me at melissa_miles@yahoo.com
posted by Melissa @ 4:29 PM
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