Choose one of the available argumentative essays for analysis. Using the principles of argumentation that we have been studying, analyze the author's rhetorical strategies. Then construct an argument evaluating the success of those strategies for persuading the author's intended audience.
Choosing an Article
The articles avaliable for analysis are:
- Sandel, Michael. "The Case Against Perfection." The Atlantic Monthly. April 2004.
- Seavey, Todd. "Legal Drugs, Illegal Cigarettes?" Health Facts and Fears. 5 November 2003.
- Rideout, Vicky. "Internet Filters Block Valuable Data, Too." USA Today. 5 August 2003.
- Mindus, Dan. "Common Sense and Health." The Center For Consumer Freedom. 3 March 2004.
Choose an article that you think has some strong points and some flaws, regardless of your agreement with the overall position. If you agree too strongly with the position, you may have trouble spotting flaws. If you disagree too strongly, you may have trouble recognizing the strong points. Your analysis should be a well-supported argument on whether or not the strengths outweigh the weaknesses.
Developing Your Content
As you analyze your document, be sure to work on doing each of the following:
- describe the article and its setting (identify the author, sponsoring organization or journal, implied or explicit audience, date/history).
- describe the author's overall goal: what does he/she want to change in the audience's beliefs, feelings, or actions?
- justify the need for an analysis of the article by making a case for its significance.
- analyze the author's rhetorical strategies, such as:
- the sequence of main claims (existence, definition, cause, value, action)
- appeals to ethos, pathos, and logos that support each main claim
- use of concession and refutation to respond to disagreements about a claim
- use of language, graphics, humor, and so on.
- evaluate how well these work for persuading the intended readers.
This assignment will help you improve your skills at evaluating argumentative strategies (types of arguments, appeals, structure, style), after you have been using them in your own arguments throughout this semester. Authors may not use every option in a single essay. Authors may use the same option many times. So your interpretation of what strategies the author has chosen--and which strategies are most prominent--is also part of your argument. Make sure your claims are stated explicitly and supported with evidence.
Read the article several times. Read with different goals each time. Try to identify major sections of the article-where the purpose or topic clearly changes. Try to summarize the purpose of each section in a few sentences. Look for key words to identify the main claim of that section. Then look for appeals that support the claim (logos, pathos, ethos), and so on.
Remember that the author may have had readers in mind who are not exactly like you. You should consider the reactions that the author was expecting as well as reactions that unexpected readers might have. To explore the full range of possible reactions that readers might have, you may need to brainstorm with your peers or use a role-playing technique.
Additional Requirements
Write a good faith rough draft. You'll find some useful and practical advice on writing a draft in The SF Handbook for Writers. Your final draft should be the equivalent of 3-4 pages double-spaced.
SOURCES: The main source for this assignment will be the text of the article itself. In addition, you might want to do research about the author and the overall rhetorical context.
FORMAT: Your rhetorical analysis will be presented in the form of a Web site. This format may influence your decisions in terms of style and visual presentation. You are still expected to follow MLA guidelines for documentation with the added flexibility of hypertext links.
SUBMIT: To submit your assignment, you need to place all the relevant files you have created in the teacher folder. There you will find a folder with your first name (inside a folder called public_html). That will be where you can keep or submit your assignment. For help on how to access the teacher folder from home, see this CWRL tutorial. A link to your assignment will be created in the students section of this site.
Grading Criteria
I will evaluate your essay according to these criteria:
- Careful exposition of the significance and rhetorical context of your argument.
- Demonstrated ability to recognize argumentative strategies.
- Demonstrated ability to use principles of argument to construct a persuasive, coherent, well-supported evaluation.
- Acknowledgement and consideration of alternative claims and conditions for rebuttal.
- Effective essay organization.
- Clear and precise sentence-level rhetoric (grammar and style).