Will Hochman/Spring 2006/English 112

Elements of Rhetorical Analysis and Arugmentation in Composition*

Using the questions four questions below and the analyses they engender may help us to focus on the elements of argument: claims, evidence, and assumptions, or on whether the status of a controversy involves arguments of fact, definition, evaluation, or procedure. 

What does the audience feel is valuable here (sometimes termed the pathetic appeal, but it can be more broadly concerned with values)?

What information and arguments have been or could be made about the topic (logical appeals)?

What experiences and claims to authority qualify an author to speak or write in this domain (ethical appeal)?

What metaphors, images, oppositions, hierarchies, and genres will be effective in this text (stylistic appeal)?
 

In addition to analyses of the resources of the rhetorical situation, the elements of arguments, and the status of the debate, rhetorical analyses often uses topical categories to examine strategic junctures in the value systems that operate within a particular domain of discourse.  These analyses sometimes become  ideological critiques of the social experiences, cultural assumptions and political purposes in an area of discourse.
 

The elements of the rhetorical situation are:

Audience 

Topic

Author

Text
 

The elements used to characterize the purposes  of discourse are:

Persuasive

Informative

Creative

Self-expressive

Literary

Rhetorical strategies are:

Emotional appeals that lead to questions about shared values

 

Logical appeals that touch on what is deemed reasonable

 

Ethical appeals that lead to questions about authority

 

Stylistic appeals that focus on the conventions of the text

It is important to stress rhetorical analysis in our compostition classes because it can help us reflect upon how to adapt the writing skills and values they are challenged to learn.  Using rhetorical analysis to foster metacognition about writing changes the criticism that composition teaches academic forms of literacy that do not transfer to other, "real world" contexts and purposes.  Rhetorical analysis can provide a complementary point of reference to discussions of the writing process because rhetorical analysis makes reflection practical in ways that make sense of academic, literary, and hypertext forms of writing by examining how varied reoccuring situations give rise to genres that formalize shared expectations and purposes.

In the last twenty years, rhetoric and composition have become reestablished as part of college English studies.  While rhetoric is the oldest of the liberal arts, it was eclipsed a century ago when literature was reduced from all eloquent discourse to a modern concentration on fiction, poetry and drama.  The renewed synthesis of rhetoric and composition has helped to connect the teaching of writing with a broader humanistic tradition concerned with studying how people interpret received values against changing situations to address shared purposes.  We are entitled and encouraged to use rhetorical analysis to connect reading and writing. Writing is defined as a problem-solving process that presents opportunities for writing classes and teachers to intervene to improve students' learning and thinking as well as their writing.  Shifting the focus of instruction from written products to writing processes has enabled teachers to create opportunities for collaborative learning and strategic thinking about how to achieve an intended purpose with a particular audience in a specific situation.  Writing makes learning visible, and attending to this dynamic can make teaching more effective, and learning more critically engaged.  A rhetorical stance can help connect academic writing with public issues by fostering the sort of reflective and engaged learning that can enable students to transfer their learning across varied situations.
 
Rhetorical analysis often focuses on how to achieve a purpose by using the resources of a situation.  As such, rhetorical analysis often assumes the perspective of the writer or speaker concerned with how to persuade an audience and sometimes uses the rhetorical appeals to consider how to exploit the resources of a situation.

Rhetorical analysis can foster reflection by helping students to question their own assumptions.  One of the oldest ways to learn rhetoric is to argue for and against a position.  While it was condemned by philosophers for failing to respect the Truth, this method was valued by rhetoricians as a means to enable people to assess the weaknesses in their own thinking and anticipate responses to them.  More than just a means to win, this method can also help foster reflections on why one thinks as one does.  Such reflections can be developed along the three lines of inquiry already noted by pursing research on the historical development of arguments for or against a position, analyses of the value systems that support a position, and scenarios and analyses of what follows from a line of thinking.  Such inquiries can help one to become more reflective, and perhaps more critical.

One way that such analyses can foster critical engagement with public controversies is to help people think through the experiences, assumptions and purposes of others.  Rhetorical analysis shifts the focus from what to how--away from what happened to how an action or argument arises from a set of experiences that led these people to think in these ways and hope these outcomes would follow from these acts.  This sort of analysis can be developed along three lines of inquiry: one focusing on the historical experiences of an other, a second focusing on close readings of their texts, and a third that situates those texts in a projected set of purposes or scenarios for possible outcomes.  Such analyses may enable us to begin to understand the experiences, beliefs and purposes of others, which can be valuable if for no other reason than to reflect before acting or reacting.

*Much of this page was adapted from a post on WPA-L on January 5, 2005 by Tom Miller at the University of Arizona.