Rhetorical Analysis Recap

What is rhetorical analysis?

• analyzes how creative an author pens his/her piece

• analyzes how an author argues rather than critiques what an author argues

• criticizes the argument made by the author

• summarizes a text carefully

How comfortable do you feel analyzing a text rhetorically?

• Extremely. I'm the boss when it comes to rhetorical analysis.

• Pretty comfortable, but I still have some stuff to learn.

• I'm not feeling like a total oof, but I can squeeze by with a little help from my friends.

• What on earth are you talking about? This is an entirely new language to me.

What strategies might one use to appeal to an audience on a logical level?

• humor, satire, and irony

• facts, data, and statistics

• allusion, rhetorical questions, and hyperbole

• adynaton, metaphor, and imagery

What might a writer appeal to in order to heighten his/her credibility?

• Pathos

• Logos

• Kronos

• Ethos

What is the process of rhetorical analysis?

• Analyzing how a piece appeals to an audience and critiquing the validity of the author's viewpoint

• Critiquing the assumptions made before really digging into the text

• Engaging in a careful analysis of the strategies used to appeal to the audience and shape the argument

• Summarizing the text after reading it multiple times

What is anaphora?

• A literary technique that involves interruption of the chronological sequence of events by interjection of events or scenes of earlier occurrence : flashback

• Repetition of a word or expression at the beginning of successive phrases, clauses, sentences, or verses especially for rhetorical or poetic effect

• The raising of an issue by claiming not to mention it

• Harshness in the sound of words or phrases

What is oxymoron?

• The naming of a thing or action by a vocal imitation of the sound associated with it

• A figure of speech comparing two unlike things that is often introduced by "like" or "as"

• A combination of contradictory or incongruous words

• A figure of speech consisting of the use of the name of one thing for that of another of which it is an attribute or with which it is associated

What is an analogy?

• An unintentional or accidental error in speech, writing, memory or action which is thought to reveal the subconscious truth

• Figure of omission in which normally occurring conjunctions (and, or, but, for, nor, so, yet) are intentionally omitted in successive phrases, or clauses

• Juxtaposition of contrasting ideas in balanced phrases

• A kind of extended metaphor or long simile in which an explicit comparison is made between two things (events, ideas, people, etc.) for the purpose of furthering a line of reasoning or drawing an inference

What is irony?

• Use of words to convey the opposite of their literal meaning. A statement or situation where the meaning is directly contradicted by the appearance or presentation of the idea.

• An understatement in which an affirmative is expressed by negating its opposite

• An implied analogy or comparison between two unlike things that actually have something important in common

• A short and simple story that illustrates a lesson

What strategy/strategies do you use as a reader to help you better understand a text? For example, do you annotate carefully, reread, skim and then read, summarize in the margins, talk through it?