RHETORICAL ANALYSIS

Following our recent conversations about discourse communities and the rhetorical situation, we will be putting those concepts to the test for this assignment. Your task is to conduct and compose a Rhetorical Analysis of an advertisement -- or an ad campaign -- for a product that you are a regular consumer of.

You'll have to consider a variety of variables when analyzing your artifact, including the speaker (or 'maker' of the product), the exigency and/or purpose of the product, the use of rhetorical appeals (ethos, logos, & pathos) within the advertisement, the intended/target audience, the design and/or methods by which the message is being delivered, and the potential consequences of a successful (or unsuccessful) argument.

The PURPOSE of this writing assignment is to showcase your ability to thoroughly analyze a rhetorical situation, but also, to highlight how you -- in your own delivery of the analysis -- can understand and apply these rhetorical strategies. You will have to determine HOW you are going to compose, design, and deliver your analysis. You might compose it in a Google Doc, you might use YouTube, Slides, Padlet, Hypothes.is, or some other delivery method. We'll discuss options in class.

General tips and questions to address as you conduct (and design) your analysis:

• Provide a copy of the work you are analyzing, whether it is a print text, a YouTube video, or digital ad. Find a way to embed this towards the front/top of your analysis.

• Provide a general summary of the advertisement you're analyzing; what is the product and why is it made? Then, offer a working hypothesis or tentative thesis; in other words, how successful (or not) is the advertisement of this product?

• Provide context: about the author and the exigency of the product. Who makes it? Who are they? What purpose(s) to they serve? What exigency does the product address?

• Analyze the message. What genre is the ad delivered in? A website, a commercial, a print ad? How might this genre or mode aid or abet the message? What emotions are evoked, intentionally or not? How does the design or layout of the text impact the audience? What appeals or techniques does the argument use?

  • Does the ad use ethos? Think about credibility. Who is making the argument, and how credible are they? Or, how are they creating credibility in the advertisement? How does it make the writer or creator seem trustworthy?

  • Does the ad use logos? Think about logic. What facts, reasoning, and evidence are used in the argument? How are they presented?

  • Does the ad use pathos? Think about emotion. What emotions are evoked by the advertisement? How might those emotions sway the audience into purchasing the product?

• Who is the intended audience, and how successfully does this text persuade that community? What rhetorical strategies/appeals are used to persuade the target audience to purchase (or re-purchase) this product?

• Finally, think about HOW you might compose and deliver your analysis in a rhetorically-effective manner. Think particularly about document design here. While you are analyzing the effectiveness of the advertisement, your own analysis should be thoughtfully-designed in order to showcase your own application of rhetorical strategies.

• Terms/concepts covered and explicitly referenced in your analysis should include: speaker, audience, exigency, genre, argument, ethos, logos, pathos, and consequence/effect. Although you’ll probably analyze rhetorical components separately, don’t let your analysis become a one-dimensional list of rhetorical appeals. Try to understand the connectedness between these concepts, and the intentionality of these appeals within the advertisement.