U1: Rhetorical Situation, Claims, Evidence

About the Exam

● Before getting into the content, here are some important things to know about the exam!

● The test is 3 hours and 15 minutes long.

● The exam has 45 multiple choice questions and you will have an hour to answer them. This counts towards 45% of your score.

● The “free response” section consists of 3 essays. It includes a rhetorical analysis, synthesis essay, and argumentative essay. You will have 2 hours and 15 minutes to write 3 essays. This counts for 55% of your score.

Overview of Unit 1

1A. Identify and describe components of the rhetorical situation: the exigence, audience, writer, purpose, context, and message.

3A. Identify and explain claims and evidence within an argument.

4A. Develop a paragraph that includes a claim and evidence supporting the claim.

Rhetorical Situation

● In this class you will learn about finding the rhetorical situation of a given text. This means you have to find out the audience, purpose, exigence and message of the text.

● You will also see the word “rhetoric” a lot. Rhetoric just means communication!

SOAPSTone

● This refers to a helpful tactic to analyze the given text. SOAPSTone is a reminder for the various things you should look for/think about when analyzing the text.

The letters stand for:

○ S- speaker. Who do they represent, who are they, and what beliefs do they have?

○ O- occasion. What happened that caused the writer to write this?

○ A- audience. Who is the writing intended for? What are their values and beliefs?

○ P- purpose. Why is the author writing this? What does the author want you to know?

○ S- subject. What is the writer talking about? What message are they trying to send?

○ T- tone. What is the author's attitude?

● The exigence of a text is basically, “why did the author write this”?

● Here’s a diagram to help you further understand the rhetorical situation.

Rhetorical Devices

● Writers also use rhetoric devices to convey their message, which help to make the writing more effective and helps the reader understand the text better. These devices include:

○ Alliteration: When words placed close together share the same initial sounds.

○ Onomatopoeia: A word that describes a sound by mimicking/resembling it.

○ Hyperbole: An exaggeration.

○ Personification: Giving something human-like qualities.

○ Simile: Comparing two unlike things using “like” or “as”

○ Metaphor: Comparison of two unlike objects, but without using “like” or as”

○ Repetition: Repeating a word or phrase in a short span of text in order to emphasize something.

○ Imagery: Describing something in great detail.

● There are many more rhetorical devices, but these are a few examples of common ones.

Rhetorical Appeals

● An appeal is a strategy used to persuade an audience of a message. There are 3 main types of rhetorical appeals: Logos, ethos, and pathos

Logos

○ The logical appeal. This strategy uses reason and logic to persuade the audience. Statistics, data, citations from experts, and real life experiences are all examples of indicators for logos.

Ethos

○ The ethical appeal. This strategy uses the reputation and credibility of the writer/speaker to persuade the audience. Credentials of the speaker, acknowledging the counterclaim, and putting an emphasis on the shared values between the writer/speaker and the audience are a few examples of indicators for ethos.

Pathos

○ The emotional appeal. This strategy uses the audience’s emotions to persuade them. Detailed descriptions, stories about emotional events, and the tone of the speaker are examples of things to look for to identify the pathos appeal.

Claims

● A claim is essentially an arguable statement. Claims do not simply state an obvious fact, but make a statement that requires a defense or justification. There are 3 main types of claims.

Claim of Fact

○ Is something true, or not? Facts can become arguable when they question someone's beliefs or if they are controversial.

Claim of Value

○ What is something worth? These claims argue if something is good or bad, wrong or right, or desirable or undesirable. When writing a claim of value, you must state the extent to which something you argue is true.

Claim of Policy

○ These claims propose a change to a policy/rule or attitude/perspective.

Evidence

● To support and justify a claim, you need evidence. There are various types of evidence you can use to support your claim. Some of these types include:

○ Expert opinion

○ Statistics

○ Pictures/Illustrations

○ Personal experience

○ Testimonies

○ Experiments

● It is important to introduce your evidence. To introduce your evidence, make sure to explain what the context of the evidence is. Here’s an example:

○ The President explains how America’s performance in the world market would be negatively affected, “It would make it more difficult for American goods to compete in foreign markets, more difficult to withstand competition from foreign imports, and thus more difficult to improve our balance of payments position, and stem the flow of gold.”

● With this example, it is explained where the evidence is from (President Kennedy), and what the context of the evidence used is (America competing in the world market). 

● After you introduce and insert your evidence, you must also explain it. It’s important to state exactly how your evidence connects to your argument and how it helps prove your point.

● Here’s another example showing how to incorporate evidence in a body paragraph.