Genre Overview: 

Rhetorical analysis is a genre of reading analysis that investigates how rhetorical strategies and devices are used within a text, speech, visual piece, or multimodal textual product. It involves a detailed examination of the choices made by the author or creator to achieve specific rhetorical purposes, such as persuasion, argumentation, or the evocation of emotions. Writers use this genre to deeply understand a communicative product, its author's intentions, and how those intentions are being crafted within the piece for an audience. Writers also use this genre to determine if the purpose or intent of a piece is being met or not met. Rhetorical analysis is the study of persuasion, whether emotional, authoritative, or logical, and so is done best on a piece that has a specific purpose. Rhetorical analysis is most often conducted on political speeches, pieces of propaganda, historical documents, or any communicative act or product that has a specific audience and purpose.

Genre in Practice:

Rhetorical analysis is an academic genre that is most commonly used in composition or rhetoric courses. Rhetoric is the art of argument and persuasion, and rhetoricians often study the most effective ways to persuade by analyzing past instances of textual persuasion. Rhetorical analyses are interesting and important documents because they teach you that writing is not a mysterious act. Instead, persuading and convincing and arguing a topic effectively boils down to how successfully you can communicate your topic, using your unique angle, to a specific audience.  

There are many forms of rhetorical analysis that one can engage in, but the primary distinction between these types is the medium of the message. 

Below are just a few different forms of rhetorical analysis: 

1. Text-Based: This sub-genre analyzes textual mediums such as essays, articles, speeches, or literary texts. In this style, you are analyzing how the author uses written language to persuade or influence the audience.

2. Visual: This sub-genre analyzes visual texts that also include design elements, such as advertisements, YouTube videos, social media posts, art pieces or even film scenes. In this style, you are analyzing how visual elements such as design features, color, composition, symbols, and imagery contribute to the rhetorical message and intended impact on the viewer.

3. Speech: This sub-genre analyzes speeches and spoken rhetoric. In this style, you are analyzing how speakers use rhetorical devices such as tone, repetition, pacing, and delivery to convey their message effectively and persuade their audience. This style involves speech that does not include other visual elements, such as a political debate or a podcast,

4. Multimodal: This sub-genre examines how different modes of communication (text, speech, visual) work together. For example, analyzing a social media campaign that includes text, images, and videos to persuade viewers to support a cause, or an advertisement such as a Nike video campaign that has visuals, a voiceover (speech), and text. Much of what is online today is multimodal, and multimodal analysis asks how all of the elements of communication work together to persuade.

5. Comparative: This sub-genre compares two or more rhetorical pieces to analyze how different creators use rhetorical strategies to achieve similar or different rhetorical goals. In a comparative model, you are both analyzing the strategies employed by each creator and then determining which works better and why.

6. Historical: This sub-genre can examine rhetorical texts from historical contexts to understand how rhetoric has been used to influence public opinion, mobilize movements, or shape political discourse over time. This sub-genre can also be the analysis of historical documents that use rhetorical strategies as a way of reading that historical context or speaking to our current moment.  

7. Cultural: This sub-genre explores how rhetorical strategies reflect and shape cultural values, beliefs, and identities within specific communities or societies.

Rhetorical analysis can be performed on just about any piece of created communication, but it works best on pieces that have a clear argument or purpose for a specific audience. In a rhetorical analysis you are determining what is being said, why it is being said, but most importantly how it is being said.

A rhetorical analysis is an academic genre which means it uses highly formal, academic language, the integration of evidence or examples for analysis, as well as additional secondary sources. Rhetorical analysis follows a similar formula and involves the strategic and processual dissection of a communicative product into its most important and persuasive elements.

Below is a list of key elements to focus on for your rhetorical analysis:

1. Logos: The piece uses logic or appeals to reason as the central mode of persuasion. The analysis assesses how the logical argument is made and how the piece uses logos to affect the audience.

2. Pathos: The piece uses emotions or an emotional reaction as the central mode of persuasion. The analysis determines how the piece elicits an emotional reaction to persuade or convince or move the audience.

3. Ethos: The piece uses an appeal to the authority or credibility or character of the author to make an argument. The analysis examines how the author establishes their authority and credibility in order to make their argument.

4. Audience and angle: The piece appeals to a specific audience to achieve its purpose. The piece uses a unique perspective, approach or lens to achieve its purpose. The analysis determines how the piece appeals to the audience and for what purpose. The analysis determines how the author integrates their unique angle or approaches an idea creatively to craft their argument.

5. Language: The piece uses specific rhetorical devices to achieve its intended purpose.  

6. Design: The piece relies heavily on visual design, color theory, images, gesture, or art to craft its messaging and achieve its purpose.

When you are crafting your rhetorical analysis make sure you remember rely heavily on specific examples and textual evidence from the piece being analyzed to support interpretations and arguments. Make sure you also include a critical evaluation of how effectively the rhetorical strategies achieve their intended impact on the audience.

Overall, rhetorical analysis as a genre aims to deepen our understanding of how communication works rhetorically and to enhance our own communication skills by dissecting the techniques and effects of persuasive language and discourse. Moreover, sometimes texts are multi-pronged. There is the immediate, surface-level messaging, and then there is the deeper meaning. Rhetorical analysis investigates every level of communication in order to more deeply understand the great persuaders of our time, and those who may fall flat of their intended purpose.

Remember--the best rhetorical analysis arranges rhetorical analysis components to serve a bigger argument about what a piece is trying to accomplish. When you begin your rhetorical analysis, you want to determine what audience the piece is speaking to and for what purpose, and then your rhetorical analysis will be the procedural breakdown of the rhetorical elements that lend themselves to fulfilling that purpose. Finally, you must bring in evidence and examples from the piece that you are analyzing to prove and demonstrate your argument. 

Genre In Practice:

Free Write

1. What is the most moving image, video, or speech that you have encountered recently? Share your thoughts and reactions and think about what components were more effective. 

2. What do you respond to most as an appeal, logos (logic), pathos (emotion), and ethos (authority)? 

3.  How does the medium effect the message for you? Do you find certain mediums more appealing or effective? 

4. Where do you get your news? What are the rhetorical strategies of your primary news source? Who is the audience? What is the angle or lean of the messaging? 

5. How has social media affected rhetorical strategies? We talk a lot about the bubble effect, how social media creates bubbles of beliefs and ideas and we are not often introduced to ideas outside of that bubble. Make a list of the characteristics of your social media bubble. What messaging do you surround yourself with? How would you describe the majority of the posts and ideas and beliefs you see in your timeline? 

Mini-Activity: YouTube Apology Video Rhetorical Analysis

Choose a famous YouTube video apology video from the below list. 

• Colleen Balinger, "Hi"

• Jenna Marbles, "Apology"

• Logan Paul, "So Sorry"

• Doctor Mike, "Admitting when I'm Wrong"

Step 1: In small groups, watch your apology video. First, determine 1) Who is the audience of this piece? 2) What is the angle? 3) What is the purpose? 

Step 2: Next, determine if the apology is sincere or not. After coming to your conclusion, determine what rhetorical strategies the person used or failed to use that led to your conclusion. Include a discussion of logos, pathos, ethos, and rhetorical situation (angle, topic, purpose, audience).
Step 3: Finally, as a group produce a brief rhetorical analysis of the apology video and determine how it fits into the greater genre of apology videos. Is this a good example, a bad example, why? 

Questions to Ask AI

1. What are logos, pathos, and ethos and how do they affect rhetorical strategy? 

2. What is the relationship between angle and audience in a rhetorical analysis? 

3. What is the relationship between audience, angle, and medium in a rhetorical analysis? 

4. How does the topic of a piece affect rhetorical strategy? 

5. How do I integrate evidence or examples into a rhetorical analysis? 

6. What is an example of a rhetorical analysis that is clear and argument-driven? 

7. How can you identify the tone of a piece of writing, video, or image? 

8. What are the conventions of academic writing? 

9.  What is color theory?

10. What is a rhetorical device? Give me some examples.