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• How to write a rhetorical analysis | Key concepts & examples

How to Write a Rhetorical Analysis | Key Concepts & Examples

Published on August 28, 2020 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on July 23, 2023.

A rhetorical analysis is a type of essay  that looks at a text in terms of rhetoric. This means it is less concerned with what the author is saying than with how they say it: their goals, techniques, and appeals to the audience.

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Table of contents

Key concepts in rhetoric, analyzing the text, introducing your rhetorical analysis, the body: doing the analysis, concluding a rhetorical analysis, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about rhetorical analysis.

Rhetoric, the art of effective speaking and writing, is a subject that trains you to look at texts, arguments and speeches in terms of how they are designed to persuade the audience. This section introduces a few of the key concepts of this field.

Appeals: Logos, ethos, pathos

Appeals are how the author convinces their audience. Three central appeals are discussed in rhetoric, established by the philosopher Aristotle and sometimes called the rhetorical triangle: logos, ethos, and pathos.

Logos , or the logical appeal, refers to the use of reasoned argument to persuade. This is the dominant approach in academic writing , where arguments are built up using reasoning and evidence.

Ethos , or the ethical appeal, involves the author presenting themselves as an authority on their subject. For example, someone making a moral argument might highlight their own morally admirable behavior; someone speaking about a technical subject might present themselves as an expert by mentioning their qualifications.

Pathos , or the pathetic appeal, evokes the audience’s emotions. This might involve speaking in a passionate way, employing vivid imagery, or trying to provoke anger, sympathy, or any other emotional response in the audience.

These three appeals are all treated as integral parts of rhetoric, and a given author may combine all three of them to convince their audience.

Text and context

In rhetoric, a text is not necessarily a piece of writing (though it may be this). A text is whatever piece of communication you are analyzing. This could be, for example, a speech, an advertisement, or a satirical image.

In these cases, your analysis would focus on more than just language—you might look at visual or sonic elements of the text too.

The context is everything surrounding the text: Who is the author (or speaker, designer, etc.)? Who is their (intended or actual) audience? When and where was the text produced, and for what purpose?

Looking at the context can help to inform your rhetorical analysis. For example, Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech has universal power, but the context of the civil rights movement is an important part of understanding why.

Claims, supports, and warrants

A piece of rhetoric is always making some sort of argument, whether it’s a very clearly defined and logical one (e.g. in a philosophy essay) or one that the reader has to infer (e.g. in a satirical article). These arguments are built up with claims, supports, and warrants.

A claim is the fact or idea the author wants to convince the reader of. An argument might center on a single claim, or be built up out of many. Claims are usually explicitly stated, but they may also just be implied in some kinds of text.

The author uses supports to back up each claim they make. These might range from hard evidence to emotional appeals—anything that is used to convince the reader to accept a claim.

The warrant is the logic or assumption that connects a support with a claim. Outside of quite formal argumentation, the warrant is often unstated—the author assumes their audience will understand the connection without it. But that doesn’t mean you can’t still explore the implicit warrant in these cases.

For example, look at the following statement:

We can see a claim and a support here, but the warrant is implicit. Here, the warrant is the assumption that more likeable candidates would have inspired greater turnout. We might be more or less convinced by the argument depending on whether we think this is a fair assumption.

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Rhetorical analysis isn’t a matter of choosing concepts in advance and applying them to a text. Instead, it starts with looking at the text in detail and asking the appropriate questions about how it works:

• What is the author’s purpose?
• Do they focus closely on their key claims, or do they discuss various topics?
• What tone do they take—angry or sympathetic? Personal or authoritative? Formal or informal?
• Who seems to be the intended audience? Is this audience likely to be successfully reached and convinced?
• What kinds of evidence are presented?

By asking these questions, you’ll discover the various rhetorical devices the text uses. Don’t feel that you have to cram in every rhetorical term you know—focus on those that are most important to the text.

The following sections show how to write the different parts of a rhetorical analysis.

Like all essays, a rhetorical analysis begins with an introduction . The introduction tells readers what text you’ll be discussing, provides relevant background information, and presents your thesis statement .

Hover over different parts of the example below to see how an introduction works.

Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech is widely regarded as one of the most important pieces of oratory in American history. Delivered in 1963 to thousands of civil rights activists outside the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., the speech has come to symbolize the spirit of the civil rights movement and even to function as a major part of the American national myth. This rhetorical analysis argues that King’s assumption of the prophetic voice, amplified by the historic size of his audience, creates a powerful sense of ethos that has retained its inspirational power over the years.

The body of your rhetorical analysis is where you’ll tackle the text directly. It’s often divided into three paragraphs, although it may be more in a longer essay.

Each paragraph should focus on a different element of the text, and they should all contribute to your overall argument for your thesis statement.

Hover over the example to explore how a typical body paragraph is constructed.

King’s speech is infused with prophetic language throughout. Even before the famous “dream” part of the speech, King’s language consistently strikes a prophetic tone. He refers to the Lincoln Memorial as a “hallowed spot” and speaks of rising “from the dark and desolate valley of segregation” to “make justice a reality for all of God’s children.” The assumption of this prophetic voice constitutes the text’s strongest ethical appeal; after linking himself with political figures like Lincoln and the Founding Fathers, King’s ethos adopts a distinctly religious tone, recalling Biblical prophets and preachers of change from across history. This adds significant force to his words; standing before an audience of hundreds of thousands, he states not just what the future should be, but what it will be: “The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.” This warning is almost apocalyptic in tone, though it concludes with the positive image of the “bright day of justice.” The power of King’s rhetoric thus stems not only from the pathos of his vision of a brighter future, but from the ethos of the prophetic voice he adopts in expressing this vision.

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The conclusion of a rhetorical analysis wraps up the essay by restating the main argument and showing how it has been developed by your analysis. It may also try to link the text, and your analysis of it, with broader concerns.

Explore the example below to get a sense of the conclusion.

It is clear from this analysis that the effectiveness of King’s rhetoric stems less from the pathetic appeal of his utopian “dream” than it does from the ethos he carefully constructs to give force to his statements. By framing contemporary upheavals as part of a prophecy whose fulfillment will result in the better future he imagines, King ensures not only the effectiveness of his words in the moment but their continuing resonance today. Even if we have not yet achieved King’s dream, we cannot deny the role his words played in setting us on the path toward it.

If you want to know more about AI tools , college essays , or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

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The goal of a rhetorical analysis is to explain the effect a piece of writing or oratory has on its audience, how successful it is, and the devices and appeals it uses to achieve its goals.

Unlike a standard argumentative essay , it’s less about taking a position on the arguments presented, and more about exploring how they are constructed.

The term “text” in a rhetorical analysis essay refers to whatever object you’re analyzing. It’s frequently a piece of writing or a speech, but it doesn’t have to be. For example, you could also treat an advertisement or political cartoon as a text.

Logos appeals to the audience’s reason, building up logical arguments . Ethos appeals to the speaker’s status or authority, making the audience more likely to trust them. Pathos appeals to the emotions, trying to make the audience feel angry or sympathetic, for example.

Collectively, these three appeals are sometimes called the rhetorical triangle . They are central to rhetorical analysis , though a piece of rhetoric might not necessarily use all of them.

In rhetorical analysis , a claim is something the author wants the audience to believe. A support is the evidence or appeal they use to convince the reader to believe the claim. A warrant is the (often implicit) assumption that links the support with the claim.

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How to write a rhetorical analysis

What is a rhetorical analysis?

What are the key concepts of a rhetorical analysis, rhetorical situation, claims, supports, and warrants.

• Step 1: Plan and prepare
• Step 2: Write your introduction
• Step 3: Write the body
• Step 4: Write your conclusion

Frequently Asked Questions about rhetorical analysis

Related articles.

Rhetoric is the art of persuasion and aims to study writers’ or speakers' techniques to inform, persuade, or motivate their audience. Thus, a rhetorical analysis aims to explore the goals and motivations of an author, the techniques they’ve used to reach their audience, and how successful these techniques were.

This will generally involve analyzing a specific text and considering the following aspects to connect the rhetorical situation to the text:

• Does the author successfully support the thesis or claims made in the text? Here, you’ll analyze whether the author holds to their argument consistently throughout the text or whether they wander off-topic at some point.
• Does the author use evidence effectively considering the text’s intended audience? Here, you’ll consider the evidence used by the author to support their claims and whether the evidence resonates with the intended audience.
• What rhetorical strategies the author uses to achieve their goals. Here, you’ll consider the word choices by the author and whether these word choices align with their agenda for the text.
• The tone of the piece. Here, you’ll consider the tone used by the author in writing the piece by looking at specific words and aspects that set the tone.
• Whether the author is objective or trying to convince the audience of a particular viewpoint. When it comes to objectivity, you’ll consider whether the author is objective or holds a particular viewpoint they want to convince the audience of. If they are, you’ll also consider whether their persuasion interferes with how the text is read and understood.
• Does the author correctly identify the intended audience? It’s important to consider whether the author correctly writes the text for the intended audience and what assumptions the author makes about the audience.
• Does the text make sense? Here, you’ll consider whether the author effectively reasons, based on the evidence, to arrive at the text’s conclusion.
• Does the author try to appeal to the audience’s emotions? You’ll need to consider whether the author uses any words, ideas, or techniques to appeal to the audience’s emotions.
• Can the author be believed? Finally, you’ll consider whether the audience will accept the arguments and ideas of the author and why.

Summing up, unlike summaries that focus on what an author said, a rhetorical analysis focuses on how it’s said, and it doesn’t rely on an analysis of whether the author was right or wrong but rather how they made their case to arrive at their conclusions.

Although rhetorical analysis is most used by academics as part of scholarly work, it can be used to analyze any text including speeches, novels, television shows or films, advertisements, or cartoons.

Now that we’ve seen what rhetorical analysis is, let’s consider some of its key concepts .

Any rhetorical analysis starts with the rhetorical situation which identifies the relationships between the different elements of the text. These elements include the audience, author or writer, the author’s purpose, the delivery method or medium, and the content:

• Audience: The audience is simply the readers of a specific piece of text or content or printed material. For speeches or other mediums like film and video, the audience would be the listeners or viewers. Depending on the specific piece of text or the author’s perception, the audience might be real, imagined, or invoked. With a real audience, the author writes to the people actually reading or listening to the content while, for an imaginary audience, the author writes to an audience they imagine would read the content. Similarly, for an invoked audience, the author writes explicitly to a specific audience.
• Author or writer: The author or writer, also commonly referred to as the rhetor in the context of rhetorical analysis, is the person or the group of persons who authored the text or content.
• The author’s purpose: The author’s purpose is the author’s reason for communicating to the audience. In other words, the author’s purpose encompasses what the author expects or intends to achieve with the text or content.
• Alphabetic text includes essays, editorials, articles, speeches, and other written pieces.
• Imaging includes website and magazine advertisements, TV commercials, and the like.
• Audio includes speeches, website advertisements, radio or tv commercials, or podcasts.
• Context: The context of the text or content considers the time, place, and circumstances surrounding the delivery of the text to its audience. With respect to context, it might often also be helpful to analyze the text in a different context to determine its impact on a different audience and in different circumstances.

An author will use claims, supports, and warrants to build the case around their argument, irrespective of whether the argument is logical and clearly defined or needs to be inferred by the audience:

• Claim: The claim is the main idea or opinion of an argument that the author must prove to the intended audience. In other words, the claim is the fact or facts the author wants to convince the audience of. Claims are usually explicitly stated but can, depending on the specific piece of content or text, be implied from the content. Although these claims could be anything and an argument may be based on a single or several claims, the key is that these claims should be debatable.
• Support: The supports are used by the author to back up the claims they make in their argument. These supports can include anything from fact-based, objective evidence to subjective emotional appeals and personal experiences used by the author to convince the audience of a specific claim. Either way, the stronger and more reliable the supports, the more likely the audience will be to accept the claim.
• Warrant: The warrants are the logic and assumptions that connect the supports to the claims. In other words, they’re the assumptions that make the initial claim possible. The warrant is often unstated, and the author assumes that the audience will be able to understand the connection between the claims and supports. In turn, this is based on the author’s assumption that they share a set of values and beliefs with the audience that will make them understand the connection mentioned above. Conversely, if the audience doesn’t share these beliefs and values with the author, the argument will not be that effective.

Appeals are used by authors to convince their audience and, as such, are an integral part of the rhetoric and are often referred to as the rhetorical triangle. As a result, an author may combine all three appeals to convince their audience:

• Ethos: Ethos represents the authority or credibility of the author. To be successful, the author needs to convince the audience of their authority or credibility through the language and delivery techniques they use. This will, for example, be the case where an author writing on a technical subject positions themselves as an expert or authority by referring to their qualifications or experience.
• Logos: Logos refers to the reasoned argument the author uses to persuade their audience. In other words, it refers to the reasons or evidence the author proffers in substantiation of their claims and can include facts, statistics, and other forms of evidence. For this reason, logos is also the dominant approach in academic writing where authors present and build up arguments using reasoning and evidence.
• Pathos: Through pathos, also referred to as the pathetic appeal, the author attempts to evoke the audience’s emotions through the use of, for instance, passionate language, vivid imagery, anger, sympathy, or any other emotional response.

To write a rhetorical analysis, you need to follow the steps below:

With a rhetorical analysis, you don’t choose concepts in advance and apply them to a specific text or piece of content. Rather, you’ll have to analyze the text to identify the separate components and plan and prepare your analysis accordingly.

Here, it might be helpful to use the SOAPSTone technique to identify the components of the work. SOAPSTone is a common acronym in analysis and represents the:

• Speaker . Here, you’ll identify the author or the narrator delivering the content to the audience.
• Occasion . With the occasion, you’ll identify when and where the story takes place and what the surrounding context is.
• Audience . Here, you’ll identify who the audience or intended audience is.
• Purpose . With the purpose, you’ll need to identify the reason behind the text or what the author wants to achieve with their writing.
• Subject . You’ll also need to identify the subject matter or topic of the text.
• Tone . The tone identifies the author’s feelings towards the subject matter or topic.

Apart from gathering the information and analyzing the components mentioned above, you’ll also need to examine the appeals the author uses in writing the text and attempting to persuade the audience of their argument. Moreover, you’ll need to identify elements like word choice, word order, repetition, analogies, and imagery the writer uses to get a reaction from the audience.

Once you’ve gathered the information and examined the appeals and strategies used by the author as mentioned above, you’ll need to answer some questions relating to the information you’ve collected from the text. The answers to these questions will help you determine the reasons for the choices the author made and how well these choices support the overall argument.

Here, some of the questions you’ll ask include:

• What was the author’s intention?
• Who was the intended audience?
• What is the author’s argument?
• What strategies does the author use to build their argument and why do they use those strategies?
• What appeals the author uses to convince and persuade the audience?
• What effect the text has on the audience?

Keep in mind that these are just some of the questions you’ll ask, and depending on the specific text, there might be others.

Once you’ve done your preparation, you can start writing the rhetorical analysis. It will start off with an introduction which is a clear and concise paragraph that shows you understand the purpose of the text and gives more information about the author and the relevance of the text.

The introduction also summarizes the text and the main ideas you’ll discuss in your analysis. Most importantly, however, is your thesis statement . This statement should be one sentence at the end of the introduction that summarizes your argument and tempts your audience to read on and find out more about it.

After your introduction, you can proceed with the body of your analysis. Here, you’ll write at least three paragraphs that explain the strategies and techniques used by the author to convince and persuade the audience, the reasons why the writer used this approach, and why it’s either successful or unsuccessful.

You can structure the body of your analysis in several ways. For example, you can deal with every strategy the author uses in a new paragraph, but you can also structure the body around the specific appeals the author used or chronologically.

No matter how you structure the body and your paragraphs, it’s important to remember that you support each one of your arguments with facts, data, examples, or quotes and that, at the end of every paragraph, you tie the topic back to your original thesis.

Finally, you’ll write the conclusion of your rhetorical analysis. Here, you’ll repeat your thesis statement and summarize the points you’ve made in the body of your analysis. Ultimately, the goal of the conclusion is to pull the points of your analysis together so you should be careful to not raise any new issues in your conclusion.

After you’ve finished your conclusion, you’ll end your analysis with a powerful concluding statement of why your argument matters and an invitation to conduct more research if needed.

A rhetorical analysis aims to explore the goals and motivations of an author, the techniques they’ve used to reach their audience, and how successful these techniques were. Although rhetorical analysis is most used by academics as part of scholarly work, it can be used to analyze any text including speeches, novels, television shows or films, advertisements, or cartoons.

The steps to write a rhetorical analysis include:

Your rhetorical analysis introduction is a clear and concise paragraph that shows you understand the purpose of the text and gives more information about the author and the relevance of the text. The introduction also summarizes the text and the main ideas you’ll discuss in your analysis.

Ethos represents the authority or credibility of the author. To be successful, the author needs to convince the audience of their authority or credibility through the language and delivery techniques they use. This will, for example, be the case where an author writing on a technical subject positions themselves as an expert or authority by referring to their qualifications or experience.

Appeals are used by authors to convince their audience and, as such, are an integral part of the rhetoric and are often referred to as the rhetorical triangle. The 3 types of appeals are ethos, logos, and pathos.

Chapter 6: Thinking and Analyzing Rhetorically

6.3 What is Rhetorical Analysis?

Rhetoric: The art of persuasion

Analysis: Breaking down the whole into pieces for the purpose of examination

Unlike summary, a rhetorical analysis does not only require a restatement of ideas; instead, you must recognize rhetorical moves that an author is making in an attempt to persuade his or her audience to do or to think something. In the 21st century’s abundance of information, it can sometimes be difficult to discern what is a rhetorical strategy and what is simple manipulation; however, an understanding of rhetoric and rhetorical moves will help you become more savvy with the information surrounding you on a day-to-day basis. In other words, rhetorical moves can be a form of manipulation, but if one can recognize those moves, then one can be a more critical consumer of information rather than blindly accepting whatever one reads, sees, hears, etc.

The goal of a rhetorical analysis is to explain what is happening in the text,  why the author might have chosen to use a particular move or set of rhetorical moves, and how those choices might affect the audience. The text you analyze might be explanatory, although there will be aspects of argument because you must negotiate with what the author is trying to do and what you think the author is doing. Edward P.J. Corbett observes, rhetorical analysis “is more interested in a literary work for what it does than for what it is”  (qtd. in Nordqvist).

One of the elements of doing a rhetorical analysis is looking at a text’s rhetorical situation. The rhetorical situation is the context out of a which a text is created.

• The questions that you can use to examine a text’s rhetorical situation are in   Chapter 6.2 .

Another element of rhetorical analysis is simply reading and summarizing the text. You have to be able to describe the basics of the author’s thesis and main points before you can begin to analyze it.

• The questions that you can use to summarize a text are in  Chapter 5.1

A third element of rhetorical analysis requires you to connect the rhetorical situation to the text. You need to go beyond summarizing and look at how the author shapes his or her text based on its context. In developing your reading and analytical skills, allow yourself to think about what you’re reading, to question the text and your responses to it, as you read. Use the following questions to help you to take the text apart—dissecting it to see how it works:

• Does the author successfully support the thesis or claim?   Is the point held consistently throughout the text, or does it wander at any point?
• Is the evidence the author used effective for the intended audience? How might the intended audience respond to the types of evidence that the author used to support the thesis/claim?
• What rhetorical moves do you see the author making to help achieve his or her purpose? Are there word choices or content choices that seem to you to be clearly related to the author’s agenda for the text or that might appeal to the intended audience?
• Describe the tone in the piece. Is it friendly? Authoritative? Does it lecture? Is it biting or sarcastic? Does the author use simple language, or is it full of jargon? Does the language feel positive or negative? Point to aspects of the text that create the tone; spend some time examining these and considering how and why they work. (Learn more about tone in Section 4.5 “ Tone, Voice, and Point of View . ”)
• Is the author objective, or does he or she try to convince you to have a certain opinion? Why does the author try to persuade you to adopt this viewpoint? If the author is biased, does this interfere with the way you read and understand the text?
• Do you feel like the author knows who you are? Does the text seem to be aimed at readers like you or at a different audience? What assumptions does the author make about their audience? Would most people find these reasonable, acceptable, or accurate?
• Does the text’s flow make sense? Is the line of reasoning logical? Are there any gaps? Are there any spots where you feel the reasoning is flawed in some way?
• Does the author try to appeal to your emotions? Does the author use any controversial words in the headline or the article? Do these affect your reading or your interest?
• Do you believe the author? Do you accept their thoughts and ideas? Why or why not?

It is also a good idea to revisit Section 2.3 “How to Read Rhetorically.” This chapter will compliment the rhetorical questions listed above and help you clearly determine the text’s rhetorical situation.

Once you have done this basic, rhetorical, critical reading of your text, you are ready to think about how the rhetorical situation ( Section 6.2 ) – the context out of which the text arises –  influences certain rhetorical appeals ( Section 6.4 ) that appear in it.

Attributions

This chapter contains material from “The Word on College Reading and Writing” by Monique Babin, Carol Burnell, Susan Pesznecker, Nicole Rosevear, Jaime Wood , OpenOregon Educational Resources , Higher Education Coordination Commission: Office of Community Colleges and Workforce Development is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0

A Guide to Rhetoric, Genre, and Success in First-Year Writing by Melanie Gagich & Emilie Zickel is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Rhetorical Analysis Definition and Examples

The analysis can be used on any communication, even a bumper sticker

• An Introduction to Punctuation

Sample Rhetorical Analyses

Examples and observations, analyzing effects, analyzing greeting card verse, analyzing starbucks, rhetorical analysis vs. literary criticism.

• Ph.D., Rhetoric and English, University of Georgia
• M.A., Modern English and American Literature, University of Leicester
• B.A., English, State University of New York

Rhetorical analysis is a form of criticism or close reading that employs the principles of rhetoric to examine the interactions between a text, an author, and an audience . It's also called rhetorical criticism or pragmatic criticism.

Rhetorical analysis may be applied to virtually any text or image—a speech , an essay , an advertisement, a poem, a photograph, a web page, even a bumper sticker. When applied to a literary work, rhetorical analysis regards the work not as an aesthetic object but as an artistically structured instrument for communication. As Edward P.J. Corbett has observed, rhetorical analysis "is more interested in a literary work for what it does than for what it is."

• A Rhetorical Analysis of Claude McKay's "Africa"
• A Rhetorical Analysis of E.B. White's "The Ring of Time"
• A Rhetorical Analysis of U2's "Sunday Bloody Sunday"
• "Our response to the character of the author—whether it is called ethos, or 'implied author,' or style , or even tone—is part of our experience of his work, an experience of the voice within the masks, personae , of the work...Rhetorical criticism intensifies our sense of the dynamic relationships between the author as a real person and the more or less fictive person implied by the work." (Thomas O. Sloan, "Restoration of Rhetoric to Literary Study." The Speech Teacher )
• "[R]hetorical criticism is a mode of analysis that focuses on the text itself. In that respect, it is like the practical criticism that the New Critics and the Chicago School indulge in. It is unlike these modes of criticism in that it does not remain inside the literary work but works outward from the text to considerations of the author and the audience...In talking about the ethical appeal in his 'Rhetoric,' Aristotle made the point that although a speaker may come before an audience with a certain antecedent reputation, his ethical appeal is exerted primarily by what he says in that particular speech before that particular audience. Likewise, in rhetorical criticism, we gain our impression of the author from what we can glean from the text itself—from looking at such things as his ideas and attitudes, his stance, his tone, his style. This reading back to the author is not the same sort of thing as the attempt to reconstruct the biography of a writer from his literary work. Rhetorical criticism seeks simply to ascertain the particular posture or image that the author is establishing in this particular work in order to produce a particular effect on a particular audience." (Edward P.J. Corbett, "Introduction" to " Rhetorical Analyses of Literary Works ")

"[A] complete   rhetorical analysis requires the researcher to move beyond identifying and labeling in that creating an inventory of the parts of a text represents only the starting point of the analyst's work. From the earliest examples of rhetorical analysis to the present, this analytical work has involved the analyst in interpreting the meaning of these textual components—both in isolation and in combination—for the person (or people) experiencing the text. This highly interpretive aspect of rhetorical analysis requires the analyst to address the effects of the different identified textual elements on the perception of the person experiencing the text. So, for example, the analyst might say that the presence of feature x will condition the reception of the text in a particular way. Most texts, of course, include multiple features, so this analytical work involves addressing the cumulative effects of the selected combination of features in the text." (Mark Zachry, "Rhetorical Analysis" from " The Handbook of Business Discourse , " Francesca Bargiela-Chiappini, editor)

"Perhaps the most pervasive type of repeated-word sentence used in greeting card verse is the sentence in which a word or group of words is repeated anywhere within the sentence, as in the following example:

In quiet and thoughtful ways , in happy and fun ways , all ways , and always , I love you.

In this sentence, the word ways is repeated at the end of two successive phrases, picked up again at the beginning of the next phrase, and then repeated as part of the word always . Similarly, the root word all initially appears in the phrase 'all ways' and is then repeated in a slightly different form in the homophonic word always . The movement is from the particular ('quiet and thoughtful ways,' 'happy and fun ways'), to the general ('all ways'), to the hyperbolic ('always')." (Frank D'Angelo, "The Rhetoric of Sentimental Greeting Card Verse." Rhetoric Review )

"Starbucks not just as an institution or as a set of verbal discourses or even advertising but as a material and physical site is deeply rhetorical...Starbucks weaves us directly into the cultural conditions of which it is constitutive. The color of the logo, the performative practices of ordering, making, and drinking the coffee, the conversations around the tables, and the whole host of other materialities and performances of/in Starbucks are at once the rhetorical claims and the enactment of the rhetorical action urged. In short, Starbucks draws together the tripartite relationships among place, body, and subjectivity. As a material/rhetorical place, Starbucks addresses and is the very site of a comforting and discomforting negotiation of these relationships." (Greg Dickinson, "Joe's Rhetoric: Finding Authenticity at Starbucks." Rhetoric Society Quarterly )

"What essentially are the differences between literary criticism analysis and rhetorical analysis? When a critic explicates Ezra Pound's Canto XLV , for example, and shows how Pound inveighs against usury as an offense against nature that corrupts society and the arts, the critic must point out the 'evidence'—the 'artistic proofs' of example and enthymeme [a formal syllogistic argument that is incompletely stated}—that Pound has drawn upon for his fulmination. The critic will also call attention to the 'arrangement' of the parts of that argument as a feature of the 'form' of the poem just as he may inquire into the language and syntax. Again these are matters that Aristotle assigned mainly to rhetoric...

"All critical essays dealing with the persona of a literary work are in reality studies of the 'Ethos' of the 'speaker' or 'narrator'—the voice—source of the rhythmic language which attracts and holds the kind of readers the poet desires as his audience, and the means this persona consciously or unconsciously chooses, in Kenneth Burke's term, to 'woo' that reader-audience." (Alexander Scharbach, "Rhetoric and Literary Criticism: Why Their Separation." College Composition and Communication )

• Definition and Examples of Explication (Analysis)
• Audience Analysis in Speech and Composition
• Definition and Examples of Ethos in Classical Rhetoric
• Stylistics and Elements of Style in Literature
• A Rhetorical Analysis of U2's 'Sunday Bloody Sunday'
• Definition of Belles-Lettres in English Grammer
• Definition of Audience
• Invented Ethos (Rhetoric)
• What is a Rhetorical Situation?
• Rhetoric: Definitions and Observations
• Critical Analysis in Composition
• Definition and Examples of the Topoi in Rhetoric
• What Is the Second Persona?
• Feminist Literary Criticism
• What Is Phronesis?
• Quotes About Close Reading

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III. Rhetorical Situation

3.3 What is Rhetorical Analysis?

A Guide to Rhetoric, Genre, and Success in First-Year Writing

Rhetoric: The art of persuasion

Analysis: Breaking down the whole into pieces for the purpose of examination

Unlike summary, a rhetorical analysis does not simply require a restatement of ideas; instead, you must recognize rhetorical moves that an author is making in an attempt to persuade their audience to do or to think something. In the 21st century’s abundance of information, it can sometimes be difficult to discern what is a rhetorical strategy and what is simple manipulation. However, an understanding of rhetoric and rhetorical moves will help you become more savvy with the information surrounding you on a day-to-day basis. In other words, rhetorical moves can be a form of manipulation, but if you can recognize those moves, then you can be a more critical consumer of information rather than blindly accepting whatever you read, see, hear, etc. as indisputable truth.

The goal of a rhetorical analysis is to explain what is happening in the text, why the author might have chosen to use a particular move or set of rhetorical moves, and how those choices might affect the audience . The text you analyze might be explanatory, although there will be aspects of argument because you must negotiate with what the author is trying to do and what you think the author is doing.

One of the elements of doing a rhetorical analysis is looking at a text’s rhetorical situation. The rhetorical situation is the context out of which a text is created. Another element of rhetorical analysis is simply reading and summarizing the text. You have to be able to describe the basics of the author’s thesis and main points before you can begin to analyze it.

To do rhetorical analysis, first connect the rhetorical situation to the text. Move beyond simply summarizing and instead look at how the author shapes their text based on its context . In developing your reading and analytical skills, allow yourself to think about what you’re reading, to question the text and your responses to it as you read. Consider using the following questions to help you to take the text apart—dissecting it or unpacking to see how it works:

• Does the author successfully support the thesis or claim? Is the point held consistently throughout the text or does it wander at any point?
• Is the evidence the author used effective for the intended audience? How might the intended audience respond to the types of evidence that the author used to support the thesis/claim?
• What rhetorical moves do you see the author making to help achieve their purpose? Are there word choices or content choices that seem to you to be clearly related to the author ’s agenda for the text?
• Describe the tone   in the piece. Is it friendly? Authoritative? Does it lecture? Is it biting or sarcastic? Does the author use simple language or is it full of jargon ? Does the language feel positive or negative? Point to aspects of the text that create the tone; spend some time examining these and considering how and why they work.
• Is the author objective, or do they try to convince you to have a certain opinion? Why does the author try to persuade you to adopt this viewpoint? If the author is biased, does this interfere with the way you read and understand the text?
• Do you feel like the author knows who you are? Does the text seem to be aimed at readers like you or at a different audience? What assumptions does the author make about their audience? Would most people find these reasonable, acceptable, or accurate?
• Does the flow of the text make sense? Is the line of reasoning logical? Are there any gaps? Are there any spots where you feel the reasoning is flawed in some way?
• Does the author try to appeal to your emotions? Does the author use any controversial words in the headline or the article? Do these affect your reading or your interest?
• Do you believe the author? Do you accept their thoughts and ideas? Why or why not?

Once you have done this basic, rhetorical, critical reading of your text, you are ready to think about how the rhetorical situation – the context out of which the text arises – influences certain rhetorical appeals that appear in it.

Practice Activity

This section contains material from:

“What is Rhetorical Analysis?” In A Guide to Rhetoric, Genre, and Success in First-Year Writing , by Melanie Gagich and Emilie Zickel. Cleveland: MSL Academic Endeavors. Accessed July 2019. https://pressbooks.ulib.csuohio.edu/csu-fyw-rhetoric/chapter/what-is-rhetorical-analysis/ . Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License .

OER credited in the text above includes:

Burnell, Carol, Jaime Wood, Monique Babin, Susan Pesznecker, and Nicole Rosevear. The Word on College Reading and Writing . Open Oregon Educational Resources. Accessed December 18, 2020. https://openoregon.pressbooks.pub/wrd/ . Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License .

To distinguish, perceive, or figure out usually through intuition, instinct, or inference; to discover information indirectly.

The person or group of people who view and analyze the work of a writer, researcher, or other content creator.

A statement, usually one sentence, that summarizes an argument that will later be explained, expanded upon, and developed in a longer essay or research paper. In undergraduate writing, a thesis statement is often found in the introductory paragraph of an essay. The plural of thesis is theses .

A brief and concise statement or series of statements that outlines the main point(s) of a longer work. To summarize is to create a brief and concise statement or series of statements that outlines the main point(s) of a longer work.

The set of circumstances that frame a particular idea or argument; the background information that is necessary for an audience to know about in order to understand why or how a text was written or produced.

The specialized language and vocabulary associated with a specific profession, trade, or group of people; words not commonly used outside the context in which they are normally found and with whom they are associated.

3.3 What is Rhetorical Analysis? Copyright © 2023 by A Guide to Rhetoric, Genre, and Success in First-Year Writing is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Table of Contents

Collaboration, information literacy, writing process, rhetorical analysis.

• © 2023 by Joseph M. Moxley - University of South Florida , Julie Staggers - Washington State University

How can I use rhetorical analysis of texts, people, events, and situations as an interpretive method? Learn how rhetorical analysis can help you understand why people say and do what they do.

Rhetorical Analysis refers to

• the practice of analyzing a rhetorical situation
• a mode of reasoning that informs composing and interpretation.
• a heuristic, an invention practice , that helps writers use to kickstart invention
• a method of analysis used to understand and critique texts .

Rhetorical Analysis is a vital workplace, academic, and personal competency–a way of producing rhetorical knowledge

In January of 2020, the COVID-19 virus swept across the world, killing people , disrupting financial markets, and transforming the lives of billions of people. It was, by all accounts an unusual rhetorical situation, a pandemic that hadn’t occurred in over 100 years.

At the onset of the pandemic, people across the globe and the news organizations that covered them had disparate interpretations of this rhetorical situation. Fox News called it a hoax, fake news, and suggested it was no worse than the flu. President Trump speculated whether a bit of bleach might be able to cleanse the human body from the virus. Rodney Howard-Browne , a pastor in Tampa, Florida, refused to shelter in place and continued to hold services and encouraged his congregation to hold hands, explaining “This Bible school is open because we’re raising young revivalists, not pansies.” Thousands of stay-at-home protesters stormed the Michigan capitol in the U.S., brandishing guns and demanding the right to return to work.

How could so many people have such different interpretations about a situation–the emergence of COVID-19 from Wuhan, China?

The best way to understand human decision making is to analyze behavior from a rhetorical perspective. Being able to think rhetorically about situations is a required workforce competency. It is foundational to successful communication.

Below are a number of questions that are designed to engage you in rhetorical analysis. To understand how to respond to these questions, please see The Rhetorical Situation.

Instructions

Below are some brainstorming prompts to guide your efforts to rhetorically analyze a topic

Context: Occasion, Exigency, Context

• What issue problem or need compels you to write or act at this particular time and place? 
• Why is this issue important right now? 
• What is at stake – and for whom?

Your notes here: 

• From the perspective of the organization, what are the purposes of this document?  
• From your perspective as the author , what are the purposes of this document?  
• What is the reader’s goal in reading/using this document? 
• What kind of information or content does the reader expect to find in this document? 
• How will the reader use or interact with the document?

Examine your own motivation for writing and any biases, past experiences, and knowledge you bring to the writing situation. Also consider your role within the organization, as well as your position relative to your target audience.

• How do you want to be perceived by the audience? 
• Tone ? Diction ? Rhetorical Stance?
• Do you need to adjust the message because of political or ethical factors? 

Consider your primary audience (the main, intended reader of the final document), secondary audiences (others who will read/review the document as it is being developed/after it has been produced), and hidden audiences (readers who are not the audience but might incidentally encounter the document and have an interest in it.) Consider primary and secondary audiences for items 1-5; focus on hidden audience in item 6.

• Who is the primary audience?
• Are you writing to an individual or a group? 
• Do you know your audience personally? 
• What is your organizational relationship to her/him/them? 
• What assumptions can you make about this audience?
• What type of audience is this and what are they looking for in the document?
• Experts: enhancing their own knowledge or evaluating the validity of a project or proposal? 
• Executives:  trying to make a decision or get up to speed? 
• Technicians:  looking for technical detail and specifics? 
• Non-specialists: limited expertise on the subject?
• How much knowledge or technical expertise does the audience have on this subject?

How will readers’ levels of expertise influence your decisions about 

• what language to use
• how much detail to include
• how much explanation of concepts/terms will be necessary
• What biases or preconceptions will your audience bring to the document?
• Is the audience enthusiastic, receptive, neutral, hostile? 
• How will their biases/preconceptions influence readers’ reception of the document? 
• Are they likely to be resistant to the situation in which the message is delivered or to the content of the message itself? 
• Are they more likely to agree, disagree or be indifferent to the information in the document?
• What cultural considerations do you need to address for this audience?
• Will you have international readers? 
• Readers for whom English is not a first language? 
• Do you need to adjust the content to accommodate these readers? 
• Language? 
• Rhetorical strategies? 
• Are there strong local customs or traditions that you must respect?
• Who are the hidden audiences for this document?
• Who else might read this document and why? 
• What is their level of knowledge and expertise? 
• What assumptions and preconceptions might they have?

Message and Medium

• Given the audience and purpose, what is the most important information to communicate? What does the audience need to know?
• Given the audience and purpose, what is the most important information to exclude? What does the audience already know, not want, or not need?

Your notes here:

• Given audience and purpose, what tone and style are most appropriate?
• What genre is most appropriate?  
• What genre does the audience expect? 
• For this genre, do you need to include or exclude specific types of information? 
• Organize contents in particular ways? 
• Incorporate specific design features?
• What medium is most appropriate for this communication, and does this medium affect writing, design or distribution of the document?
• Given the complete writing situation, what overall look is desired or most appropriate for this document?
• How will this document be delivered to the audience?

Constraints and limitations

• What practical or physical circumstances will affect the writing, design or distribution of this document?  
• What environment are you writing in? 
• What tools/technologies do you have available? 
• How much time to do you have? 
• What deadlines are important? 
• What is your budget?
• How will your own beliefs, attitudes, prejudices or habits affect writing or design?
• How will readers’ attitudes, traditions, or circumstances influence their perception of the document? 
• Where, how and in what circumstance will they interact with the document?
• What environment will they be in? 
• Will they need specific technologies to receive the document? 
• Will they be focused on the document or distracted? 
• Will they be limited by lack of time, space, or resources?
• What company policies, laws, or ethical considerations affect the writing, design, or distribution of the text?
• What relationships between individuals or groups might affect the writing, design, or distribution of the document? 
• Does the organization’s structural hierarchy matter? How so? 
• Are you in danger of stepping on anyone’s toes? 
• Is there a chance that the communication might be intercepted by an unintended audience?
• What cultural, political or other factors place constraints on this project? 

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What is Rhetorical Analysis?

Unlike a summary, a rhetorical analysis does not only require a restatement of ideas; instead, you must recognize rhetorical moves that an author is making in an attempt to persuade his or her audience to do or to think something. In the 21st century’s abundance of information, it can sometimes be difficult to discern what is a rhetorical strategy and what is simple manipulation; however, an understanding of rhetoric and rhetorical moves will help you become savvier with the information surrounding you on a day-to-day basis. In other words, rhetorical moves can be a form of manipulation, but if one can recognize those moves, then one can be a more critical consumer of information rather than blindly accepting whatever one reads, sees, hears, etc.

• Rhetoric: The art of persuasion.
• Analysis: Breaking down the whole into pieces for examination.

The goal of a rhetorical analysis is to explain what is happening in the text,  why the author might have chosen to use a particular move or set of rhetorical moves, and how those choices might affect the audience. The text you analyze might be explanatory, although there will be aspects of argument because you must negotiate with what the author is trying to do and what you think the author is doing. Edward P.J. Corbett observes, that rhetorical analysis “is more interested in a literary work for what it does than for what it is.”

One of the elements of doing a rhetorical analysis is looking at a text’s rhetorical situation. The rhetorical situation is the context in which a text is created.

Another element of rhetorical analysis is simply reading and summarizing the text. You have to be able to describe the basics of the author’s thesis and main points before you can begin to analyze it.

A third element of rhetorical analysis requires you to connect the rhetorical situation to the text. You need to go beyond summarizing and look at how the author shapes his or her text based on its context. In developing your reading and analytical skills, allow yourself to think about what you’re reading, to question the text and your responses to it, as you read. Use the following questions to help you to take the text apart—dissect it to see how it works:

• Does the author successfully support the thesis or claim?   Is the point held consistently throughout the text, or does it wander at any point?
• Is the evidence the author used effectively for the intended audience? How might the intended audience respond to the types of evidence that the author used to support the thesis/claim?
• What rhetorical moves do you see the author making to help achieve his or her purpose? Are there word choices or content choices that seem to you to be related to the author’s agenda for the text or that might appeal to the intended audience?
• Describe the tone in the piece. Is it friendly? Authoritative? Does it lecture? Is it biting or sarcastic? Does the author use simple language, or is it full of jargon? Does the language feel positive or negative? Point to aspects of the text that create the tone; spend some time examining these and considering how and why they work.
• Is the author objective, or does he or she try to convince you to have a certain opinion? Why does the author try to persuade you to adopt this viewpoint? If the author is biased, does this interfere with the way you read and understand the text?
• Do you feel like the author knows who you are? Does the text seem to be aimed at readers like you or at a different audience? What assumptions does the author make about their audience? Would most people find these reasonable, acceptable, or accurate?
• Does the text’s flow make sense? Is the line of reasoning logical? Are there any gaps? Are there any spots where you feel the reasoning is flawed in some way?
• Does the author try to appeal to your emotions? Does the author use any controversial words in the headline or the article? Do these affect your reading or your interest?
• Do you believe the author? Do you accept their thoughts and ideas? Why or why not?

Attributions

A Guide to Rhetoric, Genre, and Success in First-Year Writing  by Melanie Gagich & Emilie Zickel is licensed under a  Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Delving Into Writing and Rhetoric Copyright © by James Charles Devlin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Module 8: Analysis and Synthesis

Rhetorical analysis, learning objectives.

• Describe rhetorical analysis
• Analyze an argument using rhetorical analysis

Sometimes, the best way to learn how to write a good argument is to start by analyzing other arguments. When you do this, you get to see what works, what doesn’t, what strategies another author uses, what structures seem to work well and why, and more.

When we understand the decisions other writers make and why, it helps us make more informed decisions as writers. We can move from being the “accidental” writer, where we might do well but are not sure why, to being a “purposeful” writer, where we have an awareness of the impact our writing has on our audience at all levels.

The Importance of Rhetoric

Rhetoric is the art of effective and persuasive communication that is appropriate to a given situation. Although a thorough understanding of effective oral, written, and visual communication can take years of study, the foundation of such communication begins with rhetoric. With this foundation, even if you are just starting out, you can become a more powerful, more flexible writer. Rhetoric is key to being able to write effectively and persuasively in a variety of situations.

Every time you write or speak, you’re faced with a different rhetorical situation. Each rhetorical situation requires thoughtful consideration on your part if you want to be as effective and impactful as possible. Often, a successful essay or presentation is one that manages to persuade an audience to understand a question or issue in a particular way, or to respond to a question or issue by taking a particular action. Urging one’s reader to think or act in response to an important question or issue is one way of addressing the “so what?” element of analysis.

Many times, when students are given a writing assignment, they have an urge to skim the assignment instructions and then just start writing as soon as the ideas pop into their minds. But writing rhetorically and with intention requires that you thoroughly investigate your writing assignment (or rhetorical situation) before you begin to write the actual paper.

Thinking about concepts like purpose, audience, and voice will help you make good decisions as you begin your research and writing process.

Take a look at the following definition of rhetorical analysis:

Rhetorical analysis shows how the words, phrases, images, gestures, performances, texts, films, etc. that people use to communicate work, how well they work, and how the artifacts, as discourse, inform and instruct, entertain and arouse, and convince and persuade the audience; as such, discourse includes the possibility of morally improving the reader, the viewer, and the listener. [1]

Basically, when you conduct a rhetorical analysis, you’re examining the way authors (or speakers) communicate their message. This means you can conduct a rhetorical analysis of any act of communication. Naturally, this makes rhetorical analysis one of the most common types of analysis you will perform at the college level.

Read the following short article by Richard Stallman about “open” educational resources (which, incidentally, you are using right now), and think about how Stallman makes his argument (not what he is arguing).

Online Education Is Using a Flawed Creative Commons License

By Richard Stallman

September 2012

Prominent universities are using a nonfree license for their digital educational works. That is bad already, but even worse, the license they are using has a serious inherent problem.

When a work is made for doing a practical job, the users must have control over the job, so they need to have control over the work. This applies to software, and to educational works too. For the users to have this control, they need certain freedoms (see gnu.org ), and we say the work is “free” (or “libre,” to emphasize we are not talking about price). For works that might be useful in commercial contexts, the requisite freedom includes commercial use, redistribution and modification.

Creative Commons publishes six principal licenses. Two are free/libre licenses: the Sharealike license CC-BY-SA is a free/libre license with copyleft , and the Attribution license (CC-BY) is a free/libre license without copyleft. The other four are nonfree, either because they don’t allow modification (ND, Noderivs) or because they don’t allow commercial use (NC, Noncommercial).

In my view, nonfree licenses that permit sharing are OK for works of art/entertainment, or that present some party’s viewpoint (such as this article itself). Those works aren’t meant for doing a practical job, so the argument about the users’ control does not apply. Thus, I do not object if they are published with the CC-BY-NC-ND license, which allows only noncommercial redistribution of exact copies.

Use of this license for a work does not mean that you can’t possibly publish that work commercially or with modifications. The license doesn’t give permission for that, but you could ask the copyright holder for permission, perhaps offering a quid pro quo, and you might get it. It isn’t automatic, but it isn’t impossible.

However, two of the nonfree CC licenses lead to the creation of works that can’t in practice be published commercially, because there is no feasible way to ask for permission. These are CC-BY-NC and CC-BY-NC-SA, the two CC licenses that permit modification but not commercial use.

The problem arises because, with the internet, people can easily (and lawfully) pile one noncommercial modification on another. Over decades this will result in works with contributions from hundreds or even thousands of people.

What happens if you would like to use one of those works commercially? How could you get permission? You’d have to ask all the substantial copyright holders. Some of them might have contributed years before and be impossible to find. Some might have contributed decades before, and might well be dead, but their copyrights won’t have died with them. You’d have to find and ask their heirs, supposing it is possible to identify those. In general, it will be impossible to clear copyright on the works that these licenses invite people to make.

This is a form of the well-known “orphan works” problem, except exponentially worse; when combining works that had many contributors, the resulting work can be orphaned many times over before it is born.

To eliminate this problem would require a mechanism that involves asking someone for permission (otherwise the NC condition turns into a nullity), but doesn’t require asking all the contributors for permission. It is easy to imagine such mechanisms; the hard part is to convince the community that one such mechanisms is fair and reach a consensus to accept it.

I hope that can be done, but the CC-BY-NC and CC-BY-NC-SA licenses, as they are today, should be avoided.

Unfortunately, one of them is used quite a lot. CC-BY-NC-SA, which allows noncommercial publication of modified versions under the same license, has become the fashion for online educational works. MIT’s “Open Courseware” got it stared, and many other schools followed MIT down the wrong path. Whereas in software “open source” means “probably free, but I don’t dare talk about it so you’ll have to check for yourself,” in many online education projects “open” means “nonfree for sure”.

Even if the problem with CC-BY-NC-SA and CC-BY-NC is fixed, they still won’t be the right way to release educational works meant for doing practical jobs. The users of these works, teachers and students, must have control over the works, and that requires making them free. I urge Creative Commons to state that works meant for practical jobs, including educational resources and reference works as well as software, should be released under free/libre licenses only.

Educators, and all those who wish to contribute to on-line educational works: please do not to let your work be made non-free. Offer your assistance and text to educational works that carry free/libre licenses, preferably copyleft licenses so that all versions of the work must respect teachers’ and students’ freedom. Then invite educational activities to use and redistribute these works on that freedom-respecting basis, if they will. Together we can make education a domain of freedom.

Copyright 2012 Richard Stallman, released under the Creative Commons Attribution Noderivs 3.0 license.

How to Write a Rhetorical Analysis

As a part of thinking rhetorically about an argument, your professor may ask you to write a formal or informal rhetorical analysis essay. Rhetorical analysis is about “digging in” and exploring the strategies and writing style of a particular piece. Rhetorical analysis can be tricky because, chances are, you haven’t done a lot of rhetorical analysis in the past.

To add to this trickiness, you can write a rhetorical analysis of any piece of information, not just an essay. You may be asked to write a rhetorical analysis of an ad, an image, or a commercial.

When you analyze a work rhetorically, you explore the following concepts in a piece:

• Style or Tone
• Ethos – an appeal to ethical considerations. Is the author credible and knowledgeable? Are the actions or understandings that they are calling for ethical?
• Pathos – an appeal to emotions. Is the author trying to evoke strong feelings for or against something?
• Logos – an appeal to rational, logical understanding. Is the author using facts and “hard” research to present a case? Is the argument coherent and cohesive?
• Note that these three rhetorical modes are closely interrelated. Consider that a strong logical appeal will often convince us that a writer is ethical and diligent in his analysis, whereas an emotional appeal that seems manipulative or a weak substitute for a substantive argument may undermine a writer’s ethos, that is, his credibility.

In a rhetorical analysis, you will think about the decisions that author has made regarding the supporting appeals, the styple, tone, purpose, and audience, considering whether these decisions are effective or ineffective.

Part of understanding the rhetorical context of a situation includes understanding an author’s intent. This video walks you through the process of thinking critically about why, how, and to whom the author is speaking.

When analyzing an author’s intent, you will consider their point of view, their purpose in writing, the audience, and their tone. Taking all of this into consideration is part of understanding the broader context in which a person is writing.

You can view the transcript for “Evaluating an Author’s Intent” here (opens in new window) .

Sample Rhetorical Analysis

Here you can see a sample rhetorical analysis with some notes to help you better understand your goals when writing a formal rhetorical analysis.

rhetoric : the art of effective and persuasive communication that is appropriate to a given situation

ethos : a rhetorical appeal to ethical considerations, whether regarding the author or the topic at hand

pathos : a rhetorical appeal to emotion

logos : a rhetorical appeal to logic, often utilizing facts and figures in a strong organizational structure

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Rhetorical Foundations

16 Defining Rhetoric & Practicing Rhetorical Analysis

Jennifer Clary-Lemon; Derek Mueller; and Kate L. Pantelides

This text is an excerpt from Try This: Research Methods For Writers

Defining Rhetoric

Whereas discourse analysis examines patterns, often of language in interaction, and content analysis considers quantifiable, systemic patterns in discourse , rhetorical analysis considers the context , audience , and purpose for discourse. Rhetorical analysis helps demonstrate the significance of a text by carefully considering the rhetorical situation in which it develops and the ways that it supports its purpose. There are lots of definitions of rhetoric, and the definition that makes the most sense to you and your understanding of communication will impact how you deploy rhetorical analysis. The following are a few definitions of rhetoric:

• The ancient Greek rhetor, Aristotle : “Rhetoric may be defined as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion.”
• British rhetorician, I. A. Richards : “Rhetoric…should be a study of misunderstanding and its remedies” (3).
• Contemporary American rhetors, Elizabeth Wardle and Doug Downs : “Rhetoric is a field of study in which people examine how persuasion and communication work, and it is also the art of human interaction, communication, and persuasion” (366).
• Contemporary American genre theorist, Charles Bazerman :“The study of how people use language and other symbols to realize human goals and carry out human activities. . . . ultimately a practical study offering people greater control over their symbolic activity” (6).

Try This: Defining Rhetoric (30 minutes) 

Find a few alternative definitions of rhetoric on your own, and see which one is most appealing to you. Now, mush them together, paraphrase, and come up with a definition that resonates with your understanding of rhetoric.

Practicing Rhetorical Analysis

Rhetorical analysis helps us understand the various components that make a communicative act/artifact successful or not. A key component to effective rhetorical analysis is careful, active attention to what the author and her text are trying to accomplish. Krista Ratcliffe calls such attention rhetorical listening .

Most people summarize rhetorical listening as an orientation of active openness toward communication, and Ratcliffe identifies multiple components for such a stance:

• “acknowledging the existence” of the other, their self, and discourse;
• listening for “(un)conscious presences, absences, and unknowns”;
• and purposefully “integrating this information into our world views and decision making.” (29)

Rhetorical listening often draws our attention to absences. Jacqueline Jones Royster’s work on literacy practices, particularly of nineteenth century Black women, demonstrates how listening for and being curious about absences often leads us to understudied rhetors . Temptaous McCoy has coined the term amplification rhetorics (AR), a method of seeking out and amplifying rhetorical practices that may not have been effectively heard. She describes AR as a way of examining and celebrating the experiences and community rhetorics of Black and marginalized communities.

Try This: Analyzing Keywords (60 minutes) 

Working with something you have recently written, assign keywords (one or two-word phrases) you believe would do well to convey its significance (don’t count, just consider what you think is most important about the text). To do so, follow these steps:

• Identify five to seven keywords based on your sense of the text.
• Then, turn to a keyword generating tool, such as TagCrowd (tagcrowd.com) or the NGram Analyzer (guidetodatamining.com/ngramAnalyzer/). Copy and paste your writing into the platform and initiate the analysis with the aid of the keyword generating tool. Which words or phrases match (as in, you thought they were significant and they show up frequently in your text)? Which words or phrases appear in one list but not the other? What do you think explains the differences in the lists?
• Next, identify two keywords or phrases you believe are not sufficiently represented in either list. What are these keywords or phrases, and how are they significant to the work you are doing? Develop a one-page revision memo that accounts for how you could go about expanding the presence of these underrepresented words or phrases in your writing.

Another way of thinking of rhetorical listening in the context of texts is Peter Elbow’s practice of “ The Believing Game ,” in which he encourages audience members to suspend potential disbelief or critique of a text. Instead of starting with critique, he works to step into the authors’ shoes and actually believe whatever they are suggesting. Complimentary to this practice is Sonja K. Foss and Cindy L. Griffin’s formulation of invitational rhetoric . They offer invitational rhetoric as counter to understandings of rhetoric as primarily about persuasion, like Aristotle’s definition of rhetoric. They see persuasion as ultimately about power, whereas invitational rhetoric instead works to develop equitable relationships. Like rhetorical listening, invitational rhetoric is a method for establishing understanding within relationships. They define such work as “an invitation to the audience to enter the rhetor’s world and see it as the rhetor does” (5). Although these approaches all differ, what they have in common is using rhetorical awareness to invite understanding rather than arguing for one’s own point of view or “winning” an argument.

Try This: Rhetorical Analysis (60 minutes) 

Practice rhetorical analysis. Select an article that interests you, perhaps one that you identified to work with in Chapter 3 or something you came across when you searched for potential corpora at the beginning of this chapter. Spend some time considering why this article is persuasive or appealing to you. The following questions may aid your consideration:

• Who is the audience? What evidence suggests this audience?
• What is the context in which it was written? What evidence suggests this?
• What is its purpose? You might also identify the thesis or orienting principle and consider the larger relationship between the work’s purpose and its stated argument or principle. What evidence leads you to this finding?
• Who is the author? Really—who is the author? Draw on your worknet findings ( see Try This  for a discussion of worknets)  and consider the author’s relationship to this rhetorical situation. What is the exigency, or reason, for writing this work? Or, you might return to considering the Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How of this article.

There are many ways to practice rhetorical analysis, although it is often reduced to an equation rather than a tool for discovery of a text. Let rhetorical analysis be a method that opens up understanding and possibility rather than one that simply labels certain words or passages. Consider how identifying a particular rhetorical appeal adds depth and nuance to a text and connects you to it in complex ways. For instance, the previous “Try This” offered two approaches to rhetorical analysis. The next “Try This” offers two additional approaches. Consider which one resonates most with you. Which method helps you identify the significance and interest of a text?

Try This: More Rhetorical Analysis (60 minutes) 

Working with a text/genre/corpus of your choosing, develop responses to the following prompt. If you seek a text as the basis of your analysis, we recommend Captain Brett Crozier’s letter to shipmates aboard the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt during the 2020 COVID-19 outbreak .

In what ways does the author offer specific appeals to the audience? Consider particular instances of the following appeals in the text:

• Kairos, which refers to timeliness—indications of why the text is contemporarily relevant
• Ethos, which generally concerns the relative credibility of an author or argument
• Logos, which means demonstrating specific pieces of evidence that support the text’s purpose
• Pathos, which relates to engaging the emotions

Practice rhetorical listening. Ask yourself the following questions:

• What is not here? Are there any notable absences? Things/people/ideas the author does not mention?
• Are there ideas or appeals that potentially challenge your acceptance of the author’s work?

Although we have asked you to identify individual appeals, such rhetorical tools usually work together, and it can be hard to pull them apart. In identifying the various rhetorical components of a text, consider how they collaborate to make a text successful and persuasive . . . or not.

a research method for studying written or spoken language in relation to its social context; aims to understand how language is used in real life situations; includes investigating purposes and effects of different types of language

a research tool used to determine the presence of certain words, themes, or concepts within some given qualitative data (i.e. text); quantification and analyzation of the presence, meanings, and relationships of certain words, themes, or concepts in one collection of material

communication of thought in conversation;  a formal discussion of a subject in speech or writing, as a dissertation, treatise, sermon, etc.

the careful study of a text/speech where the context, audience, and purpose for discourse are considered; the process that helps demonstrate the significance of a text by carefully considering the rhetorical situation in which it develops and the ways that it supports its purpose

(also known as rhetorical situation) the context or set of circumstances out of which a text arises (author/speaker, audience, purpose, setting, text/speech)

a component of the rhetorical situation; any person or group who is the intended recipient of a message conveyed through text, speech, audio; the person/people the author is trying to influence

the author’s motivations for creating the text

(also known as rhetorical context) the context or set of circumstances out of which a text arises (author, audience, purpose, setting, text)

author - the creator of a text or speech; the person or organization who is communicating in order to try to effect a change in his or her audience

audience - any person or group who is the intended recipient of the text and also the person/people the author is trying to influence

purpose - the author’s motivations for creating the text

setting - the particular occasion or event that prompted the text’s creation at the particular time it was created

text - the author’s composition, including the format and medium in which it was composed

a particular method of listening developed by rhetoric scholar Krista Ratcliffe in which the listener is not trying to evaluate whether they agree or disagree with the speaker but instead listen to hear and identify with the speaker

an orator or author who can be considered a master of rhetorical principles

a practice developed by Peter Elbow that encourages audience members to suspend potential disbelief or critique of a text; approaching the text with the intent to actually believe whatever the author is suggesting

approaches communication as collaborative rather than argumentative or combative; the purpose of invitational rhetoric is understanding rather than persuasion

Defining Rhetoric & Practicing Rhetorical Analysis Copyright © 2021 by Jennifer Clary-Lemon; Derek Mueller; and Kate L. Pantelides is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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III. Rhetorical Situation

3.2 What is Rhetorical Analysis?

A Guide to Rhetoric, Genre, and Success in First-Year Writing

Rhetoric: The art of persuasion

Analysis: Breaking down the whole into pieces for the purpose of examination

Unlike summary, a rhetorical analysis does not simply require a restatement of ideas; instead, you must recognize rhetorical moves that an author is making in an attempt to persuade their audience to do or to think something. In the 21st century’s abundance of information, it can sometimes be difficult to discern what is a rhetorical strategy and what is simple manipulation. However, an understanding of rhetoric and rhetorical moves will help you become more savvy with the information surrounding you on a day-to-day basis. In other words, rhetorical moves can be a form of manipulation, but if you can recognize those moves, then you can be a more critical consumer of information rather than blindly accepting whatever you read, see, hear, etc. as indisputable truth.

The goal of a rhetorical analysis is to explain what is happening in the text, why the author might have chosen to use a particular move or set of rhetorical moves, and how those choices might affect the audience . The text you analyze might be explanatory, although there will be aspects of argument because you must negotiate with what the author is trying to do and what you think the author is doing.

One of the elements of doing a rhetorical analysis is looking at a text’s rhetorical situation. The rhetorical situation is the context out of which a text is created. Another element of rhetorical analysis is simply reading and summarizing the text. You have to be able to describe the basics of the author’s thesis and main points before you can begin to analyze it.

To do rhetorical analysis, first connect the rhetorical situation to the text. Move beyond simply summarizing and instead look at how the author shapes their text based on its context . In developing your reading and analytical skills, allow yourself to think about what you’re reading, to question the text and your responses to it as you read. Consider using the following questions to help you to take the text apart—dissecting it or unpacking to see how it works:

• Does the author successfully support the thesis or claim? Is the point held consistently throughout the text or does it wander at any point?
• I s the evidence the author used effective for the intended audience? How might the intended audience respond to the types of evidence that the author used to support the thesis/claim?
• What rhetorical moves do you see the author making to help achieve their purpose? Are there word choices or content choices that seem to you to be clearly related to the author ’s agenda for the text?
• Describe the tone   in the piece. Is it friendly? Authoritative? Does it lecture? Is it biting or sarcastic? Does the author use simple language or is it full of jargon ? Does the language feel positive or negative? Point to aspects of the text that create the tone; spend some time examining these and considering how and why they work.
• Is the author objective, or do they try to convince you to have a certain opinion? Why does the author try to persuade you to adopt this viewpoint? If the author is biased, does this interfere with the way you read and understand the text?
• Do you feel like the author knows who you are? Does the text seem to be aimed at readers like you or at a different audience? What assumptions does the author make about their audience? Would most people find these reasonable, acceptable, or accurate?
• Does the flow of the text make sense? Is the line of reasoning logical? Are there any gaps? Are there any spots where you feel the reasoning is flawed in some way?
• Does the author try to appeal to your emotions? Does the author use any controversial words in the headline or the article? Do these affect your reading or your interest?
• Do you believe the author? Do you accept their thoughts and ideas? Why or why not?

Once you have done this basic, rhetorical, critical reading of your text, you are ready to think about how the rhetorical situation – the context out of which the text arises – influences certain rhetorical appeals that appear in it.

This section contains material from:

“What is Rhetorical Analysis?” In A Guide to Rhetoric, Genre, and Success in First-Year Writing , by Melanie Gagich and Emilie Zickel. Cleveland: MSL Academic Endeavors. Accessed July 2019. https://pressbooks.ulib.csuohio.edu/csu-fyw-rhetoric/chapter/what-is-rhetorical-analysis/ . Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License .

OER credited in the text above includes:

Burnell, Carol, Jaime Wood, Monique Babin, Susan Pesznecker, and Nicole Rosevear. The Word on College Reading and Writing . Open Oregon Educational Resources. Accessed December 18, 2020. https://openoregon.pressbooks.pub/wrd/ . Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License .

To distinguish, perceive, or figure out usually through intuition, instinct, or inference; to discover information indirectly.

The person or group of people who view and analyze the work of a writer, researcher, or other content creator.

A statement, usually one sentence, that summarizes an argument that will later be explained, expanded upon, and developed in a longer essay or research paper. In undergraduate writing, a thesis statement is often found in the introductory paragraph of an essay. The plural of thesis is theses .

A brief and concise statement or series of statements that outlines the main point(s) of a longer work. To summarize is to create a brief and concise statement or series of statements that outlines the main point(s) of a longer work.

The set of circumstances that frame a particular idea or argument; the background information that is necessary for an audience to know about in order to understand why or how a text was written or produced.

The specialized language and vocabulary associated with a specific profession, trade, or group of people; words not commonly used outside the context in which they are normally found and with whom they are associated.

3.2 What is Rhetorical Analysis? Copyright © 2022 by A Guide to Rhetoric, Genre, and Success in First-Year Writing is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Part 4: Rhetorical Modes

16 Rhetorical Analysis

What is a rhetorical analysis.

A Rhetorical analysis begins with the examination of the content and the style of the author. A rhetorical analysis is an examination of the topic, purpose, audience, and context of a piece of text.  A text can be written, spoken, or conveyed in some other manner.

Sometimes, the best way to learn how to write a good argument is to start by analyzing other arguments. When you do this, you get to see what works, what doesn’t, what strategies another author uses, what structures seem to work well and why, and more.

In the paragraphs that follow, you will learn about analyzing arguments for both content and rhetorical strategies. The content analysis may come a little easier for you, but the rhetorical analysis is extremely important. To become a good writer, we must develop the language of writing and learn how to use that language to talk about the “moves” other writers make.

When we understand the decisions other writers make and why, it helps us make more informed decisions as writers. We can move from being the “accidental” writer, where we might do well but are not sure why, to being a “purposeful” writer, where we have an awareness of the impact our writing has on our audience at all levels.

The ultimate goal of a rhetorical analysis is twofold:

• to analyze how well the rhetorical elements work together to create a fitting response, and
• to evaluate the overall effectiveness of that response.

To examine that goal, there are a couple of approaches that can be made in writing an analysis. The first is to ask some basic questions.

• How has the place affected the writing?
• How have the rhetorical elements (rhetorical appeals) affected the writing?
• Do the means of delivery, genre,  or medium impact the audience?

As you begin, search your answers for an idea that can serve as your claim or thesis. For example, you might focus on the declared goal—if there is one—of the creator of the text and whether it has been achieved.

You might evaluate how successfully that creator has identified the rhetorical audience, shaped a fitting response, or employed the best available means.

Or you might focus on the use of the rhetorical appeals and the overall success of their use.

Whether or not you agree with the text is beside the point. Your job is to analyze  how  and  how well  the text’s creator has accomplished the purpose of that text.

• HOW is the analysis of the parts
• HOW WELL is the overall evaluation

Thinking Rhetorically

To add to this trickiness, you can write a rhetorical analysis of any piece of information, not just an essay. You may be asked to write a rhetorical analysis of an ad, an image, or a commercial.

The key is to start now! Rhetorical analysis is going to help you think about strategies other authors have made and how or why these strategies work or don’t work. In turn, your goal is to be more aware of these things in your own writing.

When you analyze a work rhetorically, you are going to explore the following concepts in a piece:

• Style or Voice

You will be thinking about the decisions an author has made along these lines and thinking about whether these decisions are effective or ineffective.

Types of Argument

Just as there many types of essays you will write in college and many types of writing in general, argumentative essays come in many forms as well. There are three basic structures or types of an argument you are likely to encounter in college: the Toulmin  argument, the  Rogerian  argument, and the  Classical or Aristotelian  argument. Although the Toulmin method was originally developed to analyze arguments, some professors will ask you to model its components. Each of these serves a different purpose, and deciding which type to use depends upon the rhetorical situation: In other words, you have to think about what is going to work best for your audience given your topic and the situation in which you are writing.

Toulmin Argument

The Toulmin method, developed by philosopher  Stephen Toulmin ,  is essentially a structure for  analyzing  arguments. But the elements for analysis are so clear and structured that many professors now have students write argumentative essays with the elements of the Toulmin method in mind.

This type of argument works well when there are no clear truths or absolute solutions to a problem. Toulmin arguments take into account the complex nature of most situations.

There are six elements for analyzing, and, in this case, presenting arguments that are important to the Toulmin method.

These elements of a Toulmin analysis can help you as both a reader and a writer. When you’re analyzing arguments as a reader, you can look for these elements to help you understand the argument and evaluate its validity. When you’re writing an argument, you can include these same elements to ensure your audience will see the validity in your claims.

The  claim  is a statement of opinion that the author is asking her or his audience to accept as true.

There should be more laws to regulate texting while driving in order to cut down on dangerous car accidents.

The  grounds  are the facts, data, or reasoning upon which the claim is based. Essentially, the grounds are the facts making the case for the claim.

The National Safety Council estimates that 1.6 million car accidents per year are caused by cell phone use and texting.

The  warrant  is what links the grounds to the claim. This is what makes the audience understand how the grounds are connected to supporting the claim. Sometimes, the warrant is implicit (not directly stated), but the warrant can be stated directly as well. As a writer, you are making assumptions about what your audience already believes, so you have to think about how clear your warrant is and if you need to state it directly for your audience. You must also think about whether or not a warrant is actually an unproven claim.

The  backing  gives additional support for the claim by addressing different questions related to your claim.

The  qualifier  is essentially the limits to the claim or an understanding that the claim is not true in all situations. Qualifiers add strength to claims because they help the audience understand the author does not expect her or his opinion to be true all of the time or for her or his ideas to work all of the time. If writers use qualifiers that are too broad, such as “always” or “never,” their claims can be really difficult to support. Qualifiers like “some” or “many” help limit the claim, which can add strength to the claim.

The  rebuttal is when the author addresses the opposing views. The author can use a rebuttal to pre-empt counter-arguments, making the original argument stronger.

Aristotelian Argument

The Aristotelian or classical argument is a style of argument developed by the famous Greek philosopher and rhetorician,  Aristotle . In this style of argument, your goal as a writer is to convince your audience of something. The goal is to use a series of strategies to persuade your audience to adopt your side of the issue. Although  ethos ,  pathos , and  logos  play a role in any argument, this style of argument utilizes them in the most persuasive ways possible.

Of course, your professor may require some variations, but here is the basic format for an Aristotelian, or classical, argumentative essay:

• Introduce your issue.  At the end of your introduction, most professors will ask you to present your thesis. The idea is to present your readers with your main point and then dig into it.
• Present your case  by explaining the issue in detail and why something must be done or a way of thinking is not working. This will take place over several paragraphs.
• Address the opposition.  Use a few paragraphs to explain the other side. Refute the opposition one point at a time.
• Provide your proof.  After you address the other side, you’ll want to provide clear evidence that your side is the best side.
• Present your conclusion.  In your conclusion, you should remind your readers of your main point or thesis and summarize the key points of your argument. If you are arguing for some kind of change, this is a good place to give your audience a call to action. Tell them what they could do to make a change.

For a visual representation of this type of argument, check out the Aristotelian infographic below.

Rogerian Argument

When most of us think of arguments, we think about winners of arguments and losers of arguments. Arguments, even sometimes academic arguments, can be strong and forceful. An Aristotelian or classical argument is a strong, “this is my assertion and here’s why I am right” kind of argument. But that kind of argument isn’t going to work in all situations. When your audience is a really difficult one in the sense that you know your audience isn’t going to completely agree with your side of the issue, it can be a good idea to try to find a middle ground. The Rogerian argument finds that middle ground.

Based on the work of psychologist  Carl Rogers   (pictured on the right), a Rogerian argument focuses on finding a middle ground between the author and the audience. This type of argument can be extremely persuasive and can help you, as a writer, understand your own biases and how you might work to find common ground with others.

Here is a summary of the basic strategy for a Rogerian argument, and the infographic on the following page should be helpful as well.

• In your essay, first,  introduce the problem .
• Acknowledge the other side  before you present your side of the issue. This may take several paragraphs.
• Next, you should carefully  present your side  of the issue in a way that does not dismiss the other side. This may also take several paragraphs.
• You should then work to  bring the two sides together . Help your audience see the benefits of the middle ground. Make your proposal for the middle ground here, and be sure to use an even, respectful tone. This should be a key focus of your essay and may take several paragraphs.
• Finally, in your conclusion,  remind your audience of the balanced perspective  you have presented and make it clear how both sides benefit when they meet in the middle.

For a visual representation of this type of argument, check out the Rogerian infographic below.

Types of Argument Activity

This interaction will give you a chance to practice what you have learned about the different types of argument and when it might be most appropriate to use one type over another. Read the scenarios and, then, choose a rhetorical style. You will be told if you are correct or not, and which type of argument would work best in that scenario, and why.

After completing this activity, you may download or print a completion report that summarizes your results.

Analyze This

You have learned about some of the most common organizational structures for academic arguments and learned about the benefits of each one—as well as when it might be best to use each one.

Before you begin working with your own academic argument structure, it might be helpful to review another academic argument for its organizational structure.

In the following video, watch as one student analyzes a traditional academic argumentative essay ( Cheap Thrills: The Price of Fast Fashion ), one that most closely follows the Aristotelian structure.

See It in Practice

Although there are many options for organizing your argument, understanding these three basic argumentative types can help you make a good decision about which type of argument would work best given your topic and audience.

Watch as our student writer makes notes and comes to a decision about which type of argument she’ll use as she works with a controversial topic and a potentially difficult audience.

Thinking About Content

The  Toulmin method described in this learning area is a great tool for analyzing the content of an argument. In fact, it was developed as a tool for analyzing the content of an argument. Using the different concepts we learn in the Toulmin model, we are able to examine an argument by thinking about what claim is being made, what evidence is being used to support that claim, the warrants behind that evidence, and more.

When you analyze an argument, there is a good chance your professor will have you review and use the Toulmin information provided in the Excelsior OWL.

However, the lessons you have learned about  logical fallacies  will also help you analyze the content of an argument. You’ll want to look closely at the logic being presented in the claims and evidence. Does the logic hold up, or do you see logical fallacies? Obviously, if you see fallacies, you should really question the argument.

Basic Questions for a Rhetorical Analysis

What is the rhetorical situation?

• What occasion gives rise to the need or opportunity for persuasion?
• What is the historical occasion that would give rise to the composition of this text?

Who is the author/speaker?

• How does he or she establish ethos (personal credibility)?
• Does he/she come across as knowledgeable? fair?
• Does the speaker’s reputation convey a certain authority?

What is his/her intention in speaking?

• To attack or defend?
• To exhort or dissuade from certain action?
• To praise or blame?
• To teach, to delight, or to persuade?

Who makes up the audience?

• Who is the intended audience?
• What values does the audience hold that the author or speaker appeals to?
• Who have been or might be secondary audiences?
• If this is a work of fiction, what is the nature of the audience within the fiction?

What is the content of the message?

• Can you summarize the main idea?
• What are the principal lines of reasoning or kinds of arguments used?
• What topics of invention are employed?
• How does the author or speaker appeal to reason? to emotion?

What is the form in which it is conveyed?

• What is the structure of the communication; how is it arranged?
• What oral or literary genre is it following?
• What figures of speech (schemes and tropes) are used?
• What kind of style and tone is used and for what purpose?

How do form and content correspond?

• Does the form complement the content?
• What effect could the form have, and does this aid or hinder the author’s intention?

Does the message/speech/text succeed in fulfilling the author’s or speaker’s intentions?

• Does the author/speaker effectively fit his/her message to the circumstances, times, and audience?
• Can you identify the responses of historical or contemporary audiences?

What does the nature of the communication reveal about the culture that produced it?

• What kinds of values or customs would the people have that would produce this?
• How do the allusions, historical references, or kinds of words used place this in a certain time and location?

Sample Rhetorical Analysis

Seeing rhetorical analysis in action is one of the best ways to understand it. Read the sample rhetorical analysis of an article . If you like, you can read the original article the student analyzes: Why I won’t buy an iPad (and think you shouldn’t, either) .

Time to Write

Purpose:  This assignment will demonstrate the understanding of Rhetorical Analysis and Preliminary Research. This assignment will connect to the course competencies of writing for specific rhetorical contexts, using appropriate conventions in writing, an

This assignment frames the topic, purpose, audience, and context for the approved research topic from Research Prospectus 1.

At this time you will utilize two or three sources as in-text citations and on the References.

Choose a single source (selection) for rhetorical analysis that meets the following criteria.

• Is the text responding to an opportunity to make a change? (Does it look at solving a problem?)
• What is the rhetorical opportunity for change?
• How is it identified?
• How is it connected to your research proposal topic?

After you have selected a text, read it carefully, keeping in mind that the ultimate goal of a rhetorical analysis is twofold: (1) to analyze how well the rhetorical elements work together to create a fitting response, and (2) to assess the overall effectiveness of that response. Then, write answers to the following questions, citing material from the text itself to support each answer:

Are the available means anchored to the writer’s place?

• Who created the text? What credentials or expertise does that person or group have? Why is the creator of the text engaged with this opportunity? Is this an opportunity that can be modified through language? What opinions or biases did the person or group bring to the text?
• What is the place (physical, social, academic, economic, and so on) from which the creator of the text forms and sends the response? What are the resources of that place? What are its constraints (or limitations)?
• Who is the audience for the message? What relationship is the creator of the text trying to establish with the audience? What opinions or biases might the audience hold? How might the audience feel about this rhetorical opportunity? And, most important, can this audience modify or help bring about a modification of the rhetorical opportunity? How?

Do the available means include the rhetorical elements of the message itself?

• Identify the rhetorical elements of the message itself. In other words, where and how does the person or group employ the rhetorical appeals of ethos, pathos, and logos? How are credentials, goodwill, or good sense evoked to establish ethos? How is evidence (examples, statistics, data, and so forth) used to establish logos? And how is an emotional connection created to establish pathos? Keep in mind that the rhetorical appeals can sometimes overlap.
• What kind of language does the creator of the text use? Is it plain or specialized, slang or formal? How does the choice of language reveal how the person or group views the intended audience?

Do the available means deliver a message in a genre and medium that reaches the audience?

• Is the intended audience for the text a rhetorical audience? Draw on evidence from the text to support your answer.
• If the audience is a rhetorical one, what can it do to resolve the problem?
• Does the response address and fit the rhetorical opportunity? How exactly? If not, how might the response be reshaped so that it does fit?
• Is the response delivered in an appropriate medium that reaches its intended audience? Why is that medium appropriate? Or how could it be adjusted to be appropriate?
• Can you think of other responses to similar rhetorical situations? What genre is commonly used? Does the creator of this text use that genre? If not, what is the effect of going against an audience’s expectations?

Now that you have carefully read the text and answered all of the questions, you are ready to write your rhetorical analysis. How does your analysis of the use of the available means reveal

• How well the rhetorical elements work together to create a fitting response to an opportunity for change?
• How effective the response is?

As you begin, search your answers for an idea that can serve as your claim or thesis. For example, you might focus on the declared goal—if there is one—of the creator of the text and whether it has been achieved. You might assess how successfully that creator has identified the rhetorical audience, shaped a fitting response, or employed the best available means. Or you might focus on the use of the rhetorical appeals and the overall success of their use.

Whether or not you agree with the text is beside the point.

Your job is to analyze an essay, examining how, and how well, the text’s creator has accomplished the purpose of that text.

Key Grading Considerations

• The intro provides context for the rest of the paper
• The thesis is explicit, specific, and clear
• The thesis is analytical in nature
• The conclusion recasts the thesis and provides cohesion to the whole paper
• rhetorical triangle (audience, author, purpose)
• and rhetorical appeals (logos, ethos, pathos)
•  focus is on an analysis (not a summary or the author’s own ideas of the issue)
• Smooth flow of ideas ordered in a logical sequence that effectively guides the reader
• Each paragraph has a well-supported clearly-stated main point
• The topic sentences focus on analysis
• There is an effective use of transitions.
• Uses the Rhetorical Triangle to Target the Audience
• Language Use & Mechanics
• Fully in APA Format

ATTRIBUTIONS

• Content Adapted from Excelsior Online Writing Lab (OWL). (2020).  Excelsior College. Retrieved from https://owl.excelsior.edu/ licensed under a  Creative Commons Attribution-4.0 International License .
• Basic Questions for Rhetorical Analysis.  Authored by : Gideon O. Burton.  Provided by : Brigham Young University.  Located at :  http://rhetoric.byu.edu .  Project : Silva Rhetoricae.  License :  CC BY: Attribution
• Original Content from  Christine Jones. (2021). Rhetorical Analysis. Licensed under a CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication .

English 102: Journey Into Open Copyright © 2021 by Christine Jones is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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How to Write a Rhetorical Analysis Essay–Examples & Template

What is a Rhetorical Analysis Essay?

A rhetorical analysis essay is, as the name suggests, an analysis of someone else’s writing (or speech, or advert, or even cartoon) and how they use not only words but also rhetorical techniques to influence their audience in a certain way. A rhetorical analysis is less interested in what the author is saying and more in how they present it, what effect this has on their readers, whether they achieve their goals, and what approach they use to get there. 

Its structure is similar to that of most essays: An Introduction presents your thesis, a Body analyzes the text you have chosen, breaks it down into sections and explains how arguments have been constructed and how each part persuades, informs, or entertains the reader, and a Conclusion section sums up your evaluation. 

Note that your personal opinion on the matter is not relevant for your analysis and that you don’t state anywhere in your essay whether you agree or disagree with the stance the author takes.

In the following, we will define the key rhetorical concepts you need to write a good rhetorical analysis and give you some practical tips on where to start.

Key Rhetorical Concepts

Your goal when writing a rhetorical analysis is to think about and then carefully describe how the author has designed their text so that it has the intended effect on their audience. To do that, you need to consider a number of key rhetorical strategies: Rhetorical appeals (“Ethos”, “Logos”, and “Pathos”), context, as well as claims, supports, and warrants.

Ethos, Logos, and Pathos were introduced by Aristotle, way back in the 4th century BC, as the main ways in which language can be used to persuade an audience. They still represent the basis of any rhetorical analysis and are often referred to as the “rhetorical triangle”. 

These and other rhetorical techniques can all be combined to create the intended effect, and your job as the one analyzing a text is to break the writer’s arguments down and identify the concepts they are based on.

Rhetorical Appeals

Rhetorical appeal #1: ethos.

Ethos refers to the reputation or authority of the writer regarding the topic of their essay or speech and to how they use this to appeal to their audience. Just like we are more likely to buy a product from a brand or vendor we have confidence in than one we don’t know or have reason to distrust, Ethos-driven texts or speeches rely on the reputation of the author to persuade the reader or listener. When you analyze an essay, you should therefore look at how the writer establishes Ethos through rhetorical devices.

Does the author present themselves as an authority on their subject? If so, how? 

Do they highlight how impeccable their own behavior is to make a moral argument? 

Do they present themselves as an expert by listing their qualifications or experience to convince the reader of their opinion on something?

Rhetorical appeal #2: Pathos

The purpose of Pathos-driven rhetoric is to appeal to the reader’s emotions. A common example of pathos as a rhetorical means is adverts by charities that try to make you donate money to a “good cause”. To evoke the intended emotions in the reader, an author may use passionate language, tell personal stories, and employ vivid imagery so that the reader can imagine themselves in a certain situation and feel empathy with or anger towards others.

Rhetorical appeal #3: Logos

Logos, the “logical” appeal, uses reason to persuade. Reason and logic, supported by data, evidence, clearly defined methodology, and well-constructed arguments, are what most academic writing is based on. Emotions, those of the researcher/writer as well as those of the reader, should stay out of such academic texts, as should anyone’s reputation, beliefs, or personal opinions. 

Text and Context

To analyze a piece of writing, a speech, an advertisement, or even a satirical drawing, you need to look beyond the piece of communication and take the context in which it was created and/or published into account. 

Who is the person who wrote the text/drew the cartoon/designed the ad..? What audience are they trying to reach? Where was the piece published and what was happening there around that time? 

A political speech, for example, can be powerful even when read decades later, but the historical context surrounding it is an important aspect of the effect it was intended to have. 

Claims, Supports, and Warrants

To make any kind of argument, a writer needs to put forward specific claims, support them with data or evidence or even a moral or emotional appeal, and connect the dots logically so that the reader can follow along and agree with the points made.

The connections between statements, so-called “warrants”, follow logical reasoning but are not always clearly stated—the author simply assumes the reader understands the underlying logic, whether they present it “explicitly” or “implicitly”. Implicit warrants are commonly used in advertisements where seemingly happy people use certain products, wear certain clothes, accessories, or perfumes, or live certain lifestyles – with the connotation that, first, the product/perfume/lifestyle is what makes that person happy and, second, the reader wants to be as happy as the person in the ad. Some warrants are never clearly stated, and your job when writing a rhetorical analysis essay is therefore to identify them and bring them to light, to evaluate their validity, their effect on the reader, and the use of such means by the writer/creator. 

What are the Five Rhetorical Situations?

A “rhetorical situation” refers to the circumstance behind a text or other piece of communication that arises from a given context. It explains why a rhetorical piece was created, what its purpose is, and how it was constructed to achieve its aims.

Rhetorical situations can be classified into the following five categories:

Asking such questions when you analyze a text will help you identify all the aspects that play a role in the effect it has on its audience, and will allow you to evaluate whether it achieved its aims or where it may have failed to do so.

Rhetorical Analysis Essay Outline

Analyzing someone else’s work can seem like a big task, but as with every assignment or writing endeavor, you can break it down into smaller, well-defined steps that give you a practical structure to follow. 

To give you an example of how the different parts of your text may look when it’s finished, we will provide you with some excerpts from this rhetorical analysis essay example (which even includes helpful comments) published on the Online Writing Lab website of Excelsior University in Albany, NY. The text that this essay analyzes is this article on why one should or shouldn’t buy an Ipad. If you want more examples so that you can build your own rhetorical analysis template, have a look at this essay on Nabokov’s Lolita and the one provided here about the “Shitty First Drafts” chapter of Anne Lamott’s writing instruction book “Bird by Bird”.

Analyzing the Text

When writing a rhetorical analysis, you don’t choose the concepts or key points you think are relevant or want to address. Rather, you carefully read the text several times asking yourself questions like those listed in the last section on rhetorical situations to identify how the text “works” and how it was written to achieve that effect.

Start with focusing on the author : What do you think was their purpose for writing the text? Do they make one principal claim and then elaborate on that? Or do they discuss different topics? 

Then look at what audience they are talking to: Do they want to make a group of people take some action? Vote for someone? Donate money to a good cause? Who are these people? Is the text reaching this specific audience? Why or why not?

What tone is the author using to address their audience? Are they trying to evoke sympathy? Stir up anger? Are they writing from a personal perspective? Are they painting themselves as an authority on the topic? Are they using academic or informal language?

How does the author support their claims ? What kind of evidence are they presenting? Are they providing explicit or implicit warrants? Are these warrants valid or problematic? Is the provided evidence convincing?  

Asking yourself such questions will help you identify what rhetorical devices a text uses and how well they are put together to achieve a certain aim. Remember, your own opinion and whether you agree with the author are not the point of a rhetorical analysis essay – your task is simply to take the text apart and evaluate it.

If you are still confused about how to write a rhetorical analysis essay, just follow the steps outlined below to write the different parts of your rhetorical analysis: As every other essay, it consists of an Introduction , a Body (the actual analysis), and a Conclusion .

Rhetorical Analysis Introduction

The Introduction section briefly presents the topic of the essay you are analyzing, the author, their main claims, a short summary of the work by you, and your thesis statement . 

Tell the reader what the text you are going to analyze represents (e.g., historically) or why it is relevant (e.g., because it has become some kind of reference for how something is done). Describe what the author claims, asserts, or implies and what techniques they use to make their argument and persuade their audience. Finish off with your thesis statement that prepares the reader for what you are going to present in the next section – do you think that the author’s assumptions/claims/arguments were presented in a logical/appealing/powerful way and reached their audience as intended?

Have a look at an excerpt from the sample essay linked above to see what a rhetorical analysis introduction can look like. See how it introduces the author and article , the context in which it originally appeared , the main claims the author makes , and how this first paragraph ends in a clear thesis statement that the essay will then elaborate on in the following Body section:

Cory Doctorow ’s article on BoingBoing is an older review of the iPad , one of Apple’s most famous products. At the time of this article, however, the iPad was simply the latest Apple product to hit the market and was not yet so popular. Doctorow’s entire career has been entrenched in and around technology. He got his start as a CD-ROM programmer and is now a successful blogger and author. He is currently the co-editor of the BoingBoing blog on which this article was posted. One of his main points in this article comes from Doctorow’s passionate advocacy of free digital media sharing. He argues that the iPad is just another way for established technology companies to control our technological freedom and creativity . In “ Why I Won’t Buy an iPad (and Think You Shouldn’t, Either) ” published on Boing Boing in April of 2010, Cory Doctorow successfully uses his experience with technology, facts about the company Apple, and appeals to consumer needs to convince potential iPad buyers that Apple and its products, specifically the iPad, limit the digital rights of those who use them by controlling and mainstreaming the content that can be used and created on the device . 

Doing the Rhetorical Analysis

The main part of your analysis is the Body , where you dissect the text in detail. Explain what methods the author uses to inform, entertain, and/or persuade the audience. Use Aristotle’s rhetorical triangle and the other key concepts we introduced above. Use quotations from the essay to demonstrate what you mean. Work out why the writer used a certain approach and evaluate (and again, demonstrate using the text itself) how successful they were. Evaluate the effect of each rhetorical technique you identify on the audience and judge whether the effect is in line with the author’s intentions.

To make it easy for the reader to follow your thought process, divide this part of your essay into paragraphs that each focus on one strategy or one concept , and make sure they are all necessary and contribute to the development of your argument(s).

One paragraph of this section of your essay could, for example, look like this:

One example of Doctorow’s position is his comparison of Apple’s iStore to Wal-Mart. This is an appeal to the consumer’s logic—or an appeal to logos. Doctorow wants the reader to take his comparison and consider how an all-powerful corporation like the iStore will affect them. An iPad will only allow for apps and programs purchased through the iStore to be run on it; therefore, a customer must not only purchase an iPad but also any programs he or she wishes to use. Customers cannot create their own programs or modify the hardware in any way. 

As you can see, the author of this sample essay identifies and then explains to the reader how Doctorow uses the concept of Logos to appeal to his readers – not just by pointing out that he does it but by dissecting how it is done.

Rhetorical Analysis Conclusion

The conclusion section of your analysis should restate your main arguments and emphasize once more whether you think the author achieved their goal. Note that this is not the place to introduce new information—only rely on the points you have discussed in the body of your essay. End with a statement that sums up the impact the text has on its audience and maybe society as a whole:

Overall, Doctorow makes a good argument about why there are potentially many better things to drop a great deal of money on instead of the iPad. He gives some valuable information and facts that consumers should take into consideration before going out to purchase the new device. He clearly uses rhetorical tools to help make his case, and, overall, he is effective as a writer, even if, ultimately, he was ineffective in convincing the world not to buy an iPad . 

Frequently Asked Questions about Rhetorical Analysis Essays 

What is a rhetorical analysis essay.

A rhetorical analysis dissects a text or another piece of communication to work out and explain how it impacts its audience, how successfully it achieves its aims, and what rhetorical devices it uses to do that. 

While argumentative essays usually take a stance on a certain topic and argue for it, a rhetorical analysis identifies how someone else constructs their arguments and supports their claims.

What is the correct rhetorical analysis essay format?

Like most other essays, a rhetorical analysis contains an Introduction that presents the thesis statement, a Body that analyzes the piece of communication, explains how arguments have been constructed, and illustrates how each part persuades, informs, or entertains the reader, and a Conclusion section that summarizes the results of the analysis. 

What is the “rhetorical triangle”?

The rhetorical triangle was introduced by Aristotle as the main ways in which language can be used to persuade an audience: Logos appeals to the audience’s reason, Ethos to the writer’s status or authority, and Pathos to the reader’s emotions. Logos, Ethos, and Pathos can all be combined to create the intended effect, and your job as the one analyzing a text is to break the writer’s arguments down and identify what specific concepts each is based on.

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Conspiracy Theory PWR 1 Fall Quarter 2008 Jonah G. Willihnganz Stanford University

The Rhetorical Analysis Audience: Freshman Class of Stanford University 5 pages, double-spaced Due on Coursework Friday, October 10 by 12 noon (in Materials folder)

What a rhetorical analysis is:

A rhetorical analysis is an examination of how a text persuades us of its point of view. It focuses on identifying and investigating the way a text communicates, what strategies it employs to connect to an audience, frame an issue, establish its stakes, make a particular claim, support it, and persuade the audience to accept the claim. It is not, as we have noted, an analysis of what a text says but of what strategies it uses to communicate effectively. You must, of course, begin your analysis with what the text says—its argument—but the work of the essay is to show how the text persuades us of its position.  You might think of the piece you choose to analyze as a particular kind of engine whose machinations produce particular results. An analysis of the engine examines all the parts, how they work in isolation, together, etc. to see how the engine does what it does, or makes what it makes.

Your task is to produce a rhetorical analysis of one of the pieces (or pair of pieces) listed below. Your goal is to show how the essay, debate, or story's structure, rhetorical appeals, and strategies attempt to persuade us of its/their point of view. In your essay you should have a clear thesis of your own about the piece (or pair of pieces) you are analyzing and supply strong textual evidence to support your thesis. I would suggest that before you begin you read the guidelines below and the Evaluation Rubric that we will use to assess essays in this course (in the Course Materials section of the web site). There you will find the six principle criteria for a successful essay.

• Maclolm X, " The Ballot or the Bullet "
• Martin Amis, " The Last Days of Muhhamad Atta "
• Joseph McCarthy, " Repsonse to Edward R. Murrow" on See It Now

The Form of the Essay:

As we will discuss, there is no set form , no five-paragraph standard, for writing essays such as these. But since your goal is to convince your audience of an argument, you need to use the best strategies to do so. Persuasive writing, we have seen, gains the attention and establishes a connection with its audience, provides a context for the argument it will pursue, and pursues that argument (often declared near the beginning of the essay, but not always) by building the strongest case possible. So in your first paragraph or two you will probably want to capture the attention of your audience, provide the context of the analysis you are making, and provide either your claim or your purpose (with the actual claim to come later). The form of your essay will flow from the thesis you invent, so constructing a strong one is crucial. Make sure that your thesis obeys the prescriptions we have discussed in class. Your thesis needs to be an argument , concrete and specific (vs. abstract and vague), and of appropriate scope (defensible within the constraints of the essay). An argument, as we have said, is something with which someone might conceivably disagree. Your goal here, as we have said, is to show us how a text works, what strategy or strategies it uses. Therefore a general statement such as "This story has very powerful rhetorical strategies " does not qualify as an argument, but "This essay's consistent use of war analogies encourages the audience to emotionally identify with its position" does.

Be sure to give your essay a good title, one that signals the slant and/or value of your analysis. In this essay, the only citations you need to provide are the page numbers of directly quoted passages of the text you are analyzing.

Some suggestions about the process of writing this essay:

Successful essays are approached in stages. Writing, we have said, is a process of thinking, and so to produce a piece capable of persuading others we almost always need to write in stages. The first stage is pouring out our first impressions, our "first take" on a text or subject. This draft, notes or outline—whatever form it takes—is usually some record or story of our thoughts. It is important to recognize that this then needs to be transformed in a second stage into something that is much more like a "performance"—something carefully calculated to persuade a particular audience of the position we have developed. Make sure you submit for scrutiny this second stage .

We have done a bit of this kind of analysis in class, so the activity of thinking about the texts should feel familiar.  When we write essays that try to perform a clear but sophisticated analysis, it is sometimes helpful to approach the task in discrete steps.  When producing a rhetorical analysis, you might try the following. Take notes at each stage of these stages and write out full sentences as often as possible so that you begin to make your formulations early-on. 

Firs t, describe for yourself as fully as possible what you take to be the general meaning/message of the piece . Do the same for more specific, particular effects. Then begin your examination the piece's strategies by looking at whether/how the work signals in any way its audience, purpose, and context.  Begin with what the works do for you—that is, start with your experience.  This isn't a license to say anything you like, or, for example, to speak simply about what the works remind you of, since you will have to account for the effects you describe and how they are produced. 

Second , identify the most prominent strategies the work uses to produce the meaning/effect you have described. Use terms and concepts we have discussed in class—the Aristotelian forms of appeal, metaphor, metonymy, analogy, common ground, etc—and any others that seem useful.  Look in particular for any patterns that are developed by the work.  Finally, decide what seem to be the most important elements of the work for you—that is, identify what is for you to be the most striking, meaningful effect(s) of the work and methods used to achieve it/them.  This will help you hone in on a thesis.

Third, craft a few sentences that explain why, in your view, the piece works the way it does. Try to craft these sentences so that they set up, first, a description of what the meaning/effect of the piece is, and, second, what strategies, elements, etc. help produce that meaning/effect. Then isolate the textual evidence you will use—probably only a portion of what you have noted.

Fourth, write the draft. Make sure you give us your thesis or an indication of your thesis early.  (You can give us the whole argument right up front, pose a question you'll explore, whose answer will be your thesis, or give us a general version of your thesis that you'll refine for us by the end of your essay.)  However, since you are writing not for a teacher but to interest and then convince your classmates about something, abandon the traditional, academic 5-paragraph form (thesis, 3 or so points of evidence, recapitulation of thesis).  In its place, try to write a narrative of your analysis—you might use phrase such as "when I/one first encounters. . ." "what is striking about. . ." "I/one realizes, begins to recognize. . ."  Take us on the journey of your own discovery, a discovery that is expressed as a claim about the works under consideration. 

Trump revives his wish that immigrants came from rich White countries

There’s a pattern to Donald Trump’s more controversial comments. He makes them, and the media covers them. He then denies what he said or ignores the controversy until it blows over. Later, the Band-Aid pulled off, he says them again more explicitly and without the same backlash.

And here we are again.

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In January 2018, less than a year after he took office, Trump disparaged immigrants from Haiti, Central America and Africa as coming from “shithole” countries. Why, he lamented in a closed-door meeting, couldn’t the country instead receive immigrants from countries like Norway?

A firestorm erupted, in part because it cemented the broad perception that Trump’s views of migration were inseparable from his views of race. The then-president attempted to backpedal , though, in this case, he was engaged in a credibility battle with more-credible elected officials. And then the controversy passed.

Over the weekend, he revisited the theme. The New York Times reports that, according to an attendee at Trump’s fundraiser Saturday night, Trump made similar comments about immigrants once again — explicitly referencing the 2018 controversy.

Immigrants arriving today “are people coming in from prisons and jails. They’re coming in from just unbelievable places and countries, countries that are a disaster,” he said, according to the attendee. He then tried to explain his comments six years ago.

“When I said, you know, Why can’t we allow people to come in from nice countries, I’m trying to be nice,” Trump said, according to the Times. “Nice countries, you know like Denmark, Switzerland? Do we have any people coming in from Denmark? How about Switzerland? How about Norway?”

There are two possibilities for why Trump still maintains this position on immigration. The first is that he (who, you might recall, once served as president of the United States) is deeply ignorant about immigration. The second is that he believes racist rhetoric is a successful political strategy.

The case for ignorance is simple. There are two reasons more immigrants to the United States come from Mexico, El Salvador and Guatemala than come from Denmark and Norway. The first is that you can get to the United States from El Salvador by walking, driving and taking a train. The second is that the Central American countries from which a lot of immigrants come are among the poorest in the world .

Trump spends a lot of energy pretending that people are trying to enter the country for nefarious reasons, as he did last week when he claimed that China is trying to “build an army” inside the United States. One reason he does this is that it heightens the idea that immigrants are dangerous. The other is that he will not concede that the U.S. economy has been faring well under President Biden , drawing immigrants to the country. But that economic pull is unquestionably a core part of why Central Americans — and others — are trying to come to the United States.

Countries like Haiti or Yemen (which he called out by name at the fundraiser, according to the Times) are also a point of origin for many immigrants because they “are a disaster,” in Trump’s phrasing. It’s sort of amazing that he presents this as some sort of unanswerable question. Why are immigrants only coming from collapsing countries with high rates of poverty instead of stable ones with wealthy populations? Well, because of the things you just said.

But, of course, there’s also that subtext of race. He complains about countries that are largely non-White and, given his rhetorical track record, it’s hard not to assume that he does so in part to heighten the racial fears among his target audience. Trump has made White grievance a central part of his politics from the outset and has recently pledged to focus part of his energy as president, should he win in November, on dismantling systems aimed at addressing historic racial inequality.

Trump says that countries like Mexico are sending criminals to the United States because, again, it is a useful way for him to suggest that Biden’s border policies are somehow dangerous. In recent months, Trump has repeatedly told an anecdote about seeing immigrants from Congo being interviewed on the news, with the migrants telling the interviewer that they had been released from prison. If such an interview exists, I couldn’t find it — but the odds are very good that one doesn’t. Trump knows what his followers hear when they hear “criminals from Congo,” so he keeps letting them hear it.

These two motivations for Trump’s rhetoric — a failure to understand or admit why immigrants come and his own racism or an interest in elevating racist fears — are not exclusive. It can be both that Trump refuses to understand why people from struggling nations want to come to this wealthier, more stable one and that he has more affinity for people who aren’t Hispanic or Black. Just as it is the case, I will note, that those things overlap outside the context of Trump. Many of the places that are struggling economically or politically are struggling in part because they are places with large Hispanic or Black populations that have historically been disadvantaged through racist foreign policies.

Trump often talks about how immigration has increased so much since he left office. That’s true, in part because he left office at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, as the United States (and other countries) was struggling to rebuild its economy following (or during) widespread closures. This is how it works.

Immigration is an enormously complicated system, certainly, but the questions Trump asks are uncomplicated ones to answer.

Election 2024

Get the latest news on the 2024 election from our reporters on the campaign trail and in Washington.

Who is running? President Biden and Donald Trump both secured their parties’ nominations for the presidency , formalizing a general-election rematch.

Key issues: Compare where the candidates stand on such issues as abortion, climate and the economy.

Key dates and events: From January to June, voters in all states and U.S. territories will pick their party’s nominee for president ahead of the summer conventions. Here are key dates and events on the 2024 election calendar .

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2.1: What is Rhetorical Analysis?

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Simply defined, rhetoric is the art or method of communicating effectively to an audience, usually with the intention to persuade; thus, rhetorical analysis means analyzing how effectively a writer or speaker communicates her message or argument to the audience.

The ancient Greeks, namely Aristotle, developed rhetoric into an art form, which explains why much of the terminology that we use for rhetoric comes from Greek. The three major parts of effective communication, also called the Rhetorical Triangle , are ethos , patho s, and logos , and they provide the foundation for a solid argument. As a reader and a listener, you must be able to recognize how writers and speakers depend upon these three rhetorical elements in their efforts to communicate. As a communicator yourself, you will benefit from the ability to see how others rely upon ethos, pathos, and logos so that you can apply what you learn from your observations to your own speaking and writing.

Rhetorical analysis can evaluate and analyze any type of communicator, whether that be a speaker, an artist, an advertiser, or a writer, but to simplify the language in this chapter, the term “writer” will represent the role of the communicator.