Yes, I’m Going to Teach a
Rhetorical Analysis!
D.R. Ransdell
Here’s how I felt
when I learned I
would be teaching a
rhetorical analysis!!!!
???!!??
I had no idea what it was.
I’d never written one.
I wasn’t convinced I’d ever read one.
And I had a week to get ready to teach a whole unit
on it!
Let’s back up. The first problem? I wasn’t sure what
“rhetoric” was.
It turned out that the most standard definition
came from Aristotle.
Rhetoric
• It had to do with figuring out “the available
means of persuasion” for any given situation.
• And to do that? I learned three magic words:
• logos
• ethos
• pathos
Funny…
• By then I’d been to Greece several times, but
on the beach, I never once heard talk of
Rhetorical Analysis!
Logical Appeals
• I could, however, piece together the meaning of
the words.
• In Greek logos means “word.” In Rhetorical
Analysis, we might think of “logos” as the logic of
the text or the facts of the text.
• Pathos has to do with “feeling.” This might be
translated into what the reader feels through the
text. (This might be related to sympathy or
empathy.)
• Ethos has to do with the “ethics” of the text,
meaning the trustworthiness of the author.
The Rhetorical Triangle
text
logos,
ethos,
pathos
author
reader
So far, so good!
• But how to transfer this to the classroom?
• (It was hard enough for me to understand as a
graduate student!)
• Students do well with visuals. So I start with
visuals.
• On the first day of our rhetorical analysis unit,
I explain about the magic words and the
rhetorical triangle.
• Then I show students ads.
Ads Make Rhetoric Easy!
• There’s nothing like an advertisement for a
sports car to help students understand how
ads try to appeal to our sense of logos, ethos,
and pathos.
• Most ads use obvious kinds of rhetoric that
students can identify.
• For the second day of the unit, I have students
bring in their own favorites.
More Easy Examples!
• Commercials are also really great for helping
students understand examples of rhetoric.
• My favorite? A youtube commercial billed as
“best commerical ever.”
• Given something that happened years ago in
my own family, I agree:
• http://youtu.be/x-OqKWXirsU
We Get Rhetorical Analysis!
• Students “get” commercials.
• Commercials make this scary thing called
“rhetorical analysis” easier to handle.
• With the Superbowl coming up, there are lots
of possibilities for watching interesting
commercials.
• On the next days of the unit, I have students
show their favorites.
But It’s Not Enough!
• You might think to yourself, yes, but let’s get
more sophisticated. Here’s my answer:
• http://youtu.be/a6W2ZMpsxhg
• It has an appeal to logos.
• It has appeals to ethos.
• It has appeals to pathos.
• I’ll spend another day in class working with
similar texts.
Then We’re Ready for….
• Print texts!
• It’s also easy to find lots of varieties of print
texts to use for analysis.
• A glance at The Daily Wildcat offers all kinds of
possibilities.
• My own favorite is the Time column by Joel
Stein, who usually pokes fun at cultural
trends.
• There are dozens of texts to analyze in WPL.
Summing Things Up
• In my own class, I’ll spend another couple of
days on print texts before we dive into writing
a Rhetorical Analysis.
• I’ll give the students a small number of texts
to choose from for their essays.
• Despite my best intentions, some will
summarize the text instead of analyzing it.
• However, many will catch on.
Yay!
• We’ve mastered Rhetorical
Analysis!
• Oh, wait. Not really. There
are some problems.
Victory!
• We’ve mastered Rhetorical Analysis!
• Oh, wait. Not really. There are some problems.
Many Problems
• The biggest problem?
• Students assume they can simplistically write
a five-paragraph essay and produce a splendid
Rhetorical Analysis.
• They’ll squish all their points about logos into
one paragraph. Same for ethos and logos.
Voila`! Isn’t that good enough?
• Well……..
• That’s the subject of another presentation!
Thanks!
• ransdell@email.arizona.edu
• http://ransdell.faculty.arizona.edu