SOAPSTone Analysis Rubric
Name ______________________________________________
Overview:
Score
4
3
2
Date _______________
Period ___________
SOAPSTone is an effective strategy when beginning rhetorical analysis. Before
readers can confidently assert whether a speaker’s strategies are effective, they
must understand the full context of the speaker, audience, and text.
Key Ideas & Supporting Details
In addition to Level 3, reader may:
• Address nuances and subtleties in details and meaning
• Analyze significant shifts in the piece as they pertain to the speaker’s audience and
purpose
• Explore contradictory details and meanings
• Create multiple connections across rhetorical elements
In addition to Level 2, using multiple pieces of textual evidence, reader accurately:
• Speaker: Analyzes the speaker’s potential (or apparent) bias.
• Occasion: Identifies multiple layers of context, including the broader occasion.
Analyzes how the occasion impacts the argument.
• Audience: Analyzes potential audience attitudes toward the subject and speaker,
including stated and implied audiences.
• Purpose: Analyzes primary and secondary (implicit) purposes with respect to
audience.
• Tone: Analyzes how tone reveals the speaker’s attitude toward the subject. Analyzes
how different aspects of the text reinforce the tone.
Using specific, relevant textual evidence, reader accurately:
• Speaker: Identifies speaker and briefly discusses the speaker’s background.
• Occasion: Identifies the immediate context for the piece.
• Audience: Identifies primary (explicit) and secondary audiences, including
background information, such as age, gender, profession, marital status, education,
religion, culture, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, etc.
• Purpose: Identifies primary (explicit) purpose of the piece.
• Subject: Succinctly identifies the main idea in a few words or phrases.
• Tone: Identifies the overall tone of the piece.
Deconstructing the rubric:
Level 2:
OBSERVATION. This is the identification of each of the SOAPSTone elements, using
specific textual evidence. In other words, this is where the reader notes the
speaker, occasion, audience, purpose, and tone and identifies where the text
reveals these elements.
Level 3:
ANALYSIS. In addition to the basic identification from Level 2, the reader analyzes
relationships between and among SOAPSTone elements. This task requires the
reader to analyze the impact of each element on the writer’s purpose and
audience. The reader must also engage with the complexity of each of the
SOAPSTone elements, such as multiple layers of context, implied audiences and
purposes, etc.
Level 4:
EXTENSION. At the Level 4, readers delve into details that are less obvious upon a
first reading. They grapple with apparent contradictions and shifts to explore what
they might reveal about the speaker, audience, and purpose.