Introduction to Rhetoric and
Rhetorical Analysis Through the
SOAPSTone Plus Method
Mr. Johnson
Austin High School
AP Language and Composition
Scholarly Definitions of Rhetoric
• Plato: [Rhetoric] is the "art of enchanting the soul."
(The art of winning the soul by discourse.)
• Aristotle: Rhetoric is "the faculty of discovering in any
particular case all of the available means of persuasion."
• Cicero: "Rhetoric is one great art comprised of five
lesser arts: inventio, dispositio, elocutio, memoria, and
pronunciatio." Rhetoric is "speech designed to
persuade."
• Quintillian: "Rhetoric is the art of speaking well."
• Source: American Rhetoric
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/rhetoricdefinitions.htm
copyright 2007 James Nelson
Rhetoric Defined
• “the faculty of observing in any given case the
available means of persuasion.”
--Aristotle
• A thoughtful, reflective activity leading to effective
communication
A good rhetorician can resolve conflict without
confrontation, persuade others of their position, or
move an audience to take action.
copyright 2007 James Nelson
• Rhetoric is a key feature of a democratic society; in a
nation that values differences of opinion, rhetoric is our
means of bringing others to our point of view and
accomplishing change.
• Positive connotations: rhetoric is the exchange of ideas,
an ongoing dialogue, a civil argument, a discourse.
• Negative connotations: rhetoric is often misunderstood
as manipulation, coercion, propaganda; these are
possible (mis)uses, but they are not the primary goal.
The Definition You MUST Know
• Rhetoric: The act of choosing the most effective means
of convincing or persuading an audience.
• Also, the choices made by the author in order to
influence the audience and convey particular effects.
What is said and how it is said are of equal importance.
• Rhetoric is, most importantly, about choice. The key
question to ask is this; “Why did the author choose to
use this strategy over any other? What is the intended
effect on us as readers? How does this strategy help
the author achieve his or her purpose?”
Aspects of Rhetoric That We Will
Analyze
• Above all is the thesis, also known as the argument,
major claim, proposition, and a variety of other
terms. The overall message of the work. The
argument.
• Lexical level: the diction, or word choice of a piece.
Words and phrases only.
• Syntactical level: the syntax, or sentence structure of a
piece. Clauses and sentences only.
• Appeals—logos, ethos, and pathos
• Structural level: the organization and structure of the
piece. Paragraphs and larger segments; the work as a
whole.
More Aspects For Analysis
• Appeals: logos, ethos, and pathos.
• Tone: the author’s attitude
• The context of the piece; when, where, why,
how it occurred.
• The speaker: who is the author or speaker,
really? What do we know about him or her
that can influence our perception of the text?
– Also, the persona created by the speaker
The Rhetorical Triangle
copyright 2007 James Nelson
Another way to look at it…
copyright 2007 James Nelson
The Triangles
• What does the logos-ethos-pathos model
imply about the relative position and
importance of each of the three Aristotelian
appeals?
• The speaker-audience-text paradigm also has
important implications—what does this model
suggest about the relative importance of each
point of the triangle?
SOAPSTone Plus
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Speaker
Occasion
Audience
Purpose
Subject
Tone
PLUS…
•Strategies
•Stylistic Devices
•Rhetorical Devices
Speaker/Author: Remember that the speaker
cannot simply be the author/writer.
• A SPEAKER aims to create a particular
persona. A persona (from “mask”) is the
personality that the speaker projects and that
the audience interprets from the work.
• A speaker also has a real-life background, a
personal history.
• Analyze both persona and personal history to
arrive at a complete understanding of a
speaker.
QUESTIONS FOR ANALYZING
SPEAKER
– What is the background of the speaker? This can include
many things; age, gender, race, economic status/class,
profession, political party, religious affiliation, personal
philosophies and beliefs, etc.
– What persona is the speaker creating? That is, what
personality is he trying to project to the reader/viewer?
– Speakers want to appear credible—they want us to believe
them, trust them, maybe even like them.
– How does the speaker accomplish this?
– If the persona is different from the “real” person behind
the mask, the actual author, why is this?
– Appeals based on the persona of the speaker are known as
ethical appeals, or ethos.
Occasion: Remember that naming the occasion
is not simply identifying the time/place.
• “…rhetorical transactions always take place in a
context—a convergence of time, place, people,
events, and motivating forces—that influences
how the rhetor understands, analyzes, and
generates the persona, the appeals, and the
subject matter material. Second, every rhetorical
transaction is designed to achieve an aim, a
purpose, or an intention. Third, when rhetors
consider what aim they hope to accomplish in a
particular context, they select an appropriate
type of text, or genre, to achieve that purpose”
(Roskelly and Jolliffe 15).
More on Occasion
• Context: “Every speech or written composition arises from a
context: the convergence of the immediate situation calling forth
the text, and pertinent historical background information about the
topic, the persona and identity of the rhetor, and the knowledge
and beliefs of the audience. The context of a speech or written
composition strongly shapes how rhetors argue their positions or
explore their ideas. An effective speaker or writer knows how to
allude to the context in his or her work; a careful reader
understands how context affects a text he or she is
analyzing…Knowing the cultural context thus will help a rhetor
generate evidence and create an effective persona…Context, then,
can be immediate or distant, bound by current events or ongoing
events.” (Roskelly and Jolliffe 16-17)
QUESTIONS FOR ANALYZING
OCCASION
– Ask:What is the genre of the piece? Is the text a memory?
Speech? Letter? Critique? Argument? About what event?
Where and when does the text take place?
– Also Ask: When was the piece written? What events
occurred in the world at that time that may have
influenced the speaker to create this piece? What were
the prevailing beliefs at the time? What were the major
philosophical outlooks? Scientific outlooks? Political
outlooks? Social problems and trends?
– You will probably need to research the time
period and/or the author to have enough
information!
Audience: The speaker or writer appeals to the
audience through the three Aristotelian appeals; logos,
ethos, and pathos.
• Ask: Who is the intended audience? Whose attention does the speaker
seek to gain? To whom is the writer speaking? For example, in MLK’s “I
Have a Dream,” he is not speaking to African Americans, but to readers
who may harbor racial prejudices—perhaps to policy makers.
– Is the intended audience general or specific?
• Also treat this as the “flip-side” of the speaker: what does the audience
believe? What are their biases—what do they like, dislike, want? What are
the philosophies and belief systems among audience members?
• Look for evidence in the text (and via inference) to support your
interpretation of the intended audience.
QUESTIONS AND CONSIDERATIONS
FOR ANALYZING AUDIENCE
• Audience groups can vary drastically and can fall into
multiple categories. For example, we might group
audiences by age, by reading habits, by ideological or
political beliefs—it’s up to you to determine the intended
audience based on the text, the context, and your
knowledge of the speaker.
• Most audiences are not monolithic—that is, most
audiences include members of various groups, and so,
belief and value structures may differ amongst members of
the same audience. Is the speaker trying to reach all
audience members equally? A particular segment of the
audience only?
Purpose (also, Intention/Aim)
• “A rhetor’s intention is what he or she wants
to happen as a result of the text, what he or
she wants the audience to believe or do after
hearing or reading the text. In some rhetorical
situations, the rhetor knows his or her
intention right from the start; in other
situations, the intention becomes clear as the
text evolves” (Roskelly and Jolliffe 17).
More on purpose
• “In one text, the writer may announce a
purpose—in this case, a persuasive one—at
the beginning of the essay: ‘We need to take
the bus to work. And here’s why.’ …In another
text, the writer might begin with a story and
wait to announce the aim, or use the story to
imply the aim” (Roskelly and Jolliffe 18).
Purposes: explicit and implicit, and
theses
– Purposes may be explicit or implicit (stated in a
thesis, for example, or merely implied.) In either
case, base your analysis of the purpose on all of
the information you have so far gathered on the
speaker, audience, and occasion—these offer
clues as to the purpose of the piece.
– If the piece contains a thesis, state the thesis
(either explicit or implicit). Do the same for any
claims you find.
Even More on Purpose
• Also, think about the modes and genres of writing and
the purposes behind those modes. Authors write to
entertain, to inform, to persuade, to critique, to
complain, to explain, to reflect, to describe, sometimes
to simply express a truth. Often, writers have a dual
purpose as in Amy Tan’s “Fish Cheeks”—to entertain
and to teach a lesson about accepting one’s culture.
•
– It is not enough to say “to inform”—to inform about what?
To complain about what? To explain what? Why did the
author use this type of communication and not some
other to convey his or her point?
Subject
• The subjects of texts are often abstract—the right
to die, racism, poverty, conformity, etc. They are
concrete just as often—immigration reform laws,
the Iraq War, application of the death penalty to a
particular case, etc.
• When looking at concrete subject matter, it often
helps to “look behind” the actual issue and try to
peer into the speaker’s worldview, philosophies,
assumptions, etc.—the abstracts behind the
concrete.
More on Subject
• The subject is the issue or idea at hand, not the
character or specific situation.
• Be specific about the subject in your own writing and
in your analysis; your claims must be arguable and
supportable!
• What is said is intimately connected to why certain
elements are included in a composition, whom the
speaker or writer is communicating with, and what
kind of text he or she is composing.
More on Subject
• “To develop skill with treating subjects, a rhetor needs to
understand four essential concepts. First, he or she needs to
recognize that any topic, proposition, question, or issue that might
generate the subject of a text must offer at least two paths of
interpretation, analysis, or argument—the subject must be an
‘open’ one…A successful speaker or writer generates effective
material by capitalizing on what his or her audience already knows,
making them curious to know more about the topic, and then
satisfying their curiosity by providing facts, ideas, and
interpretations that build on what they already know...the basic
move of all effective rhetorical texts is claim-plus-support, and the
central responsibility of a rhetor in developing a subject is to create
ample, substantial material to support the points he or she wants to
make.” (Roskelly and Jolliffe 13).
TONE
• Tone: Tone is the attitude of the speaker towards his
subject and audience.
• What is the speaker’s attitude towards his subject?
Towards his audience?
• Use the tone words in Fast Track to a 5 for reference.
• DO NOT confuse tone with mood—mood is the
audience side of this coin, while tone is analyzed from
the perspective of the author.
STYLISTIC DEVICES
• Stylistic Devices: DIDLS: diction, imagery,
detail, figurative language (simile, metaphor,
synecdoche, metonymy), syntax.
RHETORICAL DEVICES
• Rhetorical Devices: The writer’s use of
mode—narration, exposition, description, and
persuasion. The primary genre of the piece.
The writer’s use of evidence such as personal
experience, example, definition, statistics,
research; the writer’s use of satire, sarcasm,
irony, understatement.