Thesis
BA 4
• Description: For your draft 1.1, you will write a rhetorical analysis. See the
description of Draft 1.1 for a discussion of what a rhetorical analysis is and what
you will be expected to do.
In this assignment, you will continue your preparation for writing your rhetorical
analysis by writing thesis statements suitable for it. Using two texts specified by
your classroom instructor, you will 1) identify the audience and purpose of each
text and explain what those are, in about 75- 100 words, and 2) create a thesis
statement for a rhetorical analysis of each text.
Remember that to successfully create your thesis statements, you will need to
read these texts carefully (and, usually, several times) so that you thoroughly
understand the audience, purpose, and content of the texts.
To be clear, you will have TWO thesis statements for TWO different articles. You
will also have TWO explanations of audience and purpose for these TWO
different texts.
Texts for your thesis statements:
“The New Sovereignty,” Shelby Steele 450
“My Pedagogic Creed,” John Dewey 460
“The American Scholar,” Ralph Waldo Emerson 468
What’s a thesis?
• The controlling sentence(s) of a piece of
writing.
• It tells us the most important stuff about an
essay.
• Usually, this means outlining your conclusions
so that the reader knows exactly what you will
talk about and find in the essay.
• So if a rhetorical analysis is an evaluation of
the effectiveness of a piece of writings
rhetoric, what are some important
aspects/things that a thesis for a rhetorical
analysis should have?
• An evaluation
• Audience (as specific as possible)
• Purpose (tied to action—what does the writer
want the audience to change/do differently)
• Rhetorical choices
example
• Dewey uses X, Y, and Z to successfully
convince [AUDIENCE] to [PURPOSE]