Rhetorical Analysis. For this rhetorical analysis essay I examined UK Prime Minister David Cameron's opposition of a 2016 referendum called the “Brexit Exit”. I examined his arguments in a recent article, unpacking the reasons and justifications Cameron used for his position. I felt this was a great opportunity to become exposed, in a detailed way, to how actual politicians use rhetoric in an argumentative or adversarial political context.
Rhetorical analysis asks you to investigate how a text persuades its
audience by identifying a writer’s argumentative strategies in light of contextual
constraints and exigencies. These analyses come in many forms: political commentary,
critical essays, opinion editorials, and case studies. What unites these various forms
of writing is the recognition that arguments—regardless of their genre—work on
audiences in complex ways and that, upon first glance, audiences are often unable to
grasp fully the complexities of those arguments. Through concentrated, systematic
analysis, however, one can watch an argument unfold in slow-motion and begin to
understand the many ways a text works on various audiences. Attending to arguments from a rhetorical perspective will heighten my sensitivity to writers’ persuasive strategies and in turn help me learn to construct your own arguments more effectively.
In-class essay. I enjoyed this writing project because it asked us writers to look at what is happening behind the scenes of an argument and to use our own capabilities to persuade the audience for a reason on an issue. This forced me to pay even closer attention to the purpose, evidence, persuasive appeals, and other rhetorical strategies, you are to write a rhetorically based argument of a question regarding college life. This forced me to consider the structure and archietcture of my own argument and to think about how to be successful when I make a claim and justify it with my own reasons backing it, and thereby to consider why it may be successful or fail in this context.
. To make a claim about the effectiveness of an argument, one must use the rhetorical analysis skills learned in class: identifying persuasive appeals (ethos, pathos, and logos), identifying an author's claims, evaluating supporting evidence, analyzing the needs and expectations of an audience, and identifying common rhetorical gestures found in the type of text under scrutiny.
What I learned from this exercise was greater skill in writing and analyzing my own arguments and to consider the rhetorical functioning of a statement or claim and how it may or may not contribute to the effectiveness of an argument being made. In this context I considered the reasons that students may lose interest in school and why their academic performance may decline. The thesis of my essay considers the distracting sources in the external environment which contribute to the declining performance of students in school.
I learned in this essay that to make a claim in a thesis requires several sub-points and justifications in the body of the essay in order to substantially back up one's claim. This required me to give close and focused analysis for clear and convincing evidence.
