You might not have a text you are set on yet, but this page will address some things to consider once you did. If you have a text to analyze, that’s great!
Here are some good first steps once you have something:
- Think about scale. Do you want to look at an episode vs. a season vs. the whole series? A chapter or passage of a book or the whole book? A 30 second ad or a years-long advertising campaign? Bigger the scale, than the more narrow the focus (e.g., a very specific theme across seasons, an analysis of one character across one season). Smaller the scale, than the focus does not need to be as narrow. However, a danger of rhetorical analysis is always: let me analyze everything! If *everything* is analyzed to great detail, then it might be hard to have a coherent take away other than “this piece has rhetorical qualities to it.” Of course it does! Every text has rhetorical qualities. Make an argument about the rhetorical qualities, tell me about patterns and themes to say something noteworthy or interesting about the text you are analyzing.
- Read/view/listen/etc. to it and take notes. Think of this like doing your Reading Annotation assignments. Note things that are interesting, surprising, confusing, note patterns, note things that connect to research interests you have, etc. If you are watching or listening to something, you should mark where the event occurs. Note the timestamp on the video or audio file: something happens that you want to take a note, you hit pause, you look at the time so far (e.g., happened at the 26th minute, happened at approximately 26:31).
- Review your notes. Look over your notes that you took as you read/viewed/listened. Start to note patterns, themes, connections. What sorts of arguments, images, words, phrases, etc. keep coming up? Start to do some freewriting about these patterns, themes, and connections.
- Choose a lens or lenses that could help analysis. Go back to the “Tools for Analysis” chapter from our textbook. Review the lenses offered there and start to think about which ones would be most useful for analyzing your text. Don’t just focus on “what” you see, but “how” it is put together. For example: don’t just note topics that come up in your text, but how those topics are constructed (e.g., word choice, sentence structure, the type of imagery, character traits).
- Read/view/listen/etc. again. You can read closely here or skim a bit (or fastforward). But now that you have your lens or lenses handy, you will look at the text with a new perspective. Take some notes again with your lens or lenses in mind.
- Context. Make sure you are also listing out any relevant context to consider for your analysis. What media (e.g., a video, online writing, print writing, audio) is used and how does that affect how the text is made? What genre is it? What audience expectations might there be? What is the time period it was made? What cultural context was it produced in?
These considerations can help you think through most of the criteria for the assignment. Below is from the prompt. The above things to do once you find a text will help with most of these as a start, but our next page in the module will help you think through these more completely:
- You will choose one cultural artifact to analyze using what we have learned about rhetoric so far.
- You will choose at least one theoretical lens to analyze this cultural artifact. (you do not have to explicitly mention what lens or lenses you are using)
- You will use analysis rather than summary (unless you would like to provide a brief summary to familiarize your audience with the text).
- You will use evidence from the text to connect to claims you are making about the text.
- You will have a thesis in the sense of a main argument you are making about the text.
- You will consider the medium, genre, and style used in the text in how those contribute to meanings the text makes.
- You must contextualize the text you analyze. That means considering things like: the time period it was produced, the culture it was produced in, the audience it was for, the material constraints it had, the author and their possible purpose for making it, etc.
- The word count will be between 1,400-1,600 words.
- The genre you will be writing in for this assignment is a long-form blog post. We will go over that more in class. You will post this assignment to our course website under the category “Rhetorical Analysis” and you will submit it to Blackboard as Word document or pdf. Use the affordances of the website to add media and other elements! (e.g., photograph, memes, tables, charts, video). I’ll expect you to consider the genre conventions when writing this assignment.
- Your audience for this assignment is…us! You are writing for your classmates and me here. You know each other well enough at this point, so think about the kind of things your audience would need to know, the style they’d appreciate, and other elements of writing that would accommodate them.
Before continuing in the module, use the tips at the top of the page to help you comment below by doing the following:
- Identify a specific text (e.g., a specific book, a specific advertisement, as specific episode, a specific season of a show, a specific song, a specific music video) you are thinking about analyzing for this assignment. Use #1 from the tips at the top of this page to help you here. Write that text in your comment.
- Take 1 note about it. Use #2 at the top of this page to help you think about what to do. Write that note in your comment.
- Skim through the full text. Think about 1 lens that you think will make sense for this piece. Use #s 3 and 4 at the top of the page to help you here. Write that lens in your comment and EXPLAIN why you think it might be helpful.
- Skim through the full text again, this time with the lens in mind. Take 1 note about the text with your lens in mind in a way that connects your lens to a specific piece of evidence from the text. Use #5 from the tips up top to help you here. Write that note in your comment.
- Skim through the text again, and write out any important contextual information that might help your analysis here. Use #6 from the tips but also #6 and #7 from the assignment criteria to help you here. Write that important contextual information in your comment.
- TO RECAP THEN: there should be 5 components to your comment: the text you are thinking about analyzing, a note about it in a first skim, a lens you might use, a note connected to your lens and the text, important contextual information.
NOTE: this is just practice! I hope you spend a lot more time through these steps in the coming days as you work on your Rhetorical Analysis.
After commenting below, click the “Click to continue” button below to go to the next page.
1. I will be analyzing The episode in Black Mirror called ‘Nosedive”
2. This episode shows a lot about how society wants to viewed as and image is a big influence
3. I think the lens that I will be using for my analysis would be Posthumanism because it has the most to do with what the episode was trying to convey.
4. The episode shows how someone can be so happy while being loved by others but It can quickly change and how technology enables this
5. I still need to rewatch the episode maybe once or twice and make notes about the episode and find more specific examples.
Not sure what film yet, but I would like to base my writing piece around a movie/ tv series episode. I feel that films are most of the time based around the environment, so I will be using the rhetorical lens of ecocriticism. Anything that can help relate the environment of the film to the characters/ storyline will do a good job at serving a purpose for my writing piece.
1. “TikTok Meets the Meddling Feds” (WSJ)
2. Author questions the legitimacy of using national security as basis for removing Tiktok.
3. One lens I think would be useful in analyzing this article is Kairos. Since the U.S. is still in the middle of a trade war with China, it is helpful to consider the Tiktok case in this framework.
4. Author argues that the Tiktok ban will hurt both China and the U.S.
5. I think it’s important to give context about how Tiktok rose to prominence in the U.S., as well as its implications in the trade war.
1) “The Long Political History of Sneaker Culture” (theatlantic.com)
2) The article explains how sneakers have had an affect on culture and society since the 19th century.
3) I believe either exigence or intersectionality can be used. The article speaks about how sneakers have been involved with identity, class, race, etc.
4) The author demonstrates how the view on sneakers has shifted due to cultures and historic moments in time.
5) It is important to note the time period when explaining the impact sneakers had on culture. Sneakers have been around since the 19th century.
1. There is an APA article titled “The Cheater’s High: The Unexpected Affective Benefits of Unethical Behavior”.
2. The article seeks to debunk the idea of unethical behavior triggering feelings of guilt or shame.
3. Logos may be an appropriate lens for this article. This one is built upon many previous studies and has 6 experiments of its own.
4. Experiment 3 attempts to remove the decision of choosing to cheat and follows up with Experiment 4 removing the monetary incentive. So every experiment is building upon the last one.
5. This is a research article, and I believe the experiments add some credibility to making an intangible feeling into a measurable thing.
1. NYC is Dead Forever (Altucher)
2. This article presents a native New Yorker’s opinion on the future of New York City after the coronavirus pandemic
3. Exigence would be a good lense to use for this article because historical evidence is often brought up
4. The author often brings up major historical events like the reccession or 9/11 to compare how they impacted the city versus how covid will impact the city
5. Since this. article is about NYC, I won’t need to create as much context as I would for a different audience. It might be helpful to talk about the political view that the author has so that we know where he is coming from
1. “The social dilemma” Netflix film/documentary
2. Tech experts launch warning about the dangerous human impacts of social networking
3. Pathos or Ethos possibly
4. Psychosocial implications of using social networks
5. It is the very same creators of this social networks the ones that are sounding the alarm on their creations.
1. I think I will be writing about the Disney film “UP”
2. It is about a grumpy old man who goes on an adventure after his wife passes
3 .Lens I would use are possibley Audience, or purpose
4. The purpose of the film could be to appreciate loved ones while they are still here
5.The importance the boy adds to the grumpy old mans journey
1. The US government once poisoned alcohol to get people to stop drinking – VOX News
2. The article is about how the American government intentionally poisoned industrial Alcohol to get people to stop drinking during the Prohibition Era.
3. The Lense I plan on using is organization. I first learned about this in a podast called Throughline on NPR. I am interested in analyzing how the same message an article gives versus a podcast differs based on the organization of the creator.
4. Important context would be about the social and political environment on the time since Alcohol was banned and people drinking were breaking the law.
5. Was it ethical for the government to poison people even if they were breaking the law?
1. I will be analyzing the film “Get Out.”
2. The film exposes the racial divide that exists between whites and blacks.
3. I will utilize the critical race theory because it best explains how race is perceived in different societies.
4. Through the critical race theory, it becomes evident that blacks who are minorities in America are often subjected to prejudice both overtly and subtly.
5. The film is relevant to the Black Lives Matter campaign that is currently underway in the USA and beyond.
1. I will be analyzing the film Dreamgirls
2. I think that the film does a great job at showing the mental health affects of colorism on black women
3. I believe that the intersectionality lens would be helpful because I am analyzing the life of not just a woman but a black woman and those specific struggles
4. Women in the film were not allowed on the business side of music and black men had struggles with that too so for a black women it was a lot harder to do so
5. The film is based in the 60s in Detroit during the Detroit riots
1. “Barbie Dreams” by Nicki Minaj
2. It’s a song where the artist basically name drops/mentions some of her colleagues and makes multiple pop culture references.
3. I think I might like to try something different and analyze it from a gender studies-esque perspective.
4. The purpose of the song is essentially a middle finger to a community that has done nothing but discredit and exclude a hardworking rapper from an industry she helped mold.
5. Most if not all of the people she name drops are people she’s cool with.