Blog Post #1: Rhetorical Analysis of Content and Form using Toulmin Method
i.mohammed on Sep 10th 2017
Claim: The claim here is that content and form go hand in hand and they are both necessary in whichever way you are trying to convey your message. He doesn’t really state which one is more important or the different circumstances that one could be more important than the other.
Grounds: Here he showed us an example on how kids were given an exercise to perform a translation it was impossible without keeping the same form and content because it can change the whole meaning of the message.
Warrant: For the audience that believe one is more important than the other, Burton points out that they are “ornaments” to a rhetoric that are used to understand the full message and without the ornaments the message is not clear.
Backing: I think he sort of backed his claim with the ornament example, but he also gave an example on why the rhetoricians divided content and form and he states that they are interdependent on one another. One is not important than the other.
Rebuttal: I do not really see any rebuttal in this essay because he basically backed up his claim with numerous examples, and i do not really see a counter claim that can be made in this argument.
Qualifiers: I am pretty sure from this essay he means to write that his claim is always true in any type of message so there is not really a distinguishing factor in this claim.
I think doing a rhetorical analysis on this essay made it harder for me to understand because there are certain things from the Toulmin method that don’t really apply here. I believe this essay uses more of a logos way of persuasion because he uses reasoning to back his claim. I would say that there is not really a counter claim or rebuttal for this specific argument. I believe for all kinds of ways to convey a message this holds true and neither form or content is more important than the other. The Toulmin method is a great way to persuade an audience because you are turning into the person that has a counter to the claim, and it makes you look at your claim from a different point of view.
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