Ethos Pathos Logos

Essay Two: Rhetorical Analysis of a Text of Your Choosing

Due Dates: First Draft due Thursday, February 28th, in “Peer Reviewing Essay Two” Discussion Forum. 5 pts. Revised Draft due Thursday, March 7th, in “Peer Editing Essay Two” Discussion Forum. 5 pts. Final Draft due Thursday, March 14th, in Dropbox. 100 points.

What to Do:
Write a rhetorical analysis of a text of your choosing. A rhetorical analysis is an analysis of the rhetorical strategies that an author uses in an attempt to accomplish his or her text’s purpose.

The specific rhetorical strategies that you will analyze are those having to do with the author’s uses of the rhetorical appeals of ethos, pathos, and logos.

Challenges to Meet for This Essay:
• Identify the author’s purpose (what the author is trying to convince the audience to think, feel, and perhaps do);
• What the thesis (the main idea—stated or unstated) is;
• Summarize the text with sufficient detail (if you’re analyzing a visual or an aural text, the persuasiveness of your analysis will depend heavily on how well you describe the text’s visual and/or aural elements);
• Explain how the author uses the rhetorical appeals of ethos, pathos, and logos in an attempt to accomplish the purpose;
• Support your claims about the author’s uses of the rhetorical appeals with ample evidence from the text;
• Discuss how well the author uses ethos, pathos, and logos to accomplish the purpose—in other words, discuss what works well, what doesn’t work well, and perhaps how the text might work better.

Some Perhaps Helpful Tips:
Choose a text that you can thoroughly analyze in 1,000-1,250 words. Long texts—such as movies—may be difficult to analyze thoroughly in

You may choose to analyze a written text (articles from news sources or magazines), a visual or an aural text (advertisements, songs, music videos, Saturday Night Live skits) , or even a digital text (website).

Minimum Word Count: 1,000 words Maximum Word Count: 1,250 words

Value: 100 points

Checklist of traits of a well-written academic essay:
__Introduction that establishes topic, purpose, significance, and main idea
__Clear, articulate thesis that forecasts with precision what you argue in the body of the essay
__Effective topic/transition sentences
__Sufficient evidence to support your claims and to illustrate the claims of counterarguments
__Clear and thorough interpretation of the evidence
__Paragraphs with clear focus (they develop their main idea and don’t wander into other discussions)
__Fulfillment of length requirement and research requirement
__Effective and correct introduction of quoted material
__Signal phrases establishing author and title
__Conclusion that echoes your main idea and somehow makes it memorable
__MLA in-text citations used each time you use something specific from a source
__Works cited page with properly formatted works cited entries
__Correct MLA formatting