Analysis-Evaluation Essay Assignment - Rhetorical Analysis
Objectives: A rhetorical analysis should demonstrate effective critical thinking and your ability to analyze and evaluate such elements as the writer's purpose, audience, and strategies. It will help you understand the constituents of persuasive arguments and will improve your own writing.
What to do: Read Fred Stenson's essay "In Search of a Modest Proposal" (Essay Writing for Canadian Students, p. 340). Analyze and evaluate the writer's argument and evidence based on the principles of rhetorical and critical analysis that have been discussed in class, in Chapters 3 and 8 of Essay Writing for Canadian Students, and in the PowerPoint presentation "Communication & Rhetoric" (on BlackBoard). Consult the sample evaluative essay by D.Jones "The Complexity of Power and Gender Relations..." (p.375).
The goal is to try to employ some of the rhetorical terms and concepts to analyze and evaluate the rhetor's argument. In your analysis, you are NOT expected to use ALL of the suggested tools-only those suitable for the text in question (it is recommended to mention or address the problems of genre, structure, diction, and kinds of argument and evidence, including the dominant methods of proof and fallacies-see especially pp.42-45 and 116-123 of the textbook). Make sure you support your analysis/evaluation with textual evidence (all quotes should be grammatically and smoothly integrated into your text). Your essay should have an introduction (including the writer's full name and the work's title, the subject and thesis of his or her argument, and your own analytic-evaluative thesis statement), main body paragraphs, and a conclusion.
Overall Organization and essay structure: context and issues presented in intro; thesis statement/central argument/central idea is made clear in intro/opening paragraphs and stays central to the paper; central idea is developed clearly, logically, and completely to form a clear line of argument/discussion that runs throughout the paper; transitions (within and between paragraphs) are used to connect ideas and keep central argument together; conclusion ties evidence and argument together, sums everything up; overall the "so what" comes through clearly.
Content: sufficient discussion, explanation, analysis, evidence; examples, and evidence are tied to the central argument and are clearly relevant and well-incorporated; overall, paper illustrates insight, thinking, depth, complexity, and theoretical knowledge of rhetoric; quotations are well-chosen; quotations and references support, illustrate, and exemplify points; quotations are provided with context/set-up Tone, approach, academic conventions overall: appropriate, authentic voice, sincerity/honesty, energy.