Major Essay 2: Researched Rhetorical Analysis of an Advertisement or Ad Campaign with a Gender Bias
(1500-1800 words not counting Works Cited)
Total Point Value: 200 points

Why you're doing this: In this assignment, you'll complement the evaluative skills you've just developed with analytical ones: you'll explain how and why a multimodal argument works on an audience by writing a rhetorical analysis-an analysis of strategies involved in the art of persuasion. Completing this assignment will help you learn how to create analytical arguments in future writing in your discipline and profession.

What you're doing: To begin, think about what you know about or would like to know about: what's your ethos or how would you like to develop your ethos? Then identify a peculiar or in some way interesting advertisement (or a series of advertisements), perhaps even a historical one, that relates to your extant ethos or how you'd like to develop it. Explain how the moving-image-based or paper-based ads use rhetorical strategies to target an audience and determine the success with which they target that audience. In other words, explicate image, text, and context in your ad campaign in interesting and beyond-the-obvious ways with the goal of explaining how an argument works or doesn't work. The range of what gets marketed is impressive to say the least, so you have a lot of ad campaigns to choose from. The campaign you choose might sell a product, a person/persona, a music album, military service, a countercultural identity, or even an ideological perspective. You're writing this essay for the academic audience of your classmates and your instructor, and, inevitably, you're writing for your e-portfolio viewers. Hence your essay should adhere to genre conventions by including the following:

1. A clear and focused introduction that builds toward a thesis statement;
2. Clear topic sentences that make debatable claims instead of providing statements of fact; and
3. Supporting evidence for those claims including...
• Summary and paraphrase of significant aspects of the ad campaign.
• Explication of your summarized and paraphrased material that connects it to your main idea.
• At least 4 reliable secondary sources that give historical context and/or provide critical readings that you agree or disagree with. Remember to use MLA style to cite your sources internally and in a Works Cited page. Note, too, that you'll also need to cite your primary sources: the ad(s)!

As you compose your analysis, consider Aristotle's three appeals but avoid overusing jargon terms that won't sufficiently do the legwork of explanation for you. In other words, be sure to explain rhetorical strategies by talking through them in your own words. The following questions might help you get started, but don't feel limited by them or compelled to answer all of them:

1. Who is the rhetorician and what's his/her/their social identity? What does the rhetorician value? 
2. Who is the audience? What's the audience's social identity and what does the audience value? 
3. How does the rhetorician's style make meaning? What's the tone of the ad(s)? Is humor involved?
4. How do social and historical contexts inform the "text's" meaning? Where did the "text" originally appear and how is this original context significant? Does the "text" ever appear in different context? 
5. Does the rhetorician make interesting references in the text? If so, why? 
6. How does the rhetorician arrange the "text" and how does that arrangement make meaning? 
7. How does the rhetorician use artistic and/or inartistic logical appeals to persuade? 
8. How does the rhetorician appeal to the viewer's emotions? 
9. How does the rhetorician establish credibility and/or common ground with the audience?
10. What is the rhetorician's key purpose? Is the argument ultimately effective? Why or why not?