Section 4: Analyzing Texts

Introduction

Lisa Blankenship

The ability to observe in any given case the available means of persuasion. This is how Aristotle, one of the most famous students of rhetoric, defined the term.

The ability to discern the claim (sometimes known as argument) behind something you read, watch, or listen to—and the ability, in turn, to compose something that does what you want it to do. These are dual purposes of studying rhetoric, and key aspects of being a good writer, critical thinker, and skilled communicator. One of the most important habits of mind you’ll (further) develop this semester is the ability to analyze, or interpret, texts of all kinds. A rhetorical analysis involves identifying ways texts and writers attempt to persuade readers and audiences (i.e. ways that all language is rhetorical). This genre of writing asks you to identify the intended audience for the texts you’re analyzing and why this is important. You’ll analyze the specific rhetorical appeals and strategies the author/text uses and why the author might address an intended audience in this particular way. You’ll develop your own claim about how and why an author addresses an intended audience in specific ways—including relevant cultural contexts—and the significance or consequences of the rhetorical choices made in the texts you’re analyzing.

The essays in this section discuss what rhetoric is (“What is Rhetoric”), describe what a rhetorical analysis is and how to approach writing one (“Tools For Analyzing Texts”), and explain how to form a thesis for an analysis paper (“What’s the Point”).

Model analysis essays in this section look at how language in a variety of texts (pop culture, films, television, and video games) both reflects and shapes how we think about identity. Award-winning writer Ta-Nehisi Coates does a rhetorical analysis of the film X-Men: First Class in “You Left Out the Part About,” and Yale professor and celebrated poet Claudia Rankine analyzes the role of racism in how we “read” tennis star Serena Williams in an excerpt from her book, Citizen, winner of the 2014 National Book Critics’ Circle Awards for poetry. In “No Man’s Sky,” tech writer and video game critic Simon Parkin considers both the narrative and emotional content of an infinite space exploration game. In “One Step Towards Equality, Two Steps Back for Asian-Americans” Tristen Chau examines stereotypes in the film Crazy Rich Asians and the television show Fresh Off the Boat, and Leon Yablonovskiy analyzes the rhetoric of a popular Soviet cartoon in the context of his own experience of growing up in a Ukrainian-American family in “Nu Pogodi: Propaganda for Children of the USSR,” both of which were written in ENG 2100 in fall 2018.

Work Cited

Aristotle. On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse, translated by George A. Kennedy. Oxford University Press, 1991.