PSCC Libraries: ENGL 1010: English Composition: Rhetorical Analysis

Rhetorical Analysis

A rhetorical analysis is a type of essay where you take a literary work or scholarly article and "break down" the author's argument. In other words, you look for the types of arguments the author uses to support his/her points.

Read the work to determine the author's thesis or main point
Re-read the work carefully, looking for the ways the author supports their main point. Some questions you can ask as you read are:
- What is the author trying to do in this work? Persuade? Criticize? Inform?
- Who is the author writing for? Who is the intended audience?
- What techniques does the author use to support his/her main idea? Punctuation (exclamation points, italics, underlining, etc)? Quotes? Repetition of key terms? Is the tone formal or informal?

What are Pathos, Ethos, and Logos?

The Greek philosopher Aristotle defined three types of appeals to use in persuasion: logos, pathos, and ethos. These three types of appeals all use a different strategy to persuade someone to believe an argument.

Logos: logic and deductive or inductive reasoning; facts and statistics

Pathos: emotional appeal, tapping into the reader's feelings

Ethos: ethical appeal, convincing reader that argument is credible and worthy of respect; authority

What are Logical Fallacies?

Logical fallacies are faulty reasoning that invalidate an argument (make it untrue). There are many different types of logical fallacies. Here are some examples:

Red herring - Distracting the reader by throwing in details that seem important, but are actually not
Straw man - Presenting a twisted/altered view of the opponent's argument in order to argue against their position
Cherry picking - Pulling out small pieces of evidence to prove a point without showing the whole picture and ignoring evidence that doesn't support the point

These are just a few types of logical fallacies. Check out An Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments for more examples.

An Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments "A flawless compendium of flaws." --Alice Roberts, PhD, anatomist, writer, and presenter of The Incredible Human Journey The antidote to fuzzy thinking, with furry animals! Have you read (or stumbled into) one too many irrational online debates? Ali Almossawi certainly had, so he wrote An Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments! This handy guide is here to bring the internet age a much-needed dose of old-school logic (really old-school, a la Aristotle). Here are cogent explanations of the straw man fallacy, the slippery slope argument, the ad hominem attack, and other common attempts at reasoning that actually fall short--plus a beautifully drawn menagerie of animals who (adorably) commit every logical faux pas. Rabbit thinks a strange light in the sky must be a UFO because no one can prove otherwise (the appeal to ignorance). And Lion doesn't believe that gas emissions harm the planet because, if that were true, he wouldn't like the result (the argument from consequences). Once you learn to recognize these abuses of reason, they start to crop up everywhere from congressional debate to YouTube comments--which makes this geek-chic book a must for anyone in the habit of holding opinions.
Publication Date: 2014