Finding and developing materials

ideas

Before you analyze a text of any kind, do some background research. Discover all you can about its author, creator, publisher, sponsor, and so on. For example, you would need to know if a TV commercial you intend to examine has aired only on sports networks or lifestyle programs on cable. Figure out, too, the contexts in which an argument occurs. If you reply to a Wall Street Journal editorial, know what events sparked that item and investigate the paper’s editorial slant.

Read the piece carefully just for information first, highlighting names or allusions you need to look up; there’s very little you can’t uncover these days via a Web search. When you think you understand the basics, you are prepared to approach the text rhetorically. Persuasive texts are often analyzed according to how they use three types of rhetorical appeal. Typically, a text may establish the character and credibility of its author (ethos), generate emotions in order to move audiences (pathos), and use evidence and logic to make its case (logos).

Consider the ethos of the author. Ethos — the appeal to character — may be the toughest argumentative strategy to understand. Every text and argument is presented by someone, whether an individual, a group, or an institution. Audiences, whether they realize it or not, are influenced by that self-presentation: They are swayed by writers or speakers who come across as knowledgeable, honest, fair-minded, and believable. They are less friendly to people or institutions that seem to be deceptive, untrustworthy, or incompetent.

Here Michael Ruse describes a witness whose frank words established his ethos in a 1981 court case dealing with requiring creation science in Arkansas schools.

The assistant attorney general was trying to tie him into knots over some technical point in evolutionary biology. Finally, the man blurted out, “Mr. Williams, I’m not a scientist. . . . I am an educator, and I have my pride and professional responsibilities. And I just can’t teach that stuff [meaning creationism] to my kids.”

— “Science for Science Teachers,” Chronicle of Higher Education, January 13, 2010

Look for such moments in texts — though such frank testimony will be rare. Instead, you may find indications of writers’ authority and competence (or lack thereof) in how they describe their credentials, how they use sources, how they address readers, or how they use language. Even the absence of a “self” in a piece, as is typically the case in a scientific paper or academic article, can suggest a persuasive objectivity and rigor. Writers also bring their careers and reputations to a piece, and that stature may be enhanced (or diminished) by where they publish, yet another aspect of ethos.

Consider how a writer plays to emotions. Pathos — the emotional appeal —is usually easy to detect but sometimes difficult to assess. Look for places where a text generates strong feelings to support its points, win over readers, or influence them in other ways. Then consider how appropriate the tactic is for advancing a particular argument. The strategy is legitimate so long as raising emotions such as pity, fear, pride, outrage, and the like fits the moment and doesn’t move audiences to make choices based upon distorted perceptions of the facts. Columnist Peggy Noonan, for example, routinely uses emotions to make her political points.

We fought a war to free slaves. We sent millions of white men to battle and destroyed a portion of our nation to free millions of black men. What kind of nation does this? We went to Europe, fought, died, and won, and then taxed ourselves to save our enemies with the Marshall Plan. What kind of nation does this? Soviet communism stalked the world and we were the ones who steeled ourselves and taxed ourselves to stop it. Again: What kind of nation does this?

Only a very great one.

— “Patriots, Then and Now,” Wall Street Journal, March 30, 2006

Obviously, patriotic sentiments like these can be a smoke screen in some political debates. Your challenge in a rhetorical analysis is to point out emotional appeals and to determine whether they move audiences to act humanely or manipulate them into making bad or even stupid choices.

Consider how well reasoned a piece is. Logos — the appeal to reason and evidence — is most favored in academic texts. In a rhetorical analysis, you look carefully at the claims a text offers and whether they are supported by facts, data, testimony, and good reasons. What assumptions lie beneath the argument? That’s a crucial query.

Ask questions about evidence too. Does it come from reliable sources or valid research? Is it up-to-date? Has it been reported accurately and fully? Has due attention been given to alternative points of view and explanations? Has enough evidence been offered to make a valid point? You might pose such objections, for example, when Peter Bregman, an expert on leadership training in business, makes an especially controversial argument.

A study of 829 companies over thirty-one years showed that diversity training had “no positive effects in the average workplace.” Millions of dollars a year were spent on the training resulting in, well, nothing. Attitudes — and the diversity of the organizations — remained the same.

It gets worse. The researchers — Frank Dobbin of Harvard, Alexandra Kalev of Berkeley, and Erin Kelly of the University of Minnesota — concluded that “In firms where training is mandatory or emphasizes the threat of lawsuits, training actually has negative effects on management diversity.”

— “Diversity Training Doesn’t Work,” Harvard Business Review Blog Network, March 12, 2012

Clearly, you have your work cut out for you: Suddenly you are dealing not solely with Bregman but also with the study he cites (and a link in his blog posting takes you right to it). The bottom line is that the logic of every major claim in a text may need such scrutiny in a rhetorical analysis. You are simultaneously fact-checker and skeptic.

Questions for a Rhetorical Analysis