Guidance on How to Write a Rhetorical Analysis Essay

Writing for a purpose to complete a specific academic assignment is not an easy task, at least for those not accustomed to express their thoughts in a logical, coherent, and structured way on a given narrow subject. Writing for a creative, open topic is easy because you can speak about anything coming to your mind, but this is not always allowed when you are a student. Thus, for a Literature or, let’s say, Philosophy course, you might have a number of topics to cover, and selecting one of them may be a mandatory condition to get a passing grade. Let’s imagine you are tasked with writing a rhetorical essay, and you don’t know how to start and where to go. Don’t panic! Here is our quick guide to rhetorical essay writing, and it starts with a clarification of what is a rhetorical essay. Definition of a Rhetorical Essay As its name suggests, this type of an academic assignment deals with analysis of some people’s rhetoric found in the popular media such as literature, TV shows, films, and other artistic forms in which some text or content is involved. Since such media usually provide some content to communicate a message to the target audience, the essence of rhetoric analysis is in understanding that message and dissect it in terms of propriety, ethics, deeper meanings, and other elements of argumentation. Collecting Information as Pre-Writing Exercise The first stage before actual writing begins is to search through available good rhetorical essay topics. Though you may have a list of requirements from your supervisor, it is highly recommended to pick some burning, recent issue from the news or discuss one of the latest film productions. In this way, you will guarantee that the subject is new and your audience will be genuinely interested in reading your product. Outlining Then comes the completion of a rhetorical analysis essay outline; to perform this task effectively, experts from your-writers.net recommend taking the following steps: Analyze the rhetorical situation of your selection. Formulate its purpose, define the audience for whom it will be intended, determine the genre of writing, and try to forecast how your writing will be used. This will give you an initial idea about writing specifics and will help in selection of the approach. Upon genre selection, think over its components. At this stage, it is appropriate to select words, phrases, and organizational structure, as well as defined devices standing out as most appropriate to render your ideas and accomplish the assignment. Construct your judgments. To outline some argumentation, read or watch your piece of content with a critical stance. Then put down all your emotions and ideas raised by it: whether you feel it is good, bad, outstanding, contradictory, or persuasive. Outline the main idea you learned from it, and indicate whether it was boring or involving for you. While the general structure of such a paper fits into a usual introduction-body-conclusion scheme, it is highly recommended to start with introduction after the outline of key ideas is ready. In such a way, you will make a guide for your readers about components of further text, will condense your opinion about the analyzed piece in a concise thesis statement, and will hook the audience for further reading. How to Start a Rhetorical Analysis Essay? The introductory part should follow a standard essay format, that is, it should include a presentation of your topic and purpose of the analysis. Moreover, a strong introduction may contain enumeration of main themes focusing attention on some specific rhetoric aspects, and the background data about the issue’s context and the author of the analyzed piece. Starting from such a comprehensive background overview, your audience will feel more competent in assessing further argumentation even if they knew nothing about the medium or its author before reading your paper. Rhetorical Analysis Essay Ideas: Body and Conclusion After the opening lines are finished, it’s high time to proceed to the analysis itself; it is contained in the body of the essay. Rhetorical analysis serves as an explanation of your approach to analysis, as well as the author’s purpose, intentions, genre, and other specifics of the medium. Experts recommend including the following elements into the body: An analytical thesis overviewing the identified pattern and the author’s decision about the analyzed text Summary of the analyzed piece of content Examples and evidence from external sources supporting the arguments Professional writers also use checklists for making sure that they embraced the entire spectrum of the text’s elements during analysis, for instance: Who is the author of text/content? What credentials and competence does he or she possess in the professional field? Are there any opinions or biases evident in the text? What is the author’s attitude to the discussed subject? In what tone is the message presented? Does the tone signal about the author’s credibility in the field? Who is the audience of this message? What are they expected to learn from it? How does the author intend to achieve a change? What kind of language and rhetorical devices does the author use for making his or her message clear and persuasive? How accessible and comprehensible is the medium? Is the author knowledgeable in the field? How is this determined? Does the author give proper credit to opposing perspectives and alternatives? What is the overall impression and central idea of the message? This is only one of the checklist variants, which can be used for constructing an excellent rhetorical analysis of any piece of art or text. Don’t forget that after a thorough, in-depth analysis, you should reinforce your thesis statement and encapsulate the key ideas you arrived at during analysis in a concise conclusion. Don’t add anything new to the concluding part; instead, make your thesis statement sound even stronger than at the start, and support the resulting opinion with evidence you collected in the analysis. Make your attitude and standpoint surface in the final paragraph to establish your own credibility and show your full understanding of the studied subject.