Purpose: To think critically about how your chosen author has used rhetorical strategies in their argument, and to construct your own argument, supported by analysis of textual evidence from the author’s work, regarding whether the author’s use of rhetorical strategies was successful.
- Your essay should begin with an introductory paragraph that introduces and contextualizes the work you will be analyzing in your essay.
- Your introductory paragraph should conclude with a rhetorical analysis thesis, one to two sentences in length, that argues whether the author(s) succeed in creating a persuasive argument and which names the rhetorical strategies that they use (or fail to use) in doing so. (Be sure to revise your thesis based on your feedback from Discussion 3.2!)
- Then, your essay should contain three or four body paragraphs, including the paragraph you developed in Discussion 3.2, if you wish, revised using the feedback received on our discussion.
- Your body paragraphs should each begin with a topic sentence that refers to the point in your thesis you will be discussing in that paragraph.
- Your body paragraphs must also include textual evidence from the work you are analyzing. This textual evidence should be specific and must be analyzed to show how it supports your argument. All quoted, paraphrased, or summarized textual evidence must be cited according to MLA guidelines.
- Your paragraphs should then conclude with transition sentences that guide the reader gracefully from the topic you have just analyzed to the topic in your next paragraph, showing how those topics connect. (Please refer to Chapter 6.2: Effective Means of Writing a Paragraph for effective paragraph writing tactics!)
- Any quotes used as textual evidence must be no more than lines in length, and no more than eight quotes may be used.
- Your essay must conclude with an MLA formatted work cited page, providing an MLA 9 formatted citation for the work you have analyzed. This work cited page does NOT count towards your required three full pages.
- Your analysis must be focused on how the author used rhetoric, not about their topic.
- Your paper should not include any use of the first or second person.
- This paper does NOT allow the use of any materials outside of those provided in this class. Do not fall into the trap of looking online for sample essays. Any academic dishonesty will result in significant consequences.