AP English Language and Composition AP Summer Institute – Brassil Course Development Resources Rhetorical Analysis 1 2 3 AP English Language and Composition Brassil Guidelines for Reading a Text I. What is your response to the author’s text (essay, speech, public statement, letter, etc.)? a. What questions do you have for the author? b. What did you find in the text that surprised, pleased, puzzled or annoyed you? c. Did the text or portions of it remind you of an experience you've had or heard / read about? What were the experiences? Did your experiences reinforce or contradict the message of the text? II. What is the purpose (aim or intent) behind the author's message? a. What goal did the author have when she/he fashioned this text? How do you know? b. What language features or sentences in the piece reveal the author's goals? (see IV.) c. How did you respond to the author's message and purpose? d. What message would you convey if you had a similar purpose? Why? III. What is the audience for what the author has to convey? a. What sentences, ideas, or other features help you identify the nature and character of the intended audience? b. How are you like / unlike the intended audience for the text? IV. What strategies does the author use in order to convey his or her thinking? a. How does the author catch and hold (“engage”) audience attention? b. How does the author establish, or perhaps vary, the tone of the text? c. What are some of the effects the author achieves with words and language? How do these effects help communicate important ideas? d. What has the writer said and done using language? What particular strategies (analogy, figurative language, vivid description, powerful diction) do you see at work in the text? e. What moves involving language features allow the author to better convey his or her message? 4 AP English Language and Composition Annotating a Text -- Brassil When you annotate a text you generate a record of response to your reading. Such a record can prove valuable to you later when you proceed to analysis. Annotating a text is not the same thing as underlining a few words or highlighting several lines. Annotating a text involves interacting with a text’s language and images. This approach should help you discover what you find important, what you want to explore, and/or what you find puzzling about a text. Approach a text as if you were entering into discussion with it. While a text cannot literally speak, its written words, images, and phrases do indeed communicate. At certain points a particular text’s meaning may be clear, while at other points it may be unclear. Either way, you can note such encounters and offer comments. Your discussion with a text occurs as you initially engage with and subsequently think over its words, phrases, and ideas. These thoughts can find their way onto the text’s margins and between the lines. As you underline telling phrases, note ideas, link portions of the text, and raise issues and questions around particular observations, you establish a written record of your interactive discussion. After annotation, you will be better able to identify the text’s message and discern both its purpose and argument. If you fail to note what you find remarkable, the initial ideas and important questions you have while reading may be lost to you. By annotating a text, you can return to it later to rethink what you considered important. Techniques for annotating a text will vary since each reader generates his or her own reading, each person will identify upon different portions of a text as noteworthy, interesting, or remarkable. Here are some questions to guide your annotations: What’s remarkable? Where do you engage with this text? Where do particular claims, ideas or assertions pull you in or capture your attention? What arguments take shape in or emerge from this text? What language or rhetorical features are at work? Do any patterns emerge from your markings? Do particular portions of this text link or connect with each other? Do key words, phrases, and ideas crop up in several places? Have you asked questions? How have you answered them? Given multiple readings, how have your annotations changed? Have any questions been answered? Have any new questions emerged? When you review your annotations, what do you discover? Are there places where the author’s message is made clear? Are there segments that continue to puzzle or vex you? Can you link this text with others you have read? 5 September 4, 1990 President Saddam Hussein c/o Ambassador al-Machat Dear Mr. President: I am writing to you to send my student son, Thomas Hart Benton Ewald, home to his family. He was taken, I think, from the SAS Hotel in Kuwait City. I feel I have the obligation to appeal to you for two reasons. First, my family has been a staunch friend to the Arabs. My husband, Tom’s father, was on the White House Staff when President Eisenhower caused the French, British, and Israelis to pull out of Suez. One of the first non-Arab meetings at the Washington Mosque was the one which I, as president of the Radcliffe (Harvard) Club of Washington, arranged to explain Muslim culture. I am also a poet who has written about Arabia. I have sent my youngest, well-loved son to work in an Arab country, hoping he would help bring peace between our cultures. Instead, after two days, he was caught up in war. It seems unjust that I, who have given to you so generously, should have my son taken away from me in return. You have the power to right that wrong. Second, my son is asthmatic, so severely crippled as a child that we thought we could never raise him. He needs medication and a doctor’s care. I beg you, in the name of Allah, let my son go. Yours truly, Mary Ewald 6 AP English Language and Composition Rhetorical Analysis “Halftime in America” It's halftime. Both teams are in their locker room discussing what they can do to win this game in the second half. It's halftime in America, too. People are out of work and they're hurting. And they're all wondering what they're going to do to make a comeback. And we're all scared, because this isn't a game. The people of Detroit know a little something about this. They almost lost everything. But we pulled together, now Motor City is fighting again. I've seen a lot of tough eras, a lot of downturns in my life. And, times when we didn't understand each other. It seems like we've lost our heart at times. Then the fog of division, discord, and blame made it hard to see what lies ahead. But after those trials, we all rallied around what was right, and acted as one. Because that's what we do. We find a way through tough times, and if we can't find a way, then we'll make one. All that matters now is what's ahead. How do we come from behind? How do we come together? And, how do we win? Detroit's showing us it can be done. And what's true about them is true about all of us. This country can't be knocked out with one punch. We get right back up again and when we do, the world is going to hear the roar of our engines. Yeah, it's halftime America. And our second half is about to begin." IMPORTED FROM DETROIT ™ RAM DODGE JEEP CHRYSLER ------------------------------------------ production, including script: Oregon ad agency of Wieden+Kennedy speaker: Clint Eastwood ------------------------------------------ Considerations for rhetorical analysis: • What is the text’s context? (rhetorical situation/circumstance) What’s the “exigence” here? • What is the text’s message? (argument) • What is the text’s content? • What are the credentials of the speaker? (what quality does the speaker bring to the circumstance?) • What is the nature of the audience? (what are audience expectations, beliefs, anticipated actions?) • What “moves” influence or move the audience toward appreciation of the text’s message? (What are the rhetorical features that “matter” or “make a difference”? How do these moves answer the “so what?” question?) 7 AP English Language and Composition Rhetorical Analysis “Halftime in America” Clint Eastwood's 'Halftime in America' Ad a New Ballgame by Christopher Correa, Forbes Magazine Another Super Bowl, another slew of ads. It’s become a predictable–perhaps, at this point, even rote–occasion: A volley of commercials insinuate themselves into our homes, packaged in either tidily clever trappings or whimsically left-field vignettes, that have less to do with selling the items than justifying the need to celebrate them. Super Bowl ads are often more eagerly anticipated than the 60 minutes of gameplay stringing them together like trinkets on a bracelet. They’re often admired for their ability to distract, whet or surprise. But every once in a while, an ad comes along that doesn’t just stop the game, it changes the game. It happened in 1984, when Apple hired Blade Runner director Ridley Scott to shatter perceptions (both literally and figuratively) of personal computing. It happened in 1993, when McDonalds benefitted from basketball legends Michael Jordan and Larry Bird challenging each other to sink utterly implausible baskets (off the scoreboard; from the Hancock Building; over the river: “nothing but net”) to score a burger.