PURPOSE: Analyzing the ways in which language works to persuade is valuable stuff because it helps us avoid being manipulated or taken for a ride; it enables us to become more discerning and critical.  This assignment gives you the opportunity to look at the rhetorical (or persuasive) apparatus of political language, assessing the ways in which it achieves its purpose. It will also help set you up to analyze a particular audience: their demographic makeup, their beliefs, and their values, which will be useful come November. 

ASSIGNMENT: Find a recent (in the last three months or so) stump speech or opinion piece by a presidential candidate.  Your choice need not reflect your political persuasion though sometimes this is easier to analyze an opinion that you do not agree with.  In any case, this assignment is designed to analyze what we can learn about how the speaker constructs his or her argument, rather than debate its “rightness” or “wrongness.”  Bring the speech or to class on Thursday, X/XX with annotations on your analysis (see checklist below).   Because this is an election year, the media is full of political statements and speeches.  You can go to a candidate’s website or find political in the newspapers—particularly the New York Times or Chicago Tribune; or check out www.allpolitics.com. 

TASK:  Write a rhetorical analysis of a political speech  (3-4 pages, typed, double-spaced)

YOUR AUDIENCE:  Political speeches or statements (arguments) are everywhere; there is so much thrown at us that we hardly know what to believe.   Hence, your target audience for this essay is the newspaper-reading public (interested, intelligent, but not particularly critical) who is relatively unaware of the ways in which the speaker is using language to sway public opinion.

SUGGESTIONS AND CONSTRAINTS

• Before you write, do your invention activities and analyses:  Identify the purpose of the speech, the intended audience(s), the speaker’s stance (how the speaker portrays himself or herself) and what you see to be some of the persuasive techniques in this piece (though you may not use all of them in your paper).
• Use our readings and class discussions (for example, on doublespeak or slanted language) as you identify rhetorical strategies that you find in the piece you have selected.
• The best essays do not necessarily just make a claim about a speech’s effectiveness.  Rather, they make a point about what this all means.  Try to shed new light on the speech or on the candidate or on his or her audience, coming to an insight that most people—reading uncritically—may not recognize.  For example, you may discover that a speech by a politician avoids talking about the issues, but instead makes the case for being “a true American,” thus emphasizing his or her persona over issues.   Your analysis would have to provide evidence and hypothesize about why this might be so. 
• Your essay should NOT merely be a list of the techniques used or instances of slanted language.  Again, the best essays will make a point or claim beyond “this speaker is using rhetoric to persuade.”  Pay attention to the fact that when you make a claim, you need to provide evidence.  This will usually be in the form of a quotation or paraphrase from the selected piece and an explanation of what you think the quotation illustrates.  
• The best essays will also use a style and tone appropriate to this assignment—in other words, fairly formal, using specific examples from the text, labeling quotations and examples clearly, and examining complexity. 

Annotated speech:  X/XX; Rough Draft:  X/XX  (bring 3 copies, one for each group member, including yourself).  Final Draft:  X/XX

Checklist for Rhetorical Analysis Checklist

Ethical questions (Ethos)

• Who is this author? What can you tell from the information in the text? Does he or she have the background to speak with authority on this subject?
• If you were going to do an internet background check on this author, what would you want to find out?
• What sort of ethos does this writer try to project in this article? What devices does he or she use to project this ethos?
• Do you trust this author? Do you think this author is deceptive? Why or why not?

Questions about emotional effects (Pathos)

• Does this piece affect you emotionally? What parts?
• Do you think the author is trying to manipulate your emotions? How?
• Do your emotions conflict with your logical interpretation of the arguments? In what ways?

Logical questions (Logos)

• Aristotle notes that in ordinary speaking and writing we often use what Aristotle calls a rhetorical syllogism@ or an enthymeme. This is an argument in which some of the premises remain unstated or are simply assumed.
• Locate major claims and assertions you have identified in your previous analysis and work out the unstated assumptions behind them. Are these assumptions valid?
• Look at support for major claims and ask “Is there any claim that appears to be weak or unsupported? Which one and why?”
• Can you think of counter-arguments that the author doesn’t deal with?
• Do you think the author has left something out on purpose? Why or why not?
• Finally, all things considered, are you persuaded by this author’s thesis and arguments? Why or why not?