Response to "Rhetorical Analysis"

Something really important that I learned in English 111 was doing a rhetorical analysis.  With this analysis, a person can easily analyze any form of text.  This type of analysis involves three triangles.

The main triangle used is the rhetorical triangle.  This includes the purpose, author, and audience.  A good rhetorical analysis requires a further knowledge of understanding where the author is coming from in the first place.  A person should really research beyond what is given.  The audience is another important part of the triangle.  If the author is trying to let his or her ideas be known to a small group of individuals or for people in general to know, it is shown in the way to author is writing the text.  When the author uses words that only a professional of a topic would know then they are speaking to a specific audience.

The purpose is broken down into three parts:  entertainment, inform, and persuasion.  This has its own triangle.  Entertainment is for the enjoyment of the audience.  However, inform deals with the need to tell a reader of an important subject.  Persuasion is a way in which the author tries to make the reader lean towards their side of a certain matter.

The part that really stuck to me were the rhetorical appeals.  They are ethos, pathos, and logos.  These appeals have their own triangle separate from the rhetorical triangle.  Ethos appeals to credibility of the author.  An example of this is an author using their personal experience within their text.  This is important to test the knowledge of the author on whatever it is they are writing.  Pathos gets in touch with a person's emotions.  Using words like death, abuse, and harm, these words provoke a negative feeling within a person.  Unlike the negative words, sunshine, happy, and rainbows give a person a more positive feeling.  Logos involve the logical understanding of a subject.  This is by using facts, history, and statistics.  With this appeal, a writing uses common sense to engage a person's attention.

I think rhetorical analysis is going to be something I'll continue to use in my future writings. 

Image from:  http://www.english.uga.edu.writingcenter/images/resources/triangle1.gif