11.18 Finding a thesis for the rhetorical analysis assignment

During the first part of class you did some group work to flesh out your analysis of the essay you chose for the Rhetorical analysis assignment.  The purpose of this work was for you to nail down your claims about how the essay worked in terms of its audience, purpose, and form (the way it used logos, pathos, and ethos).  

We listed the audience, purpose, and the form of the appeals to ethos, logos and pathos for the Orback essay on the board.

Audience: feminists in the 70's, people who bought Orbach's book (this essay is from her book on Fat is a Feminist Issue).  Beliefs and values of this audience connecte to increasing attention to the ways dominant political and social structures limited women's freedom.  Feminist issues centered on equal opportunity (in terms of access to jobs, schools, and "identities"), reproductive rights, equal pay.  

Purpose: we had two different opinions here:

to inform:  to provide feminist readers with "talking points" for an argument on why fat is a feminist issues.  That way they would all be on the same page, as feminists, about the the feminist stand on "fat"

to persuade: to convince mainstream feminists that in addition to reproductive rights, equal pay, and equal opportunity issues => "fat" was also a feminist issue.  That the "mainstream" view on fat (that it was an individual control issue) was in reality a cultural issue, and that because women were put in a position to "market" themselves as sexual objects, being fat was (in some ways) about rebelling against an oppressive set of cultural beliefs. 

ethos/pathos/logos . . . you had a range of different interpretations as to how Orbach resorted to these. 

Finding a focus.

The second half of class was about identifying a thesis that would satisfy the requirements of the assignment.  We reviewed the assignment sheet and noted that the requirement for the focus of the essay is to "evaluate the effectiveness" of the essay you are writing about in terms of the audience, purpose, and form (its use of ethos, logos + pathos).  

This means that your thesis statement for this essay will be about how well (or whether) the essay "works" (in terms of the author's choices about how to use of ethos, logos & pathos) to achieve its purpose with its designated audience.

After you identified a thesis, you went back to your analysis of the essay, and to the essay itself, to identify a series of points you could make to "prove" your statement about whether the essay used rhetoric effectively, or not.  

Once you had your list of points, you identified specific examples from the essay which you could use as evidence to support those points.  

In theory, you composed a thesis and a list of points by the end of class, and posted that writing to your portfolio page. 

For next class:

Write: a rough, rough draft for your rhetorical analysis essay.  This can be very drafty   The most important parts for you to work on are: 

• making sure you have a focus (thesis)that works for the assignment; 
• identifying relevant "background" material (about the audience, purpose, general form etc) which you will need to set up before you begin to "prove" your claim about how the essay works; 
• setting up (and beginning to develop) a series of points where you "show" how the essay uses ethos, pathos, and logos + relate what you show back to your thesis (state whether these moves are effective or not.

In class, we will identify the kinds of feedback most needed to help writers meet the genre requirments, focus, organization, and development criteria for this essay.  Then, as a class, we will review some of the drafts you have developed so far.

Individuals who have agreed to have their essays used as "examples" include: Jesse, Jessie, Kevin, Sabrina, Erica, Lulu and Austin. 

Good luck on your drafts and see you on Thursday!