Rhetorical Criticism

Why We Fight, a 2005 documentary that was directed by Eugene Jarecki synthesizes multiple sources and uses various rhetorical techniques to raise questions about America’s motivations for combat historically and in the present day. In George Orwell’s Shooting an Elephant, a british police officer experiences effects of Imperialism even as the oppressor in Burma during the time of British Imperialism. Although these two different work involves different situation, there is still an idea of imperialism that is running through. United States is acting as an imperialist country, trying to spread its policy throughout the world while Burma was going through British Imperialism. In the documentary, Why We Fight, Jarecki argues that the reason we

The social problem is that some police overstep their boundaries as law enforcement and commit acts of unnecessary brutality towards citizens. The name of the article is “Sheriff: Lawyer Says Deputies Didn’t Need to Kill Texas Man” and was posted on abcnews.go.com on September 2, 2015. The scope of coverage and audience is at the national level.

The first chapter introduced the reader to the art of rhetoric. He describes how rhetoric works through real life examples. He demonstrates ways that rhetoric persuades us like, argument from strength, and seduction. He tells the reader that the sole purpose of arguing is to persuade the audience. He showed that the chief purpose of arguing is to also achieve consensus, a shared faith in a choice.

Persuasion is a skill that can be acquired and utilized with a mastery of writing. Arguing against the popular belief is one of the most difficult things that one can do. The following essay rhetorically analyzes an article that is written about why the legal drinking age should stay at 21 years old in the United States. The author of the article attempts to argue against the popular opinion that the drinking age should be lowered and is successful by using appeals to one’s logos. The author is an experienced writer and knows how to convey their ideas to convince people of his argument. Understanding why someone is writing a piece, what their motivation is, and how they try to convince the reader of their argument helps gain a more comprehensive grasp of what the subject matter itself is. Personally, I look to argue against popular opinions because it enables me to critically think of a sound argument that can not easily be disputed. This essay helped me

In May of 1998, Kipland Kinkel brought a gun to his school. Over the course of two days this escalated from: being sent home, to murdering his father and mother, to murdering 2 students and wounding 26, earning a lifetime sentence of 111 years and 8 months in prison. In the court case being examined, the presiding judge addresses the original case, defendants ground for appeal, and the justification for the State’s decision to deny the appeal. Judge Haselton effectively uses ethos, logos, and pathos to support the Higher Court’s decision to deny the appeal because the original sentence was constitutional and just.

Do traffic signals make a difference when drivers are conducting their vehicles? In U.K. the roads have less signs and are smaller roads than in the United States. The United States has great amounts of traffic signals and symbols all over the road to make the driver more aware. In the U.K. accidents do occur but not that often has in the United States. In the Unites States every second there is huge amounts of accidents going on over the nation. John Staddon in his magazine article “Distracting Miss Daisy” tries to persuade that traffic control is making traffic more dangerous because we do not pay attention to the road, but to the signals.

The primary election for the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians is to be held Thursday, September 3, 2015. This momentous occasion happens every four years. The elected chief and officials, such as council members, can run for office for as long as they see fit, for there is no term limit. Our past chief, Michell Hicks, was in office three consecutive terms for a total of twelve years. This year Hicks has decided to step down and the new candidates for chief are Patrick Lambert and Gene “Tunney” Crowe. These new candidates must be able to fill the role of a generous and successful leader to those of the Cherokee nation. The platforms of both Lambert and Crowe are used to persuade the public to vote in their favor and are extremely versed in the

In David Brooks’ “People Like Us” passage on the issue of diversity, Brooks takes a personally emotional perspective of the way in which Americans don’t appreciate how diverse our nation is while “relatively homogeneous” (Brooks 136). His argument is weakened, however, through a bias and hypocrisy that his diction conveys. He claims that grouping ourselves with those who we are most alike is in our nature to, and in doing so, we separate ourselves from those who are different. Using certain statistics as evidence, Brooks points out that the social segmentation created by society will always exist.

Many authors use rhetorical devices and strategies to get their point across and try to convince the reader to believe in their perspective. It can also be used to get emotions from its readers, but that isn’t really the whole point of persuading someone. For instance, Martin Luther King Jr. uses an abundance of pathos in order to make the reader or clergymen feel sympathy towards the black people. Along with pathos, he uses logos and a bundle of hypophora. In order to obtain the goal of persuasion, Martin Luther King Jr.’s letter contains rhetorical devices.

Nat Turner: Mr. Garrison I do wish I could agree, but few of these men (looking down at Fitzhugh and calhoun) have shown no respect for god.

A rhetorical analysis assignment is to see how an author tries to present his work to a certain group of people. There is present certain meaning in all the texts and it is up to the author to communicate it in the required way. The purpose of this assignment was to review the article and see how the author made use of different strategies. It appears that a major aim that the author had was trying to convince the readers about revenue based financing. The author made use of several strategies as they will be discussed further down. There are many examples of rhetorical writing strategies that an author can use to make the writing all the more powerful. There is a very crucial reason why writers actually go for this sort of writing. The simplest answer would be to have their writing be more powerful and effective on the reader. The document that will be analyzed today is an n article written by Verne Kopytoff. The title of writing basically talks about how revenue-based financing is a good solution for business. The title itself sheds positive light on the article and states that the better the business does, the faster you will pay. The author of the article is Verne Kopytoff who is a technology journalist. He is alum of the San Francisco Chronicle and the New York Times. The article was written on February 05 2013.

In the world of rhetoric, the artifact itself is probably the single most important piece to the puzzle when applying any kind of rhetorical critique. On top of that, the rhetorical theory you're applying and the lens in which you view this artifact, play an equally important role. They set up the foundation of criticism.

College is one of the biggest financial burdens in today’s society for many. Since the recession, people often ponder what the best financial options for students looking to go to college are and what path they should take to get them there. Mike Rose, faculty member at the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Karen Lawrence, the president of Sarah Lawrence College, have both written articles about this epidemic stating the advantages and some possible downsides to pursuing a higher education. During these articles, the two writers are trying to persuade their intended audience that college is an option that could be beneficial for them to take advantage of. They both have different

In the online article found on the CNN website titled, “U.S gun violence: The story in charts and graphs” the article provides the readers with multiple graphs from bar graphs to pie charts. The graph I will be looking at critically is titled “Firearm background checks by months since 2012.” It’s important to note that this article was written in December of 2015. For this reason, the graph stops on December 2015. Before providing the graph to its readers the author states that the year of 2015 was “was a record year for background checks on guns. Some have pointed out the requests for background checks have gone up after mass shootings, the idea being that shootings cause people to worry about their safety and buy a gun to protect themselves.”

Listening to another’s point of view is a grossly under-appreciated skill of which is essential to win arguments and debates. Listening and truly understanding what another has to say allows you to exploit areas of limited knowledge, a bad argument, etc.; whereas, if all you intend to do is spew vacuous grandiloquence, you’ll never touch on their opinion, therefore heavily undermining persuasiveness.