In this chapter, you will learn:

  • the purpose and process of rhetorical analysis
  • how to relate specific elements of a text to its context
  • how to identify and write about speaker decision-making in relation to their main argument and their audience
  • the difference between sequential and holistic forms of analysis

In Chapters 4–6, we offered tools for identifying a text’s context–speaker, audience, and situation—and for labeling the elements of a text’s argument—claim, reasons, and evidence. In this chapter, we offer strategies for relating these elements to one another. Specifically, we offer strategies for analyzing the relationship between the argument and the audience. A good rhetorical analysis paper must accomplish all of these tasks. It must label the important elements in the text; it must point out the relevant parts of the context; and it must explain how these textual and contextual parts fit together into a persuasive (or an unpersuasive) argument.

Keep in mind that no rhetorical analysis can explain the relationships among every element in a text and every feature of its context. So you should focus on a few interesting textual features and a few salient parts of the situation that you can connect and relate to each other. For instance, your rhetorical analysis might use your analysis to examine how your text:

  • describes recent events in particular ways to impact the reader’s emotions
  • offers evidence that appeals to a specific audience’s values and beliefs,
  • uses what the audience already knows to convince them of a claim they don’t yet believe
  • includes specific images move the audience’s emotions in specific ways
  • excludes or alienates certain audiences by relying on certain kinds of beliefs
  • creates trust by using a specific kind of voice and making certain references

Primary Goals of a Rhetorical Analysis

Though there are many ways to analyze the rhetoric in any text, every rhetorical analysis must accomplish four tasks:

  • Summarize or describe the text. Keep in mind that you’re writing to an audience who may not have seen the image, watched the video, or read the article that you’re analyzing. Even if your readers have seen the text, they may have forgotten or overlooked the elements (the reasons and the evidence) that you think are most important. So you will have to remind them. You do not have to summarize or describe every detail, but you should give your reader a general sense of the principal claim, the main reasons, and the key evidence in the argument.
  • Describe the audience, situation, and speaker. Since you’re ultimately trying to explain how the text relates to the context, you should describe the context and its most important features. It is crucial to know who your speaker is and who, specifically, who they are speaking to (re. Chapter 4: “The Basics of Rhetorical Analysis”). Research will be necessary.
  • Identify the salient elements of the text. Identifying reasons and evidence will highlight the most persuasive parts of the text. More importantly, such labeling will show how these parts work in the argument. Do not feel obligated to identify every piece of evidence or every reason. Focus on the reasons and the evidence that you think are most important or that you find most interesting.
  • Analyze the relationships between the text and the context. As we mention at the beginning of this chapter, rhetorical analysis ultimately aims at this last task. Nevertheless, you probably will not spend the majority of your time analyzing. You might dedicate many words to summarizing and labeling. Summarizing and labeling are the heavy lifting that set up those crucial sentences where you explain how these textual and contextual elements fit together.

Finally, remember, specificity is the key. In a rhetorical analysis, little is accomplished by saying: “The speaker uses certain words to create good feelings.” A rhetorical analysis instead thoroughly explains: “To create trust and convince listeners he has their best interests at heart, the speaker uses words like “we,” “our community,” and “our families.” These words help overcome class differences between the well-to-do speaker and his working-class audience to make them feel like he is one of them.” The following sections will help you practice making these specific connections and articulating them in writing.

Relating Reasons and Evidence to Audience

Every reason and every bit of evidence must be presented to an audience, and the audience will decide whether the reason or the evidence is persuasive. If an audience agrees to all the reasons and all the evidence, then they will be completely persuaded. But complete assent is not necessary. In fact, complete assent is quite rare. Think of how many times you find yourself saying, “Well, I don’t agree with everything that person says, but enough of it makes sense to me, so I’ll agree to do what they recommend.”

An argument can convince an audience even though some of the reasons or some of the evidence doesn’t move them at all. Imagine that you are trying to convince a friend that the state of Texas should continue to offer in-state tuition to people who can’t prove their legal residency in the U.S. You invent the following reasons:

  • People who live, work, and pay taxes in Texas deserve the same benefits, regardless of their citizenship status, so we should ask everyone who lives in Texas to pay the same in-state tuition.
  • It would be unfair to tell someone who grew up in Texas that they must pay more for college tuition just because their parents brought them into this country illegally when they were six months old.
  • Giving in-state tuition to everyone that resides in the state will ensure that more of the talented people raised in Texas remain in Texas. No matter where they come from, talented people who get college degrees will earn more money, pay more in taxes, and ultimately benefit everyone.
  • There is evidence to support this reason. Dr. Reynaldo García estimates that Texas tax revenue would increase 23% if undocumented immigrants could earn college degrees and work in the state. And he further estimates that the economy would grow annually by an additional 2.4%.
  • Think about how much you value college and how much you hope to benefit from your education. Would you take that opportunity away from someone just because of his citizenship status?

You have four reasons and one bit of evidence (authority). After you make your arguments, your friend says that there is nothing “fair” or “right” about giving the benefits of citizenship to “illegals.” They’re not sympathetic to lawbreakers. So they’re not moved by your first, second, or your last reasons. You realize that the first, second, and last reasons will appeal to an audience with certain qualities: an audience that thinks all state residents, regardless of citizenship, deserve the same treatment; an audience that thinks it’s fair to treat everyone who works hard equally; an audience that feels sympathy for all people who aspire to improve their lives.

Your audience—your friend—does not feel such sympathy, nor do they assume such things. But they confess that your third reason is persuasive. They say, “I don’t want people to benefit because of something they’ve done illegally, but I see that the state could prosper if we let illegal aliens get an education and contribute to the economy.” They’re not convinced, but they’re moved. Perhaps, you could offer further evidence or counterarguments to support your first, second, and/or last reasons. Even if they never feel sympathy, they might accept that paying in-state tuition (like having a driver’s license) has nothing to do with U.S. citizenship, so it’s not a “right” but rather a “privilege.” If they accept your first and your third reasons, then they might reluctantly accept the entire argument.

Our point is that an argument doesn’t need to completely convince an audience of everything that the speaker says. Assent is a matter of degree. When rhetorically analyzing an argument, you can measure how much assent the argument will generate by determining how much of the evidence and how many of the reasons the audience will accept. For each piece of evidence, you must ask: Will this audience accept this example? Will they know this maxim? Will they enjoy and believe this fable’s moral? For each reason, you must wonder: Will the audience be moved to feel something, or will they trust or believe the speaker based on what the speaker says? And you must explain why the audience would or would not accept each reason or each piece of evidence.

When explaining why you think the audience will or will not accept an argument’s reasons and evidence, you may rely on the textual information that you find in the argument itself. You may decide, for instance, that because your third reason is supported by copious evidence, it is more likely to convince. The amount of evidence supporting that third reason is textual because you find it in the text itself. But you should also consider finding some contextual information to support your claims. A bit of research might reveal that your friend has demonstrated a lack of sympathy for anyone who came into this country illegally. Maybe they wrote a letter to the editor of your college newspaper saying as much. This kind of contextual information demonstrates something about the audience, and this information helps you to more convincingly explain their reactions. The letter to the editor might prove that they are not at all tolerant of people they call “criminals.” And your friend’s disposition explains their reluctance to entertain some of your reasons.

Brief Exercise: Make a list of all the reasons and evidence you find in the text you’ve chosen to analyze. Then, next to each item in your list, explain how you think the audience will react to this discrete part of the argument. Next to your prediction of the audience’s reaction, explain why you think they are likely to have this reaction. Finally, next to each explanation, give textual and/or contextual information to support your claim. You can format your list as a table like this one:

Reason Audience’s Reaction Explanation of Audience’s Reaction Textual Information Contextual Information
Reason to feel sympathy for undocumented immigrants who aspire to improve their lives: “Think about how much you value college and how much you hope to benefit from your education. Would you take that opportunity away from someone just because of his citizenship status?” Not persuaded Kaitlyn does not feel sympathetic toward anyone who has come into this country illegally. There is no evidence to support this reason. In a letter to the editor of the Daily Texan, Kaitlyn said, “Anyone who crosses the U.S. border illegally is a criminal, so we shouldn’t feel bad when they aren’t treated like U.S. citizens.”

Relating Reasons and Evidence to Each Other

As we’ve explained so far, one strategy for rhetorical analysis is to explain how each piece of evidence and each reason will convince—or fail to convince—the audience. This strategy can explain why the audience may agree with the principal claim even though they do not appreciate all the evidence or every reason. Furthermore, this strategy can explain how much an audience is likely to be persuaded. Such an analysis assumes, however, that the audience will see all the evidence and all the reasons at the same time, which is rarely the case. Typically, an audience will notice one thing, then something else, and then something else. Even visual arguments happen in a sequence. Every video has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Paintings and billboards initially draw your attention to particular elements. Most viewers will look at the various parts of an image in a common order. Most importantly, an argument’s sequential presentation changes the audience, preparing them psychologically for what comes next.

To illustrate, here’s a hypothetical example: While driving down the highway, you see a billboard with a gruesome image of two cars in a head-on collision. You’re horrified. This emotion prompts you to read the words adjacent to the picture: “Talk, Text, Crash!” The strong feelings induced by the image have led you to read the words as a warning. If you read the words before seeing the image, they will not have their intended (emotionally persuasive) effect. The sequence of reasons is important. First, you must encounter the reason to feel horror (the image of the two cars crumpled against one another). Then you must read the words to believe that you shouldn’t use your phone while driving. These three words are an abbreviated reason to believe that talking on the phone or texting while driving will distract you and cause you to get in a wreck. If you simply encounter the reason to believe, you’ll be more likely to dismiss it by saying, “That never really happens,” or “That won’t happen to me because I’m careful.” But once you have the vivid image of a horrible crash in mind, it’s much more difficult to dismiss the warning.

Instead of trying to understand how the audience will respond to each discrete element, your rhetorical analysis—like our very brief analysis of a hypothetical billboard—can explain how the reasons and the evidence fit together, that is, how each element (each reason or piece of evidence) prepares the audience for the next. How does the audience react to one piece of evidence or one reason, and why will that reaction make them more or less likely to accept the next piece of evidence or the next reason?

Sequential analysis (looking at how each reason or each piece of evidence sets up the next) can explain some things overlooked by holistic analysis (looking at all the reasons and all the evidence at once). Holistic analysis cannot explain why an audience that is predisposed to reject a particular reason might be brought around to accepting it. For further illustration, let’s return to your friend Kaitlyn, who does not want the state of Texas to charge illegal immigrants in-state tuition. If you open your argument by asking her to sympathize with undocumented immigrants, then you will likely get nowhere. But if you begin with a reason that they are more likely to accept, then you might slowly cajole them into sympathizing with people they have elsewhere called “criminal.” You know that they wants the Texas economy to improve, so you begin by saying that helping undocumented immigrants to attend college will boost economic growth. Then you mention that these same would-be college students likely will live in Texas after they graduate and will contribute to the state’s vibrant business culture. You offer an example of a student who plans to attend UT and major in agricultural science so that they can improve methods of irrigation and help Texas farmers to survive drought years. Once you’ve vividly described this example of one person, you give your friend a reason to sympathize: “Doesn’t Analise deserve an opportunity to excel and to give back to the community?” Your opening reason sets up an example, which then leads into an emotional appeal for sympathy.

Sequential analysis relates the reasons and the evidence to one another by showing how each reason or each bit of evidence draws on previous elements and contributes to later elements. Like holistic analysis, sequential analysis requires that you first identify the speaker, the audience, the situation, the reasons, and the evidence. But the two strategies differ in one key regard. Holistic analysis assumes that the audience doesn’t change as they receive the argument. Sequential analysis assumes that the audience must change as they receive the argument. Both assumptions are valid. No argument will completely change anyone’s mind, but every argument can change its audience a little bit. You have to decide what you want to emphasize in your rhetorical analysis. The analytic strategy that you choose—holistic or sequential—should reflect your decision.

Brief Exercise: Make a flowchart for the argument you want to analyze. Use arrows to represent claims, reasons, and evidence. Place a box after each arrow to explore what the audience should think or feel at that particular moment in the argument’s progression. Use a circle below each box to explain for the audience’s reaction prepares them for the next bit of evidence or the next reason. A flowchart that traces the claim that Texas universities should only charge undocumented immigrants in-state tuition because it will make America stronger to its reasons and evidence. The first reason is that making higher education more accessible will boost economic growth. This claim is evidenced by the story of a student who plans to attend UT and major in agricultural science, so that she can improve irrigation methods and help Texas farmers. In the box, it says The audience should think in-state tuition isn’t entirely a bad idea, since it benefits everyone in the state. The circle says, At this point, the audience should be prepared to consider other ways we benefit from making higher education more accessible

General Advice for Writing a Rhetorical Analysis

Though there are many ways to analyze the rhetoric in any text, every rhetorical analysis must accomplish four tasks:

  1. Summarize or describe the text. Keep in mind that you’re writing to an audience who may not have seen the image, watched the video, or read the article that you’re analyzing. Even if your readers have seen the text, they may have forgotten or overlooked the elements (the reasons and the evidence) that you think are most important. So you will have to remind them. You do not have to summarize or describe every detail, but you should give your reader a general sense of the principal claim, the main reasons, and the key evidence in the argument
  2. Describe the audience, situation, and speaker. Since you’re ultimately trying to explain how the text relates to the context, you should describe the context and its most important features. Even if your reader knows who the speaker is, some reminding will be helpful.
  3. Label the salient elements of the text. Labeling reasons and evidence will highlight the most persuasive parts of the text. More importantly, such labeling will show how these parts work in the argument. Do not feel obligated to label every piece of evidence or every reason. Focus on the reasons and the evidence that you think are most important or that you find most interesting.
  4. Analyze the relationships between the text and the context. As we mention at the beginning of this chapter, rhetorical analysis ultimately aims at this last task. Nevertheless, you probably will not spend the majority of your time analyzing. You might dedicate many words to summarizing and labeling. Summarizing and labeling are the heavy lifting that set up those crucial sentences where you explain how these textual and contextual elements fit together.