English 101

As you are finding the multiple perspectives on your issue and analyzing the different strategies used by those perspectives, you need to keep asking yourself, "What is the importance of seeing the differences?"

The answer to this question will be your claim for the rhetorical analysis essay.

 The importance of having a claim is the difference between analysis and summary or description. If you simply describe or summarize the different views on your issue, you really haven given your reader any real insight into the issue. You have given them a place to start to analyze the issue, but the assignment is for you to do the analysis, not the reader.

So, what exactly makes a paper an analysis of the rhetorical strategies rather than just a summary? The answer, as you may have gathered from your midterms, is that analyses talk about WHY certain rhetorical strategies are used in preference to others. Let me give you a few examples of ways an exploration of an issue can be expressed as rhetorical analysis rather than just description.

Example 1: Topic--Terrorism

Issue--Prevention of terrorism in America

Description--one side believes terrorism must be stopped by any means necessary; another perspective suggests that creating a "police" state will actually cause more terrorism rather than prevent it.

Analysis--Although these perspectives argue for different approaches to terrorism, both depend on portraying terrorism as a huge, real threat, thus playing on the public's fear of terrorism in order to present their views.

Why important--both positions depend on the assumption that terrorism is a threat that requires a certain course of immediate action. It is possible to question the underlying assumption of both arguments. Perhaps we need to question whether terrorism is as much of a threat as these positions make it out to be.

Example 2: Topic--Tucson "Hope 6" redevelopment

Issue--Should current housing "projects" be torn down and redeveloped or should the housing project remain and monies put into additional housing at a different site.

Description--one side believes the current housing should be torn down and funds used to build a new project that provides low-income and regular rate rentals; the other side believes the low-income housing should remain and funds be committed to building an additional project.

Analysis--Both sides have to address issues of "redevelopment" and "gentrification" and the issue can only be understood in terms of the historical context of Tucson redevelopment in the 1960s and 1970s which displaced many Mexican families.

Why Important--Those who ignore the history of the issue miss the emotional response of citizens of Tucson. The debate is about more than just a single housing development; it is about what this city has learned from its history and how it views its most disenfranchised citizens.

These examples represent just a couple of ways an analysis might be handled. Each deals with opposing views on the issue at hand, but looks deeper at what is going on with the issue than just what the sides are saying. The examples are meant to demonstrate to you that you need to be thinking about the complexity of your issue in terms of rhetorical strategies and the way the arguments get presented.

If you choose to look at how one aspect of an issue is presented to different audiences (rather than different sides of an issue to the same or different audiences), your analysis might look at why it is important or what it says about the issue itself that it is "packaged" differently for particular audiences. Does that make the presentations unethical? Are audiences being manipulated? Or is it that the issue has so many facets that it appeals to people on different levels?

*For class today we will get in groups and look at other topics in terms of issue, analysis and importance.