Rhetorical Analysis: An Argumentative Piece Of Writing

Rhetorical analysis breaks down the parts of a certain piece of writing, picture, etc., and analyzes how each piece fits together to make it all work. A big thing that has always stood out to me was a visual. I was that person that cries at every Super Bowl commercial about drugs or drunk driving. In general, I am not a very emotional person but these visuals make me feel exactly what they are anticipated to make the viewer feel. The authors note how emotional arguments can become sappy, “yet emotions can add real muscle to arguments, too, and that’s worth noting,”(96). Last class we briefly discussed how pathos is the least effective tool in creating an argument in an educational piece of writing. However, this section argues that, “your task in rhetorical analysis is to study an author’s words, the emotions they evoke, and the claims they support and then to make this kind of judgment,”(96-97). Basically, do not brush off pathos as an effective argument tool. I know I am not the only that becomes emotional when those types of commercials pop up. It seems that the modes of persuasion are key to every argumentative piece of writing.

Logos, is the strongest of the three modes of persuasion, according to our Tuesday/Thursday class. When analyzing a text using rhetorical analysis, “knowing how to judge the quality of sources is more important now than ever before because the digital universe is full of junk,”(100). This is certainly relevant to modern days. All of high school I felt like I was surrounded by naive teenagers who did not know how to find a credible source in my English classes. However, at one point I was one of those