You are here

Rhetorical analysis

Enthy/memes: Making Memes to Teach Logos

To pratice creating and breaking down enthymemes, I had students create memes (about anything), break down the stated and unstated premises and ultimately, come to a conclusion as to the meme's argument.

Introducing Rhetorical Analysis with the 1491s

The 1491s Logo

This lesson plan uses the 1491s' youtube videos "I'm an Indian Too" and "Lincoln Was a Douche" to introduce students to rhetorical analysis.

Introducing Rhetorical Analysis with Contemporary Advertisements

The aim of this lesson is to provide students with an accessible and engaging introduction to rhetorical analysis. Students will view four brief texts—three thirty-second videos and one print advertisement—and try to identify the audience, the speaker, and the argument contained in each.

Rhetorical Analysis of "Sugar Dating" Ads and Audience(s)

Sugar Dating Sites Unabashedly Target Cash-Strapped Female Students

Students work on argumentation techniques, rhetorical fallacies, and other concepts via reading a heavily-biased article from the New York Post discussing the relatively new but quickly growing phenomenon known as "sugar dating," which consists of web sites that pair older men (sugar daddies) who are willin

Teaching Ethos with Selfies

A selfie photo. Text superimposed: professional? Insightful? Outrageous? Horribly Misguided?

Students will be asked to think critically about the argumentative weight a visual picture of the author adds to a position. For homework, students will be instructed to construct a persona, capture it with a "selfie," and turn it in to the instructor.

Using Debates to Teach Rhetorical Analysis

Two debaters at podiums smile at one another

This assignment asks students to watch a debate and evaluate the participants' use of ethos, pathos and logos given their goals and their audience.

Using Google Drive for Collaborative Bias Analysis

In this exercise, students research potential sources of bias within a set of assigned texts and add their notes to a Google Drive spreadsheet. The students and instructor then review the spreadsheet as a group and finish with a class discussion.

Evaluating Satire With Rhetorical Analysis

Satirical image of eighteenth-century women in over-large bonnets

This assignment asks students to locate a product ad on their computers, and evaluate its use of ethos, pathos, and logos given its goal and target audience.

Flash Games and Visual Rhetoric

Image of Pokemon characters re-designed by Peta for its Flash game

This assignment pushes students to recognize the layers of rhetoric and propaganda embedded in something as visual and auditory as a flash game.

Student Digital Activism as Rhetorical Advocacy/Analysis

Social media logos juxtaposed with solidarity fists

This assignment challenges students to become digital activists/advocates for a cause of their choosing, and aids them in developing a portfolio of work in the service of that cause.

Research and Descriptive Reading - Visual Analysis

Eustace Tilley Mosaic

This plan puts student into groups of three or four and asks them to collaborate on generating a coherent analytical reading of a New Yorker cover image. The students present their readings to the class and then trade images and present a re-reading.

Drawing Logos

A sample illustration from the RSAnimate series on Youtube.

This assignment asks students to map out logos with the aid of visualized arguments and, ultimately, to create and explain their own vizualization of a textual argument that helps highlight the elements of logos within that textual argument.

Teaching Audience and Stakes With the Colbert Report

This exercise asks students to work in groups to move past a working summary of a text's rhetoric to consider the goals of an author and their strategic approach to audiences. It uses PBworks' collaborative potentials to bridge the gap between two connected class discussions.

Analyzing Visual Arguments

A doctor's body inside large, bleeding ears with large money bags against a blood-red backdrop seen behind the mirror images of the enlarged close up of a man's ears.

Students practice closely describing and analyzing an image for its argument and rhetorical impact.

Close Listening

Do the assignment

Using TV Tropes to Teach Narrative Devices

Using the wiki TV Tropes encourages students to think about how issues arise across media

Incorporating TV Tropes (a wiki that catalogues narrative devices used across a variety of media) into your discussion of literary devices and encouraging students to talk about how narrative techniques across different genres and forms of media can assist in making these concepts intelligible and "real" to them. 

End of Semester Reflection on Political Rhetoric

Students consider an ostentacious example of political rhetoric, then consider the other side's analysis of said rhetoric.

Twitter in the Classroom: Observations and Analysis

My class used Twitter for a few general purposes & for two specific assigments

My class used Twitter for a few general purposes and then for two specific assignments. For our general goals, we used Twitter to share resources among one another and to familiarize ourselves with various conversations that are important to people in the digital humanities.

Subscribe to RSS - Rhetorical analysis