Your task is to evaluate the effectiveness of the texts argument, presenting a thesis-driven analysis that addresses the reasoning for your judgement. In doing so, your essay should analyze the rhetorical choices the author makes, exploring the author/arguments credibility (ethos), its use of logical appeals (logos), and its use of emotional appeals (pathos). You should also attend to the texts tone, diction (word choice), organization and anything else that you feel helps to make the argument convincing or unconvincing to its intended audience. The thesis for your rhetorical analysis should answer the question: Is the text effective in persuading its intended audience and why?
Your audience for this assignment is a general public readership who has read (but not memorized) the article; your analysis will need to make sense to readers who do not have the text in front of them.
Goals:
Identify how the purpose of text is achieved through the choices a writer makes
Evaluate the degree to which the argumentative choices a writer makes are effective and ethical
Determine the effects of point of view on an authors interpretation/argument
Organize prose giving priority to more important ideas
Demonstrate effective logical reasoning in written prose
Incorporate paraphrases, summaries, and quotations smoothly and honestly into writing
Process and Questions to Consider:
Read and annotate the text.
Determine the texts purpose (implicit or explicit). Is it making an argument? Trying to persuade someone of something? Simply informing its audience on a topic?
Determine the audience. Who does the document target? How can you tell?
Who is the author or producer? Why might it matter? Is any bias present or possible? Is the author/producer knowledgeable and reliable?
How complete and accurate is the information? Is anything missing?
Examine the tone, purpose, organization/structure, point of view, and context of the documents text. What do these choices add?
Examine the texts appeals to emotion, logic, and credibility.
Evaluate any claims made in the document. Are they fair? Is there any faulty reasoning in these claims?
What is the overall message of the document? What does it attempt to do? Is it
successfulhttps://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/17/opinion/climate-change-environment.html