Three types of questions to ask for each sentence: **Factual**, **Interpretive**,
and **Global**. (”FIG”)
- Most MCQs are level 1 and level 2 questions.
- FRQs include all three levels of questions.
## Rhetoric
Rhetoric is **using language effectively to persuade, inform, educate, or
entertain**.
- One’s own skills in analysis is part of rhetoric.
- The features of a text are also rhetoric.
## Rhetorical Situation
To start analyzing a text, we inspect the **rhetorical situations**:
- **Occassion & Context**: the time and place the text was written or spoken; the
circumstances, atmosphere, attitudes, and events surrounding the text
- **Purpose**: the goal the speaker wants to achieve; one would usually focus on
the two most important purposes
- **Exigence**: an issue, problem, or situation that causes or prompts someone to
write or speak
- **Audience**
- **Writer**
- **Message**: What the writer wants the audience to think or know.
The rhetorical situation is the first part of the rhetorical analysis essay: when
and where, who did what, to whom, for what purpose.
## Persona
Persona is the “mask” that a writer puts on when writing. It’s the role that the
writer projects. A writer may project multiple roles.
- It’s not always identical to the speaker’s private self; instead, it’s a crafted
image.
- Writers often want their personas to be genuine and reflect their true selves.
- A persona affects what the audience thinks and believes.
> **Example:** Activity 2
>
>
> In Lou Gehrig’s farewell speech, he projects several roles or **personas**:
>
> - A humble baseball player (para. 1)
> - A team member who’s supported by people around him (para. 2)
> - A friendly competitor (para. 3)
> - Son-in-law, son, husband (para. 4)
## Tone and Style
### Tone
**Tone** is the author’s or speaker’s attitude toward the subject, audience, or
situation, revealed through word choice, sentence structure, and style. **Tone** is
also a part of the rhetorical situation.
- Unlike **mood** (the emotional effect on the reader), tone reflects the
**speakers’** stance.
- Common tone words.
**To analyze the rhetorical situation—SOAPSTone**: speaker, occasion (and context),
audience, purpose, subject, tone
- SOAPSTone can be applied in both ways: from the readers’ perspective or from the
writers’ perspective.
> **Example**: Activity 4
>
>
> In this letter, Einstein addresses the sixth-grade student Phylis and the general
public in response to Phylis’s question of whether scientists pray, highlighting
the similarity between the root of all scientific laws and that created by a
supernatural being. Einstein adopts a ~~curious,~~ simplistic, and direct tone,
using simple and casual words ~~such as “seriously involved” and “a sort of,”~~
while provoking curiosity by stating that humanity’s knowledge of the universe is
still “imperfect and fragmentary.”
>
These answers are like thesis statements. You mention several points, and develop
them further in later paragraphs.
### Style
**Style** refers to language we use to present ourselves in a piece of writing.
**To analyze tone and style—DIDLS**: diction, imagery, details, language, syntax.
**Diction** refers to word choice.
- Formality: You can go either formal or informal.
- Denotation is the literal meaning of a word; connotation involves emotions,
values, or images associated with a word.
- Figurative language is a tool that an author uses to help the reader visualize
their words.
### Using Tone and Style
> On the topic of ___, my attitude is ___; my purpose in writing is ___ to an
audience of ___. My tone, therefore, should be ___.
>
## Rhetorical Devices
A **simile** is a comparison of two unlike things using the words **like** or
**as**. A **metaphor** is a direction comparison of two seemingly unlike things,
without the words **like** or **as**.
**Personification** is a figure of speech in which the characteristics of humans
are assigned to inanimate things or animals.
**Pun** is the usually humorous use of a word to suggest two or more of its
meanings or the meaning of another word similar in sound.
**Allusion** is a reference to a person, place, or thing in history or in another
work of literature.
**Symbolism** is the use of recurrent symbols or images in a work to create an
added level of meaning.
**Imagery** is the use of language to evoke a sensory impression or vivid picture
in the readers’ mind.
**Hyperbole** and **understatement**.
Rhetorical devices are often used in figurative language.
## Appeals to Ethos, Pathos, and Logos
**Ethos** is the credibility and character of the speaker. Ways to build ethos
include…
- Emphasizing shared values
- Automatic ethos—appearing in high-ranking individuals and reputable organizations
- Using one’s reputation to establish credibility (and showing vulnerabilities too)
**Pathos** is the appeal to the audience’s emotions. Before the audience can fully
trust you, they’ll need to feel that you understand their experience or concerns.
To do so, strike an emotional tone.
- Using imagery, vivid descriptions, humor, and anecdotes
- Using analogy
**Logos** is the appeal to the audience’s logic, or at least something that
simulates it.
- Using facts, statistics, and data.
- Reasoning and using common sense
- Syllogism 三段论
- Enthymeme (simplified syllogism, where an assumption is left implicit)
- Using logical argumentation structures
- Degree. Most audiences will accept that more of a good thing or less of a bad
thing is good
- Analogies
- Precedent
<aside>
ℹ️
When writing analyses, we don’t directly cite “ethos,” “pathos,” and “logos.”
Instead, we phrase analytically, using words like trust, emotion, and logic
instead.
</aside>
## Syntax
**Syntax** is the way words are arranged in sentences; i.e. sentence structure.
- Sentence parts (e.g. subjects, verbs, clauses, phrases, sentence fragments)
- Sentence lengths (e.g. Telegraphic (very short)? Short? Medium? Long?)
- Types of sentences (e.g. declarative/imperative/interrogative/exclamatory;
simple/compound/complex/compound-complex; loose/periodic/balanced)
- Word order (e.g. natural/inverted order)
- Punctuation ; : - ( ) …
Now, we will closely inspect **periodic** vs. **cumulative sentences**.
A **cumulative sentence** has modifiers following the independent clause.
> Two women are fighting loudly in the parking lot across the street in front of a
growing crowd.
>
A **periodic sentence** has modifiers before the independent clause.
> Loudly, in the parking lot across the street, in front of a growing crowd, two
women are fighting.
>
