Essay 2: Analysis

WR 13200 / Dietel-McLaughlin / Fall 2011

Overview

As weve been discussing in class, rhetoric has powerful connections to the way we interpret arguments crafted from a variety of symbolsarguments that can have a profound impact on the ways in which we think and act. While it may be easy to associate the art of rhetoric with formal essays and speeches, popular culture also reflects rhetorical messages about our culturefrom what kinds of qualities we should deem as heroic, to expectations based on gender, race, or class, to assumptions about what constitutes the ideal in beauty, fashion, romance, family, and career. Additionally, violence in its various forms has long been a key aspect of many popular culture texts. Films, novels, music, and works of art often engage themes of war, gang crime, and other forms of physical violence, and other popular cultural artifacts, from Harry Potter to Mean Girls, also engage themes of conflict and violenceoften with a much younger target audience in mind. Embedded in these texts are arguments and assumptions about violence, youth, race, class, gender, and a variety of other cultural institutions. This assignment will give you an opportunity to uncover some of those arguments, which will deepen your understanding of our course readings, as well as your understanding of the complexity and power of rhetoric. Drawing from our readings, you will analyze some aspect of violence or conflict in a film or other text from popular culture.

Getting Started
STEP 1: Consider your interests. Are you passionate about your major? A sport? A book series? A social cause? What are some texts in popular culture that relate to that interest? How is conflict characterized within these texts? STEP 2: Observe. Study your texts carefully. Take copious notes. It may be helpful to compare your text to other texts of a similar genre, looking for patterns of sameness and difference, signals of community inclusion/exclusion, awareness of audience, purpose, and context, unwritten rules about language, topics, and behavior, and any other notable points for analysis. STEP 3: Return to the readings. Which of our course readings might help you explain what youre observing? Which might help you find other points for analysis?

Requirements

Your completed essay should be 5-7 pages long (typed, double-spaced, 12-point Times New Roman font and in MLA format). Your essay must meaningfully integrate material from at least 3 of the sources we read in class. Your essay must include an MLA-formatted Works Cited page, with an entry for each of the sources cited in the paper (including the websites being analyzed). You must also use appropriate in-text citations. Your essay should include an engaging introduction that offers information about the text being analyzed, relevant context, and rationale for the analysis. Your essay should include a clear, debatable thesis that makes a claim about the text being analyzed. Your analysis should center on several clearly defined points of analysis that directly support your thesis. Your essay should incorporate evidence from the text being analyzed and the sources read in class to support your points of analysis. Your essay must include attention to counterargumentsanticipate and respond to the legitimate objections and skepticism from your readers. Your essay should end with a meaningful conclusion that underscores the relevance of your analysis to a particular community, field of study, current event, etc.

Starter Questions: Who (author): Who

wrote/produced the text? What does the author have at stake? How does that impact the message?

Who (reader): Who is the text

designed to reach? What are their demographics? What are their shared values? What values are shared with the author? Who might respond differently?

What: What is the primary

goal or function of each text? What are readers supposed to do or believe by the end?

Where/when: What
context led to the text being created? Why might it resonate with the intended audience? How does the context impact the way readers respond to the text?

Why: Why does the text

matter? What attitudes does it reflect? What conversations does it complicate? What stereotypes does it perpetuate or resist?

How: How is the message

constructed? What are the claims? What evidence or reasoning is provided? How is credibility established and maintained? How is the audience supposed to feel?

DUE: Oct. 7, 11:55 p.m. (Sakai)

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