321 Practice-analysis

You have an hour to write a 2-3 page analysis of Zach Wahls’ testimony to the Iowa House Judiciary Committee (here), and submit it via canvas to the Practice Analysis Assignment.

Begin (opening paragraph) by introducing the artifact and the situation or occasion to which it responds, offering a link to this artifact right inside your text. State the full name of the speaker in your introduction, along with any other contex-setting information necessary for your audience to follow, and offer a concise but thorough summary of what the artifact (in this case, the testimony) wants the audience to believe or feel or do.

Spend the majority of your allotted space offering your analysis of how the argument works rhetorically, what makes it persuasive. You are not concerned here with agreeing or disagreeing (that is beside the point) but in offering an analysis of the persuasive strategies employed in this testimony.

You should discern and describe all of the following:

  • who this rhetor is and how he establishes credibility (ethos), IOW, how does he establish that he is knowledgeable, trustworthy, and full of good will?
  • any appeals to the audience’s emotions (pathos). Be specific: what emotions are evoked and how (vivid imagery? charged language? identificatory moves?). Point us to specific passages.
  • any appeals to the audience’s sense of reason and logic (logos), including the formal topic(s) and the supporting and main stases operating in the artifact. Be specific.

Plus at least one of the following:

  • the intended audience and the actual audience (could be the same)
  • the exigency: what is the specific urgency prompting the rhetor to speak/write?
  • the type of discourse (juridical, deliberative, epideictic)
  • the cultural or historical context in which the article was written, the larger conversation to which it contributes, as well as the timing of this contribution (kairos)

Conclude with a brief reflection on what you’ve discovered through your analysis, a wrap up or “cap” of the rhetorical strategies you’ve discovered and your evaluation of how well they worked.

Save your analysis on your desktop as a word document, send a copy to yourself, and submit it to Canvas under Practice Analysis Assignment.