DAWN KNIGHT: Hi.
I'm Dawn Knight, an English teacher from Indiana.
And today, we're going to be talking
about the rhetorical analysis essay.
Specifically today, we're going to be looking
at the rhetorical situation and thesis statements
with the rhetorical analysis essay.
So we're going to look at the 2019 prompt for today's lesson.
We'll read it together, and then I'll
give you a little more information.
So in 1930, Mohandas "Mahatma" Gandhi led a nonviolent March
in India, protesting Britain's colonial monopoly on
and taxation of an essential resource, salt. The Salt March,
as it came to be known, was a triggering moment
for the larger civil disobedience movement
that eventually won India independence from Britain
in 1947.
Shortly before the Salt March, Gandhi
had written to Viceroy Lord Irwin, the representative
of the British crown in India.
The passage below is the conclusion of that letter.
Read the passage carefully.
Then, in a well-written essay, analyze the rhetorical choices
Gandhi makes to present his case to Lord Irwin.
So when we write a rhetorical analysis essay,
we're analyzing the rhetorical choices
that a writer makes for a specific purpose.
And in order to do that, one of the first things we need to do
is look at the rhetorical situation.
So the rhetorical situation is what you see on the screen
here.
It's made up of components like exigence, the specific occasion
or event that prompted the message
to be spoken or written, the purpose, why the speaker is
conveying a message, the audience, to whom the writer is
speaking, the context, the circumstances surrounding
the situation, the writer, who is doing the writing
and what we know about them, and the message, what
the writer wants the audience to think or know.
So, a lot of times, we start to see the rhetorical situation
in the prompt itself.
As I read through the prompt, I'm
already looking for elements of the rhetorical situation that
are revealed there.
So I might annotate for things like the Salt March,
that it's to present his case to Lord Irwin,
that Lord Irwin is a representative
of the British crown in India, that it's 1930,
that there's a protest going on of Britain's colonial monopoly
and the taxation of salt, and of course, Gandhi himself, who
is leading the protests.
So, when I look back at my rhetorical situation,
now I have some information here.
I know the exigence is partly to do with the Salt March.
I know part of the purpose is to present his case to Lord Irwin,
that the audience is Lord Irwin, a representative
of the British crown.
But the context background, it's 1930,
they're protesting Britain's colonial monopoly.
And I know who the writer is.
But I'm still not really sure much about the message.
So we're going to start reading a little bit from the passage.
And we're not going to read the entire thing, just
for the sake of time today.
But we'll read a couple of selections
from it so we can start taking a look at some
of these other elements of the rhetorical situation.
So if you could take a minute and pause here and read
through this paragraph, looking for the message
and any other elements of the rhetorical situation
you can find, and then hit Play when
you're ready to start again.
All right.
So let's look at a couple of examples.
You might have found something a little different than I did,
but this will give you an idea.
So we see that Gandhi is saying he's
inviting him to pave the way for immediate removal
of and open the pathway to conference.
And so he wants to have a conversation.
And he says, but, if you can't see your way
to deal with the evils--
he's talking about the evils that he thinks Britain
did to India at the time.
And he says, if this letter makes no appeal on your heart,
on the eleventh day, I shall proceed
to ask my followers to disregard the provisions of the salt
laws.
So now, we're starting to see some of the message
that he's revealing.
And in paragraph 5, we see he wants a discussion.
And he doesn't want Lord Irwin to deflect him from his course,
unless he wants to actually have that conversation.
So now, we have a little more information about purpose.
He wants this open dialogue between Gandhi and Lord Irwin.
And the message, Gandhi wants Lord Irwin
to have a discussion with him.
And he's warning him.
If Irwin tries to stop Gandhi, the letter will go public.
All right.
So now that we have some of that information,
we can get to our thesis statement.
So the thesis statement must do two things.
One, it needs to answer the prompt.
So we think AP, Answer the Prompt.
And two, it needs to be specific.
And if you look at the prompt, it's saying that
in a well-written essay, we need to analyze rhetorical choices
Gandhi makes-- so that's one of the things we need to know
to completely answer the prompt--
and two, in order to present his case to Lord Irwin.
So we have to know those two things, rhetorical choices
and how he's going to present his case to Lord Irwin.
When we talk about rhetorical choices, what we're really
talking about are the strategies that writers
use to appeal to an audience.
And they choose these based on what
they know about their audience.
That's part of the reason that rhetorical situation
is so important, so what do they know
about the audience at the time.
And based on that information, they determine whether
they're going to use specific kinds of rhetorical devices,
or sentence structures, how they might organize their writing
or speech, the tone that they're going to use and whether there
might be shifts in tone-- that's something we always want
to look for--
and word choice.
So those are some of the rhetorical choices
that we might be looking for when we're analyzing.
So it's your turn.
You're going to pause here and read
through the selection from paragraph 4 again,
looking for rhetorical choices that you find, that you think
might help convey the message.
And remember, we talked about what his message is.
And when you're ready, just hit Play.
All right.
And you'll see on the screen some of what
I found when I looked through.
And yours might vary, and that is completely OK.
There are a lot of strategies that writers use.
We want to take a look at them and not
do like a treasure hunt, where we're
looking for every single simile or metaphor that we find.
For example, what we want to look at
is what stands out as far as conveying the specific message.
So when I read through this whole paragraph,
I noticed that there were a lot of if-then statements.
You'll see those here in yellow.
I noticed word choice, friendly negotiation,
between equals, common good, mutual help,
fellowship, equally suited to both.
And so I'm seeing some tone emerge here
with the if-then statements.
I'm seeing this logic.
If this happens, then this thing might also happen,
and so maybe appealing to reason or logic.
And then, I notice that there's a but.
And this is something we want to look for, but, however, unlike,
any words that might trigger that idea and a tone
shift we might see.
And so after the but, I notice the word choice changes
to evils, monopoly, cruel, disfigured.
And so I'm seeing two different tones
emerge here, one before the but and one after.
Right now, we're going to do the same thing for paragraph 5.
So just pause for a second, read through paragraph
5, doing the same thing, looking for those rhetorical choices
that you think stand out.
And when you're ready, hit Play.
OK.
So let's take a look at, again, some of the ones
that I noticed.
At the very beginning, he's saying
he has no desire to cause any unnecessary embarrassment.
I'm seeing more if statements.
And even when I don't see the word then,
there's definitely an understood, if this happens,
this thing will also happen.
And he also says not to deflect him from his course.
And so I'm seeing this tone here, again,
where there's almost this warning element to it.
I see the however that shows that shift in tone from hey,
I don't want to cause you any unnecessary embarrassment
to hey, don't deflect me from my course.
All right.
So a reminder, when we are analyzing
in a rhetorical analysis, we're looking for rhetorical choices
a writer makes in order to convey
a specific message, in this case,
to present his case to Lord Irwin.
So now, we can write a thesis statement.
And what I want you to do-- this might seem a little obvious,
doing this as a multiple choice question--
but I want you to think about which
best shows both elements of the prompt,
that you're looking for specific choices that
convey a specific message.
All right.
So, Gandhi uses tone and parallel statements to convey
his message to Lord Irwin.
Gandhi uses tone shifts from amicable to admonitory and if
statements to convey his message to Lord Irwin
that Britain needs to stop its poor treatment of India
and treat it as an equal instead.
And Gandhi makes several rhetorical choices
to convey his message to Lord Irwin,
that Britain is wrong in its treatment of India.
All right.
So decide what you think the answer is, and then hit Play
when you're ready.
OK.
So it wasn't the first one.
Although we see a couple of specific rhetorical choices,
we don't see a specific message.
In this third one, we see a specific message,
but we don't see specific rhetorical choices.
So our answer is the one in the middle, where
we have specific rhetorical choices that
can convey a specific message.
All right.
So to recap, read the prompt and passage better
to understand the rhetorical situation--
to better understand the rhetorical situation.
You can read it better also.
Don't treasure hunt rhetorical choices.
Look for choices a writer makes to convey a specific message
to a specific audience for a specific purpose.
And write a thesis that fully answers the prompt, that
shows specific rhetorical choices to convey
a specific message.
All right.
I hope you'll join me for the next video.
We're going to look at the rhetorical analysis again,
but we're going to get into writing, organizing,
commentary, things like that.
So I hope you'll join me again.
And a reminder to be kind to yourself and to others,
there's a lot going on.
Thanks so much.