Book' rhetorical analysis

Your purpose in a rhetorical analysis is not merely to summarize what an author or authors
write. Nor is your purpose to agree (or disagree) with what the authors write. Instead, your goal
is to analyze and report on the rhetorical strategies employed by the author or authors—that is,
how and to what purpose the authors convey their respective arguments to their likely target
audiences.
Primary Sources (Texts for Analysis)
The two editorials that you must analyze for this writing assignment are identified below (and
are available via link and as attached files at the module-one assignments folder):
• Andrew Marantz's 4 October 2019 editorial "Free Speech Is Killing Us" (published in The
New York Times);
• Katherine Timpf's 10 October 2019 editorial "Free Speech Isn't Dangerous, but Minimizing It
Is" (published at National Review Online).
Assignment Details and Requirements

1. Craft your analysis as a formal academic essay of four to six paragraphs (at least two pages
   • A functional, appropriate introductory paragraph with engaging, purposeful lead-in content
   (a) that ends with a single functional thesis statement previewing your essay’s topic (the
   whole topic and nothing but the topic) and signals your focused, debatable argument (your
   debatable opinion about the rhetorical strategy or strategies used by each author or authors
   to persuade their likely target audiences of the merits of their arguments).
   • Two to four purposefully, logically organized body paragraphs that reflect adequate,
   appropriate, MEAL-plan paragraph development (a) that clearly support your thesis, (b) that
   include concrete, specific, relevant examples from the texts being analyzed to illustrate and
   substantiate your rhetorical analysis claims, and (c) that provide clear, appropriate source
   acknowledgement (signal phrases or parenthetical in-text citations for references to all
   sources referred to in your essay).
   • A functional concluding paragraph (a) that reviews your thesis idea (without simply repeating
   thesis-statement wording), (b) that reviews each main supporting idea (without simply
   repeating topic-sentence wording from your body paragraphs), and (c) that offers additional
   relevant observations to answer for your reader the answer to the question, “So what?” (that
   is, why or how your analysis is relevant to your likely target reader).
   • An appropriate 8th-edition MLA-style end-of-text Works Cited identifying all sources referred
   to in your essay.
2. A full analysis will include the following:
   • Concise but a relevant summary of the thesis and main supporting ideas of each editorial to
   anticipate and accommodate the needs of a reader who may be unfamiliar with the editorial
   in question.
   • Focused, fully-developed critical rhetorical analysis of the text’s sources, to include relevant,
   detail pertaining to each author and publisher and each author’s purpose, likely target
   the audience, stance, genre, medium (or media), currency, relevance (context), authority, and
   accuracy.
3. Tailor your tone, stance, diction, and purpose for an academic audience: objective,
   descriptive, and formal:
   • Engage your audience as a college-level reader at any American college, male or female,
   who may or may not be your age, may or may not be a native English speaker, may or may
   not be an American citizen, may or may not be familiar with the U.S. military, and may or may not be familiar with your sources, their authors, or their publishers.
   • This document must reflect formal academic diction: Use no contractions; no informal, colloquial, slang, or street language; no pretentious language; no inappropriate jargon; no
   cliché or unnecessary redundancy; and no first or second person (excluding that which may
   be required for the accurate direct quotation of your sources).
   • First-person includes any reference to I, me, my, mine, myself, we, us, our, ours, or ourselves. The second person includes any implied or explicit reference to you, your, yours,
   yourself, or yourselves.
4. Your document must reflect 8th-edition MLA manuscript style and documentation prescriptions in Times New Roman, size 12 font.
5. Use no computer-generated in-text or end-of-text citation (such as the MS Word “References”
   applications “Insert Citation” and “Bibliography” or such as other online applications like EasyBib, BibMe, Knight Cite, Zotero, or Citation Machine, for example).

Sample Solution