Skip to main content
2.1: Basic Questions for Rhetorical Analysis
-
-
Last updated
-
-
Save as PDF
-
What is the rhetorical situation?
-
What occasion gives rise to the need or opportunity for persuasion?
-
What is the historical occasion that would give rise to the composition of this text?
Who is the author/speaker?
-
How does he or she establish ethos (personal credibility)?
-
Does he/she come across as knowledgeable? fair?
-
Does the speaker’s reputation convey a certain authority?
What is his/her intention in speaking?
-
To attack or defend?
-
To exhort or dissuade from certain action?
-
To praise or blame?
-
To teach, to delight, or to persuade?
Who make up the audience?
-
Who is the intended audience?
-
What values does the audience hold that the author or speaker appeals to?
-
Who have been or might be secondary audiences?
-
If this is a work of fiction, what is the nature of the audience within the fiction?
What is the content of the message?
-
Can you summarize the main idea?
-
What are the principal lines of reasoning or kinds of arguments used?
-
What topics of invention are employed?
-
How does the author or speaker appeal to reason? to emotion?
What is the form in which it is conveyed?
-
What is the structure of the communication; how is it arranged?
-
What oral or literary genre is it following?
-
What figures of speech (schemes and tropes) are used?
-
What kind of style and tone is used and for what purpose?
How do form and content correspond?
-
Does the form complement the content?
-
What effect could the form have, and does this aid or hinder the author’s intention?
Does the message/speech/text succeed in fulfilling the author’s or speaker’s intentions?
-
For whom?
-
Does the author/speaker effectively fit his/her message to the circumstances, times, and audience?
-
Can you identify the responses of historical or contemporary audiences?
What does the nature of the communication reveal about the culture that produced it?
-
What kinds of values or customs would the people have that would produce this?
-
How do the allusions, historical references, or kinds of words used place this in a certain time and location?