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