Hooked on Rhetorical Analysis
Agenda:
Questions?
Rough Draft Workshop
Analyzing Fame Junkies
Chapter 1: Going to fame school, Personal Best
Chapter 2: IMTA talent convention
Chapter 3: Community of the famous and almost famous
Chapter 4: Assistants to the famous
Chapter 5: Celebrity photographer ... the paparazzi
Chapter 6: Reflected glory vs. actual fame
Chapter 7: Celebrity house tours and US Weekly editorial meeting
Chapter 8: Rod Stewart ... enough said
Much like the work you'll be taking up for your execution of Project Two, Fame Junkies is a book-length argument that is organized around a central thesis, but divided into distinct sections (both sections and chapters in this case) that support that thesis and perform the rhetorical strategy of the book in particular ways.
For today's class, we will collectively work on defining how Halpern uses evidence in each chapter to support his central argument, then we will develop, as a class, a thesis statement for our Project Two paper on this particular book.
We can get closer to a rhetorical analysis thesis statement for the book by asking some basic questions about the introduction to Fame Junkies:
1. What is the general argument of the book?
2. What form or forms of (definition, evaluation, resemblance, proposal, etc.) is being deployed here?
3. What is the crucial context for this argument?
4. What are the most prevalent, important, or interesting strategies used to support this argument in the introduction?
Building A Thesis
As we discussed during our last meeting the appropriate "skeletal structure" for a rhetorical analysis is some variation on the following:
A = Author(s)
W = Work being analyzed
T = Thesis of that work
X, Y, Z, Q (etc.) = particular strategies used in making/supporting T
In W, A argues T through X, Y, Z.
Again, as we discussed last time, the sample rhetorical analysis on Black No More positions the thesis of that book as a definition argument with three fundamental strategies (irony, conflict b/w appearance and reality, and humor) to drive home this argument:
| Schuyler uses irony, the conflict of appearance and reality, and a humorous tone to ultimately define race as a maddening paradox. |
The skeleton version of that thesis would be:
How might we leverage the skeletal structure to make a rhetorical analysis thesis statement for Fame Junkies?
For Monday:
- Read Shooting War and leave a comment on the Eighth Response page by 9:00 p.m. on Sunday.
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