Rhetorical Choice: Anything the speaker does to construct meaning

- Exigence
- Audience
- Writer
- Purpose
- Context
- Message

Purpose: What the audience is supposed to understand and do after experiencing the
discourse

Successful response: Contextualizes the argument, effort to bring about: Effect,

audience, situation
*Always connect back to purpose and audience*

Avoid: literary analysis

Analyze do not Evaluate

TIPS:
- Try to find 2-3 choices that you can explain deeply
- Incorporate SPACECAT into your response
- Use clear sentencing that say what you mean
- Don’t throw in big words to sound smart
- Organize your essay

INTRO:
Define speaker and audience. And context and exigence.
Then list strategies and their effect (CAT)

BODY
Dig deep into strategies, use specific examples from text
Why the strategy works and why the author is using it

CONCLUSION
Recap how and why the author used strategies
Remember audience and appeal

Step 1: Provide 2-3 sentences that summarize the socio-historical context of the time
period within which the piece was produced.
The Purpose of a text is what the writer hopes to accomplish with it. Writers may have
more than one purpose in a text.
Writer perceptions of an audience's values, beliefs, needs, and background guide the
choices they make.
An Audience of a text has shared as well as individual beliefs, values, needs, and
backgrounds.
Writers create texts within a particular Context that includes the time, place, and
occasion.
The Exigence is the part of a rhetorical situation that inspires, stimulates, provokes, or
prompts writers to create a text.
The Message is the general topic, content, ideas contained in the text.

The “Good” thesis includes…

- At least 2 specific devices the writer uses
- The name of the writer
- Strong verb
- Purpose and message
A “Great” thesis includes…
- At least 2 strategies the writer DOES
- Verbs
- Appeals
- Shifts/chronology
- Methods
- The name of the writer
- The message

Visual Rhetoric Notes

: The use of an image to communicate a position and offer evidence to support that
- The use of images as an argument
- The arrangement of elements on a page
- The use of typography
- The analysis of existing images and visuals

S: Who created the visual

P: What is the purpose of the visual argument? In other words, what issue is it addressing
A: Who is the intended audience? Is this audience hostile, friendly, or neutral
C: What was the context which this image was produced
E: What was the exigence, or catalyst, behind the creation of this image
CAT: Major components, such as characters, visual detail, colors symbols, fonts
Verbal clues, such as titles, tag lines, date, author, dialogue
Traits of the characters or objects
Composition line
Traits of the characters or objects
Position and size of detail: exaggerations, focal points, or emphases of other kinds
Concrete items that may represent abstract ideas
Contrast of lightness and darke ss, of color, of shape, of size
What is included versus was is left out

Remember:
Every genre has its own conventions
Photographs: composition lines, contrast and colors
Political Cartoons: Exaggeration, symbolism
Paintings: Color symbolism and allusion
Posters: advertisement use color and composition o attract attention and symbolism and
imagery to persuade
Graphs: Charts select sets. Easy to interpret

Visuals help us retain more information and it involves emotion