There are many ways to approach a portion of an article, a small clip of a video, a photograph, or even a song. There exist many ways to analyze the meaning behind the mentioned artifacts; rhetorical analysis being one. Rhetorical analysis is when the reader has the ability to identify the specific techniques that an author uses, throughout the source, to appeal to or persuade to a given audience. This type of analysis is broken down into three main components of analysis. The first: identifying the writer/speaker, the second: the audience, and the third: the message. Each component is then broken down into various specific questions that one can ask themselves, in order to approach the definition of “writer/speaker, audience, and message”, respectively, for whatever source, or artifact that is sought to be analyzed. In its totality the understanding of how these three components come together in harmony, is what rhetorical analysis truly is.
Throughout the course of this semester, I wrote two rhetorical analysis; which derived from sources that were very different from one another. The first source was about an online apartment tour of a small NYC apartment “filled with plant life, artwork, and three different wall colors”. The second source was based on a children’s book called “Iggy Peck, Architect”. Both these sources aren’t your ordinary sources; in other words they aren’t just words laid out as text, rather they’re both creative in their presentation, and that in itself was a technique used by the author’s to convey their messages. There was a slideshow of pictures of the apartment in the first source, and in the second source there was a video with pictures. For both, however, I used the same “approach” questions in order to be able to identify the type of writer/speaker, audience, and message, for each respectively. For example, in order to identify the writer/speaker, in both cases I asked myself, “How does the author present himself or herself?”, and “How does the author treat the reader?”. In order to identify the audience, I asked myself, “What are the characteristics of the audience? How can [I] tell?”, “How should the audience use information about opposing views?”, and “What is the style of this work? How is this style created?”. Finally, in order to identify the message, I asked myself, “How is this work organized? What are the cues to this organization?” (Process, narration, Comparison/contrast, Division/classification, Cause/effect , and Definition, description), “What claims are made? Are these claims strong, obvious?, and “Do visual aid(s) add to the overall effect?”. All these questions, in combination, helped me in my rhetorical analysis.
In the house tour “A Creative Spirit Fills Her Home with Plants and Art” the artist, Alina Fassakhova, and her husband Artem, have very unique home decoration that may be extremely helpful to those, who, like Alina (audience), love nature, love painting, and may love to travel as well. This tour is organized in such a way that the first thing presented is the conflict/challenge of the small space. Alina states, “add to that [the fact that they have such a small space] a messy artistic profession requiring oil paints and large canvases, and it becomes truly challenging to balance work and personal life in one space”. To me there is already a hidden strategy to appeal to the audience. That strategy is this way of trying to connect to the universal struggle of people in general, through emotional connection. The emotion here would be something like sympathy or the understanding of the daily struggles of those who live in small apartments. Alina then, goes into another emotional connection with the audience, this time inspiring motivation into the audience (message), when she says “Don’t be afraid to change something if you want to. Don’t hesitate for too long, just go to a hardware store, buy some paint and create your new reality. You can always repaint everything back anyway (believe me I’ve done it many times),”.
The tour is then broken down into the specifics of again, Alina’s and Artem’s styles and tastes, the types of furniture, the apartments inspiration, and the specifics of all elements involved in this apartment. The vivid, and bright pictures also makes the audience feel in awe, and I believe that this tour was indeed effective in getting their message across. The main reason for this thought is because this house tour seemed very approachable, realistic, and there were comments that were left at the end of the house tour, which asked about details of how to obtain certain items in this apartment, therefore this “Plant and Art-Filled NYC Apartment”, was a good house tour.
In Iggy Peck, Architect the author or narrator isn’t really presented out to reader, however the writer uses rhyming techniques in every single page. This is probably done in order to be more creative, and to appeal to the targeted audience. The audience of this book are small children; more specifically preschool children. This book is very influential to children of that age, because it is these years in the life of a person, which are vital in forming how one views the world. Therefore, since the message of this book is rather very positive, it can help form this non-conforming mentality in preschool children, and as result reap the rise of a non-conforming generation. In more specificity, this book is probably directed to those children who may have very “out of the normal”, special talents which may seem “un-appropriate” for children of such young ages. It may be directed to them, in order to motivate and encourage their talents, and with that, the exercise of them.
The book is organized in a process and narration format. Through “Iggy’s” narrative story, of “life since 2 years old”. The book also has pictures and the pictures depicted are very helpful to keep children entertained, engaged, therefore, aiding to the overall effect; of getting the message across, in addition to the rhyming adding auditory creativity to the story. Lastly, the message of the book was to implicitly motivate children to maintain their talents, because they’ll be useful one day.
Through the practice of “Rhetorical Analysis”, I’ve been taught to be more of aware of all elements that are present in a source. Before practicing this, I was always a person that read to find out “What” was being said, rather than “How” it was being said. I can now apply this knowledge to anything that I’m asked to analyze. Doing rhetorical analysis broadened my perspective of sources in general. I can say that by doing this, there can be artifacts which can then be found interesting, because usually when one tries to just read an article, or text, for the sake of just finding a specific information, it becomes a boring task to complete; however, if one explores the three components (writer/speaker, audience, and message), not only will it be more interesting and engaging, but the findings will be richer. Therefore, in completing a rhetorical analysis on my rhetorical analysis’, I find that my technique to get my message across has a lot of correlation with “Definition, description”. It’s a technique that, in my opinion, makes the explanation of things more clearer. Overall, doing rhetorical analysis is very helpful to not only be organized as a writer, but it’s helpful to identify organization in any given artifact.
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