Articles to write rhetorical analysis on

For your second assignment, you will write a rhetorical analysis of two sources addressed in your annotated bibliography. One way to better understand the kinds of writing and thinking valued in the university is to compare them to more popular forms of writing and thinking with which you are familiar.This assignment asks you to find a popular news source and an academic article regarding the same topic in order to analyze the differences between the two types of discourse. Using one of your popular news sources about your topic (e.g., a New York Times, Wall Street Journal, etc.) article and an academic journal article regarding the same topic, make some initial observations about how they're different.Are there any clear similarities?Begin speculating about the reasons for those similarities and differences.

Researching and Analyzing

Analyze the differences between the academic paper and the popular news source.The technical name for what happens when a scholarly source becomes popularized is accommodation. In addition to being well written and organized by rhetorical strategy, the most successful responses will do the following:

Describe the rhetorical situation of the text(s) being analyzed (audience, purpose, author, the genre, the medium, and the context or exigency).
Succinctly summarize the central argument presented in the text(s).One or two sentences should be enough to briefly capture the essence of the argument in your source(s).
Include a clear and precise thesis statement that summarizes your analysis and suggests whether the text presents and effective argument or not.
How subtly or obviously are claims stated in each?How accurately are they stated?How do the academics state the significance of their claims?How does this compare to how the media account reports their significance?
How are non-specialists addressed in the mass media piece—for example, through language change, tone change, more overt statements of significance, the use of more sweeping claims (i.e., "the only kind" or "the first kind"), use of logical fallacies (e.g. sloganizing, slippery slope, bandwagon, etc.), placement of information in the paragraph or sentence, removal of qualifiers or hedges (i.e., taking out “appears" or "suggests"), or other changes in phrasing?Why were these changes made?Do they change the meaning of the original?