The living room candidate answers

Rough Draft: Rhetorical Analysis of a Political Ad

Choose any political ad. Here are two good archives (or you may find the ad anywhere on the Internet as long as you can provide a link):

• Stanford University Political Communication Lab • The Living Room Candidate: Presidential Campaign Commercials 1952-2016

Be sure to post a direct URL link to your ad after your name on the paper. Your task is to do a rhetorical analysis of a political advertisement. In our class,

we covered two types of rhetorical analysis—Aristotelian Analysis and Metaphor Analysis. Your paper can focus on one or both of these methods. Use whichever terms help you best explain the rhetorical strategies of the political ad. In your paper's introduction, you will likely have to put the advertisement in context and explain the rhetorical situation of the ad.

The body paragraphs should break down the ad and reassemble it to make points. Lastly, your paper should have some element of synthesis in it as well. It should incorporate ideas from the following list of class readings.

The conclusion of the paper will likely reflect on whether or not you found the ad rhetorically effective and why.

• Lakoff and Johnson. "Metaphors We Live By." • Osborn, Michael. "Archetypal Metaphor in Rhetoric: The Light-Dark Family." • Geary, James. Excerpt from I is an Other, "Metaphor and Politics." • Fowles, Jib. "Advertising's 15 Basic Appeals." • Lakoff, George. "Don't Think of an Elephant"

You should use at least two direct quotes from your synthesis source. So, in

summary. Your goal is to explain the rhetoric of your chosen ad (how the ad is persuasive). You can break it down using Aristotelian analysis and/or metaphoric analysis. And your ad should use one of the articles we read in Week Three as a source.

http://pcl.stanford.edu/campaigns/
http://www.livingroomcandidate.org/