Rhetorical Situation Analysis Activity

Lesson by Amanda Bales

Description (for Instructors)

This activity asks students to analyze varied rhetorical situations (i.e., determining author, audience, purpose, setting) present within several provided texts. This structured analysis prepares students to navigate rhetorical situations that they will encounter in future BTW assignments, particularly those whose designs hinge upon audience and purpose. Furthermore, the activity asks students to engage in increasingly complex and comparative rhetorical analyses, based upon provided analytic prompts.

Please note that each pairing of article/question set can be assigned at a different point in the semester. Since each of the three pairings becomes increasingly complex, it may help to assign one per class period or per week.

Students submit their responses to a submission tool on the course management system of the instructor’s choosing (i.e., Moodle, Canvas, etc.).

Explanation (for Students)

1.) Read texts: Read the following texts:

2.) Answer questions: Based upon your reading of Waterford Whisper News’s article, answer the following questions and submit them to the appropriate submission tool:

  1. Who is the author?
  2. Who is the audience?
  3. What is the purpose? 
  4. What is the setting? (i.e., the time, place, and environment surrounding a moment of communication)
  5. How does understanding the rhetorical situation affect how you read and understand this article? 
  6. What parallels can you draw between reading A Modest Proposal now and how people 300 years from now will read Here’s how Time Works in 2021?

3.) Read text: Read the following text:

4.) Answer questions: Based upon your reading of Grober’s article, answer the following questions and submit them to the appropriate submission tool:

  1. Who is the author?
  2. Who is the audience?
  3. What is the purpose? 
  4. What is the setting? (i.e., the time, place, and environment surrounding a moment of communication)
  5. How does understanding the rhetorical situation affect how you read and understand this article? 

5.) Read text: Read the following text:

6.) Answer questions: Based upon your reading of Swift’s piece, answer the following questions and submit them to the appropriate submission tool:

  1. Who is the author?
  2. Who is the audience?
  3. What is the purpose? 
  4. What is the setting? (i.e., the time, place, and environment surrounding a moment of communication)
  5. How does understanding the rhetorical situation affect how you read and understand this article? 
  6. What parallels can you draw between reading “A Modest Proposal” now and how people 300 years from now will read “Here’s How Time Works in 2021”?

Student Examples

Student Example #1 (“Irish Scoliosis Patients”)

  1. While the author is not named, the piece was published by Waterford Whispers News (WW News). The website is based out of Ireland and publishes satirical new pieces, similar to The Onion.
  2. The audience is mainly Irish natives who are exposed to this type of reporting from reputable news sites. The piece is also written in fairly basic language with obvious comparisons to present day affairs, allowing it to be accessible to a larger portion of the population
  3. The purpose of this particular piece is to highlight the way in which Western countries talk about inequalities in less developed nations. By highlighting the idea that African countries—that are often treated as impoverished or undeveloped—have raised thousands of dollars by “depicting the plight of Irish children”, the author highlights the condescending tone in which many publications use to describe those countries.
  4. The article was published online in 2017 on the WW News webpage. The timing was aligned with an announcement by Irish Minister of Health Simon Harris. In his statement, Harris stated that Irish children would need to go overseas for scoliosis correction surgeries. Additionally, news outlets had long been covering inequities in developing nations with an air of superiority. These events, combined to provide WW News with the content and motive to publish this article.

Student Example #2 (“Here’s How Time Works in 2021”)

  1. The author of this article is Eli Grober, a writer who writes frequently for The New Yorker and McSweeney’s, was a former writing staff member for The Tonight Show. He was born in Massachusetts in 1990 and graduated from Columbia College. His writing style is mainly humorous.
  2. This article is from McSWEENEY’S Publishing Company’s Daily Humor website and is aimed at smart, open-minded people who enjoy reading humorous/sarcastic writing. The publishing company is based in San Francisco and its main readers are from the United States. Since there are certain thresholds for understanding humor/sarcasm, the audience should be an adult and educated person.
  3. This article uses humorous writing to describe how the epidemic has affected people’s perception of time in 2020. It’s not meant to satirize someone, or want to change something, it’s just a light-hearted picture of changes in people’s lives.
  4. The article describes life in 2020. The epidemic that began in late 2019 has changed people’s way of life. It affects every aspect of our lives, and to avoid infection, people need to reduce social interaction and travel. A monotonous life affects our emotions. From a psychological point of view, emotions will affect people’s perception of time. People with negative emotions will feel that time passes more slowly, which is why we feel that time passes more slowly during the epidemic.
  5. Understanding the rhetorical situation can help me understand the author’s reason and purpose for writing this article, which can describe many people’s perceptions of life under the epidemic. It has the special era background of the epidemic, and if we do not understand this, we will not be able to understand the core content of this article. This article is from a daily humor site, and it doesn’t describe facts. The flow of time has not changed, but people’s perception of time has changed.

Student Example #3 (“A Modest Proposal”)

  1. The author of this short essay is Jonathan Swift and he published the “Modest Proposal” in 1729. Swift was an Irish satirist, essayist and pamphleteer poet who is also known for “Gulliver’s Travels”.
  2. The audience for this short essay was most definitely geared towards both Irish and English populations. With the article being written in 1729, England at the time ruled Ireland so Swift’s intentions were to inform them, satirically, how unstable living conditions were becoming. Regarding the period again, Swift’s target audience was most likely upper-class civilians and politicians who were literate unlike the poor.
  3. The purpose of this piece was an attempt to illustrate the horrible living conditions Irish civilians, mainly the poor, were suffering through as well as convincing upper-level governing officials to improving these conditions. The essay portrayed and proposed that Ireland should eliminate poverty by butchering the children of the Irish poor and selling them as food, alleviating space and increasing economic income. Swift wanted to have people at the time realize the severity of poverty and hunger facing Ireland and how these problems needed to be addressed immediately. In the essay, one could also tell that Swift’s purpose was to satirize the English by comparing them to ‘landlords’ to whom the Irish would sell their ‘plump and healthy’ infants to, to boost the economy.
  4. The setting for this essay would be early 18th century Ireland with a scenic view of an Irish countryside or streets with female beggars followed by her poor children in rags asking for money. This distressed scene is a focal point for Swift because he wanted to bring attention to physical problems regarding poverty occurring. Surrounding this environment, 1729 was a time where Ireland was ruled by the English and Swift seems to blame these worsening living conditions on the English. Ireland at the time was also limited to many trade restrictions by the English which led to poorer and more overpopulated living conditions.
  5. The rhetorical situation plays a tremendous role when viewing readings like the “Modest Proposal” because understanding the context and background behind situations makes the reader more aware of what is being described either figuratively or literally. For example, if one did not consider the rhetorical situation for this piece, they would simply think that Swift is some crazy author talking about eating Irish infants to bolster his country’s economy. However, understanding that the reading is satirical, and the motives behind Swift’s writing, they can connect the dots and see how he is simply addressing an overarching problem.
  6. The biggest parallel I notice between the two is that audiences at first read, will be confused with what the author is attempting to message. Simply reading the “Modest Proposal” without background information will have the reader scratching their heads and most likely identifying a different message that what is intended. The same goes for “Here’s how Time works in 2021” because readers 300 years from now might believe that 2021 did in fact have out of order time periods and durations when in hindsight, it is all a humorous joke based upon real life context. Both satirical pieces have these potentials, which is why understanding the rhetorical situation is essential.