Rhetorical Analysis Essay Common Issues

MARKS YOU MAY SEE ON YOUR PAPER A rhetorical device with an “X” through it...this means you identified it as the wrong rhetorical device RO = run-on sentence sp = spelling Words commonly crossed out because they lack specificity: things, very, really

ANALYSIS ISSUES In your analysis, DO NOT give the definition of the rhetorical device. Ex. This use of pattern of three gives the reader three specific items to think about. Ex. Kelley uses repetition to emphasize the meaning of the word. Ex. She uses a rhetorical question to make the audience stop and think.

ANALYSIS IMPROVEMENT In your analysis, explain the impact of that rhetorical device on the audience. Ex. Kelley repeats the phrase, “while we sleep,” to convey that the children are working horrendous hours throughout the night when they should be at home fast asleep. She wants the audience of adults to feel guilty that they are sleeping while the children work to produce items that they buy or use on a regular basis. By evoking guilt in the audience, she hopes to instill in them the need to fight with her against the atrocities of child labor.

AWESOME ANALYSIS! Florence Kelley’s speech focused primarily on child labor; however, you have to ask yourself why she was speaking against child labor at a convention about women’s suffrage (the right to vote). You nailed your second paragraph IF you explained the connection between child labor and women’s right to vote. SO, WHAT’S THE CONNECTION?

COMMON RHETORIC MIX-UPS in these essays “Pitiful Privilege”: oxymoron and alliteration (it is NOT antithesis) Antithesis: Yes, it shows opposites; however, the structure of two parts of a sentence or the structure of two sentences must be the same for it to be antithesis. It is NOT just two opposite ideas the author writes about. Ex. “carrying her pail of midnight luncheon as happier people carry their midday luncheon”

COMMON RHETORIC MIX-UPS in these essays Emotive words v. Emotional appeal: emotive words: “robbed of school life” emotional appeal: “A little girl, on her thirteenth birthday, could start away from her home at half past five in the afternoon, carrying her pail of midnight luncheon as happier people carry their midday luncheon”

COMMON RHETORIC MIX-UPS in these essays Statistics v. Logical Appeal Statistics: numbers/percentages that prove a point Ex. “Tonight while we sleep, several thousand little girls will be working in textile mills” Logical Appeal: using facts to prove a point Ex. “They vary in age from six and seven years (in the cotton mills of Georgia) and eight, nine and ten years (in the coal-breakers of Pennsylvania), to fourteen, fifteen and sixteen years in more enlightened states”

COMMON RHETORIC MIX-UPS in these essays Synesthesia is not just imagery; it is imagery that appeals to two or more senses Ex. “several thousand little girls will be working in textile mills, all the night through, in the deafening noise of the spindles and the looms spinning and weaving cotton and wool, silks and ribbons for us to buy” ***If you claimed that this was synesthesia in your essay, you must explain in your analysis WHAT TWO SENSES it appeals to and the impact the imagery has on the reader.