Essentials of Rhetorical Analysis

In this section of the course, you'll learn about the basic strategies that authors use to structure and build their arguments.  First, you'll look at the argumentative modes (description, narration, cause/effect, etc), which are the essential tools of communication.  

Then you'll learn about the Rhetorical Appeals (ethos, pathos, logos, and kairos), all of which were created in ancient Greece, which was the world's first democracy and a society that greatly valued the art of argumentation (rhetoric).

Our goal in this section is to be able to observe the rhetorical strategies (or, you can also say argumentative strategies) that an author is using.  You'll do that in the Rhetorical Analysis Essay--an essay that analyzes and explains the argumentative strategies that an author is using. 

On the website about the Rhetorical Appeals, be sure to click "Next" at the bottom of each page to see the detailed explanations of each concept.