Analysis
Analysis is the act of breaking something down to its chief components and figuring out how those components work. This is a common type of assignment in college because it is a natural part of the learning process for any subject. To better learn the culinary arts, you would take time analyzing dishes: their ingredients, their flavors, their textures, their presentation, etc. To better learn boxing, you would take time analyzing fighters: their feints, their footwork, their defenses, their combinations, etc. And to better learn writing, you will take time analyzing other essays, articles, and books.
You will encounter all sorts of analytical assignments in your various college courses, each changing with the subject: analyzing case studies for psychology classes, analyzing precedents for law classes, analyzing classic conundrums for philosophy classes, etc. How to handle each of those is dependent on the specific subjects and what you learn in those courses, so they can’t be effectively addressed here, but there are general steps to nearly all types of analysis:
Analysis Steps
- Introduce the context of what you are analyzing. This means to explain what the original circumstances and intentions were, regarding the thing you are analyzing, and it means to offer a brief summary of the overall subject and claim, if applicable. It also means to explain how you plan on viewing it or handling it as something to be analyzed. Sometimes this step can be completed once for an entire analysis and therefore does not need to be repeated, as might be the case with an essay in which you might contextualize what you are analyzing in the first couple of paragraphs only.
- Name and clarify the part you are analyzing. This means to use the precise term for the component you’re attempting to analyze, to define what that term means as a category itself, and to explain why the part fits the term you are using for it.
- Give an example. This means to show a specific moment or instance from the source you are analyzing in order to show the component you named above (in step 2) as it actually functions. When analyzing text, giving examples or showing means to summarize, paraphrase, or quote (see more details on this is in the section Summary, Paraphrasis, and Quotation).
- Explain how it functions in its context. This is typically the bulk of the analysis. It means to describe what the component is doing in order to work, and why or how it is working as it does, and even to evaluate how effective it is. In other words, you to say what the effect is, and why or how it has that effect.
Note that steps 2, 3, and 4 can often be rearranged.
Exercise 1
Using an artifact (such as a reading, or an advertisement) and a part to analyze (such as sophisticated vocabulary, or humor) as assigned by your instructor, analyze using these steps:
- Introduce Context
- Name and Clarify
- Give an Example
- Explain Function
The above steps can guide you through many types of analysis in many different college subjects, but for analysis particular to English classes and composition courses, especially analyses of written works (articles, essays, books, etc.), there are more particular strategies for the types of assignment you will encounter: critical analysis, rhetorical analysis, and literary analysis.
Critical Analysis
For an analysis that covers critical thinking–or even for analysis of a reading in general–here are the components that you should cover and/or analyze:
- The author, especially anything directly relevant to the piece of writing itself
- The purpose or intention, possibly including its perspective, orientation, or worldview
- The context, such as its social or historical situation, its original publication circumstances, or its publication history since
- The audience, such as its original intended audience, its audience since, its original reception, or its consensus opinion since
- The main subject, issue, and/or question it handles
- The thesis or main claims
- The main points and pieces of support for its thesis or main claims
- The strategies used to convey its ideas
- The style of writing it uses
- The primary concepts, theories, models, or schools of thought it uses or participates in
- The assumptions and biases it uses or relies on
- The critiques of its ideas, approach, or expression
Here is a brief example of one paragraph of critical analysis by a first-year composition student who preferred to remain anonymous:
Exercise 2
Find a recent article published in the Opinion section (also called an op-ed article) of a professional and legitimate news publication. Analyze it by addressing each of the components of Critical Analysis:
- author
- purpose
- context
- audience
- subject
- thesis
- main points
- strategies
- style
- primary concepts
- assumptions and biases
- critiques
Rhetorical Analysis
A rhetorical analysis is a breakdown of the strategies and appeals a written work employs in order to convey its ideas. The phrase “rhetorical strategies and appeals” means the ways in which the author wrote and explained the idea in order to be clearer, more persuasive, and more effective. So a rhetorical analysis tries to figure out which kinds of techniques the writing uses in order to achieve its purpose for its audience, and how, why, or to what effect those techniques are used. These elements are important to remember for a good rhetorical analysis, and they fit into the general analysis steps like so:
Analysis Step 1. Introduce Context: What is the writing’s subject, main claim/thesis, purpose, and/or intended audience?
Analysis Step 2. Name and Explain: Which rhetorical strategies or appeals does it use? And why do you think your examples fit those types of strategies or appeals?
Analysis Step 3. Give an Example: Where do these strategies or appeals appear specifically? Show them.
Analysis Step 4. Explain Functions with Examples: How does it use them? Or why does it use them? Or to what effect does it use them?
Rhetorical strategies and appeals, as well as rhetoric/argumentation, are covered in detail in the section Rhetoric and Argumentation, but they are summarized and illustrated here.
Rhetorical analysis is vital for improving writing skill because it is essentially a close look at how writing works, using a specific example of writing to do so. Students who feel confused, lost, or hesitant about such assignments often feel this way for the following reasons:
- The idea that writers use strategies is new to such students. Some students come to college thinking that all writing is spontaneously produced by the emotions or wisdom of a writer, or that something said in a written work is the only way the author could have said it. The sooner students exorcise these bad ideas from their heads, the better, for these are wildly incorrect assumptions. Indeed, their opposites are true: good writing is deliberate and conscious of its choices, and every expression, approach, appeal, or strategy is one option out of an astronomic number of possibilities.
- Such students confuse facts with insights, so they are afraid to make claims that aren’t confirmed pieces of data. For instance, a student might be hesitant to say that in the essay “Politics and the English Language,” author George Orwell used morbid humor, even if the student finds examples and can explain them, and the hesitation is only because the student never met Orwell long enough to get the author’s answer about whether he intended morbid humor. This would be an attempt to ruin an insight (actually, a very good point of rhetorical analysis) just because it is not a confirmed fact or data point. Facts are not insights and indeed cannot offer insights without critical interpretation, or analysis. So the quicker students understand that insights are the aim of analysis, the better.
Once those barriers are removed from your mind, you can engage in rhetorical analysis. There is no finite list of which strategies can or cannot be analyzed in a written work, and the actual strategies employed will differ with every piece of writing, but with that said, the following are some of the most common points worthy of your investigation for rhetorical analysis:
Rhetorical Strategies and Appeals
Appeals to logos: the mode of persuasion through logic, reason, rationality. This often relies on critical thinking, careful explanation, and facts.
Appeals to ethos: the mode of persuasion through relying on credibility, trustworthiness, reputation, or some type of common authority.
Appeals to pathos: the mode of persuasion through emotion or audience-reactions. Such emotions could be outrage, nostalgia, pride, pity, defensiveness, even curiosity or humor.
Illustration: the strategy of offering specific examples or instances in a persuasive way.
Definition: the strategy of using key words or phrases in a persuasive way. It is helpful to think of this strategy as re-defining words in the author’s own way. This is also the strategy of placing ideas into categories.
Consequence: the strategy of explaining causes or effects in a persuasive way. Writers often try to explain why things have happened (causes) or what will be the outcome of something (effect), or even how events are related.
Comparison: the strategy of showing how things are similar or how they are different in a persuasive way. Note that comparison includes contrasting. A common form of comparison is an analogy.
Testimony: the strategy of referencing or quoting others in a persuasive way. Any time a writer brings in outside material, such as statistics, cases or precedents, news stories, laws, or similar material, that writer is using the rhetorical strategy of testimony.
Examples of Rhetorical Appeals and Strategies
What follows is an excerpt of a written work, and then a brief analysis of examples from the work that fit the appeals and strategies noted above. That analysis would not be complete on its own as an essay, for it stops at merely naming the points of analysis with examples, but it can help you learn to see rhetorical strategies in use.
Our Founding Fathers gave us excellent advice on foreign policy. Thomas Jefferson, in his first inaugural address, called for “peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.” George Washington, several years earlier, took up this theme in his Farewell Address. “Harmony, liberal intercourse with all nations, are recommended by policy, humanity, and interest,” he maintained. “But even our commercial policy should hold an equal and impartial hand; neither seeking nor granting exclusive favors or preferences.” Washington added:
The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible… Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor or caprice?
Unfortunately, we have spent the past century spurning this sensible advice. If the Founders’ advice is acknowledged at all, it is dismissed on the grounds that we no longer live in their times. The same hackneyed argument could be used against any of the other principles the Founders gave us. Should we give up the First Amendment because times have changed? How about the rest of the Bill of Rights? It’s hypocritical and childish to dismiss certain founding principles simply because a convenient rationale is needed to justify foolish policies today. The principles enshrined in the Constitution do not change. If anything, today’s more complex world cries out for the moral clarity of a noninterventionist foreign policy.
It is easy to dismiss the noninterventionist view as the quaint aspiration of men who lived in a less complicated world, but it’s not so easy to demonstrate how our current policies serve any national interest at all. Perhaps an honest examination of the history of American interventionism in the twentieth century, from Korea to Vietnam to Kosovo to the Middle East, would reveal that the Founding Fathers foresaw more than we think.
Anyone who advocates the noninterventionist foreign policy of the Founding Fathers can expect to be derided as an isolationist. I myself have never been an isolationist. I favor the very opposite of isolation: diplomacy, free trade, and freedom of travel. The real isolationists are those who impose sanctions and embargoes on countries and peoples across the globe because they disagree with the internal and foreign policies of their leaders. The real isolationists are those who choose to use force overseas to promote democracy, rather than seeking change through diplomacy, engagement, and by setting a positive example. The real isolationists are those who isolate their country in the court of world opinion by pursuing needless belligerence and war that have nothing to do with legitimate national security concerns.
–Ron Paul, “The Foreign Policy of the Founding Fathers”
Now, below, see example parts labeled by appeal and strategy. Note that some parts are given as the same example for different strategies. This is fine, both here and in your own rhetorical analysis essays, for any given expression can indeed employ several strategies at once.
Testimony:
Thomas Jefferson, in his first inaugural address, called for “peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.” George Washington, several years earlier, took up this theme in his Farewell Address. “Harmony, liberal intercourse with all nations, are recommended by policy, humanity, and interest,” he maintained. “But even our commercial policy should hold an equal and impartial hand; neither seeking nor granting exclusive favors or preferences.” Washington added:
The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible… Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor or caprice?
Consequence:
Comparison:
Definition:
Illustration:
Appeal to logos:
Appeal to ethos:
Appeal to pathos:
So once you have identified the parts and examples to analyze, you then piece it all together and convey it with explanations, using the analysis strategy described at the beginning of this section. Here is an example of one paragraph of rhetorical analysis composed by a first-year writing student who preferred to remain anonymous:
Barzun uses comparison often and relies on it heavily when arguing his position on exporting democracy. In order to support the fact that democracy is an undefined and abstract idea, he discusses the differences between communism and democracy. Barzun reveals that communism is very easily taught to others, unlike democracy, because communism is easy to define and is able to be planned out and taught. In his article, Barzun states, “The scheme is readily teachable as a series of catchwords which, as experience shows, can appeal to every level of intelligence” (474). By comparison, democracy cannot be shared in a few ideas; therefore, the author’s point is effectively reasoned. Barzun also uses comparison well when discussing that democracy works differently for different countries. He compares the thirteen colonies and Latin America, pointing out that when rebelling the two nations were very similar; however, the same technique did not work effectively for both of them. The thirteen colonies gained their freedom; however “[r]epeated efforts by able, selfless leaders have left South and Central America prey to repeated dictatorships with the usual accompaniment of wars, massacres, oppression, assassinations, and…uncertainty about the succession of legitimate governors” (Barzun 480). His use of comparison demonstrates his point that different techniques of democracy work differently for other countries. Barzun also uses comparison when reasoning his belief that democracy is an overall complex idea. He associates government with the circuitry of a computer, stating that they are very alike in many ways. Barzun argues, “the government machine is more like the circuitry of a computer, too complex for anybody by students of the science” (485). Because of the author’s successful use of comparison, his argument is well argued and persuasive.
Exercise 3
Using one of the Readings in this textbook, or a reading assigned by your instructor, rhetorically analyze for one of these appeals/strategies:
- Appeals to logos
- Appeals to ethos
- Appeals to pathos
- Illustration
- Definition
- Consequence
- Comparison
- Testimony
Literary Analysis
You might be asked to write about a novel, a short story, or a poem as a work of literature. This means you are assigned to engage in literary analysis. The strategy of critical analysis applies here as well, but with the addition of features particular to literature. Those features are far too numerous, detailed, and nuanced to handle in this textbook–they require entirely separate textbooks–but a very brief list of items to analyzed can be noted here:
- Plot: the events
- Characters: the participants
- Point-of-view/Voice/Narration: the mode of telling
- Setting: the time and place
- Symbols/Metaphors: the specific images or words that have deeper or connected meanings
- Themes: the major concepts, subjects, morals, or questions
- Form/Style: the technical features of choices with words, phrases, sentences, sounds, meter, etc.
