Wallace Analyses

AP Language. Mon, Aug 26th, 2013 at 5:58 pm

Themes: , ,

Tonight you are to begin writing your outline for a rhetorical analysis of David Foster Wallace’s commencement address to Kenyon College. The goal is not to churn out a perfect example of the form (b/c you’re taking the wrong course if you’re at that point) but to begin collecting your thoughts into a workable flow. Here’s a way to go about it if you’re stuck:

  1. Look over your annotations of the speech. ((If you don’t have annotations, remember the small panic you’re feeling now during the next week-long discussion of a work. Now put that aside for now, take a deep breath, and read through the speech again, marking answers to the questions on our first post. Once you’ve annotated the entire speech, make an attempt at briefly summarizing his thesis. Now head to #2 above.))
  2. If you notice a pattern (“jokes,” “stories,” “slang,” “syllogisms,” etc.), group them together. These will fall under the main points of your essay.
    2b. If you don’t notice any patterns, look for the three basic appeals: How does he help his audience trust him? How does he make his argument seem reasonable? How does he make his audience care? Group your answers to the last three questions together. These will make up the major points of your essay.
  3. Take a step back. Whether you are organizing this by patterns or by appeals, you may have lots of evidence under one major point and little under the others. If so, consider bolstering the little ones by looking back over your annotations or dividing the larger one.
  4. Write down what you believe his argument is. It doesn’t have to be worded perfectly, but it should be accurate.
  5. Above each group of patterns or appeals write how the group supports the appeal of his argument. In this step you’re writing the gist of your topic sentences while preparing to show your audience how the disparate rhetorical elements of his argument tie together to make it convincing.
  6. Stop. Or continue, but that is really all we need for discussion tomorrow. You can fiddle with the bullet symbols if you like. I enjoy hederas, myself.

Comments are closed.