Rhetorical Analysis Reflection

I feel like I deserve an A on my rhetorical analysis because I tried to carefully follow the rubric in the supplemental guide.  I focused on building my analysis of the writers tools rather than summarizing his article.  My paper is clear and easy for the reader to understand because the paragraphs all tie back to my thesis statement.  In choosing quotes that could relate to my audience I feel like I did a good job connecting to my readers.  I proofread my paper to avoid grammar and punctuation errors and followed the MLA format for quoting the article.

If I had another chance I would go back and spend more time with my group evaluating each others papers.  Not only did this give me helpful feedback from three differnet people on my own paper, but it also helped me to read other papers and see what I would improve on in my own.  Group work and visiting the Writing Center helped me the most in writing my paper so next time I will not take advantage of these opportunities.

My biggest challenge was focusing in on a specific audience.  However, once I was able to pick an audience and focus on them my paper seemed to make more sense.  It was difficult to make assumptions about the audience while still trying to relate to them.

My papers greatest strength was in the body paragraphs and analyzing the quotes from the article.  This was simple, the only thing that made it challenging was relating these quotes to the audience. I spent a lot of time selecting quotes I felt would relate best and have the biggest impact on the audience I selected.

Rhetorical Strategies in the Presidential Debate

1. Pathos: Romney started off with a story about a family losing their house to get the audiences attention before moving on to state his action plan.
2. Eye contact: Romney looked directly into the camera and made eye contact to emphasize his points throughout his argument.
3. Poisoning the well: Obama said something along the lines of "if this is what you want, Mitt is your candidate." After pointing out the flaws in Romney's plan.
4. Hand gestures: Both Romney and Obama used hand gestures to emphasize their stance on an issue.
5. Stacking the deck: Obama avoided the question about trickle down government and instead focused on another topic.
6. Slippery slope: When Obama began addressing multiple issues, Romney call him out and asked to focus on each issue one at a time.
7. Logos: Romney included the statistics that Obama planned to cut the deficit in half but instead doubled it during his time in office to support his own approach to the issue.
8. Red Herring: Obama said Romney plans for a break in jobs over seas... Romney came back by asking where Obama got that information, since it was nots something he had ever supported.
9. Allusion: Romney talked about the founding fathers and related them to his argument today.
10. Tone: Romney used his tone of voice to lead the argument.  He made sure to get the last word in and was confident in what he was saying.