magine that you enter a parlor. You come late. When you arrive, others have long preceded you, and they are engaged in a heated discussion, a discussion too heated for them to pause and tell you exactly what it is about. In fact, the discussion had already begun long before any of them got there, so that no one present is qualified to retrace for you all the steps that had gone before. You listen for a while, until you decide that you have caught the tenor of the argument; then you put in your oar. Someone answers; you answer him; another comes to your defense; another aligns himself against you, to either the embarrassment or gratification of your opponent, depending upon the quality of your ally’s assistance. However, the discussion is interminable. The hour grows late, you must depart. And you do depart, with the discussion still vigorously in progress.- Kenneth Burke, The Philosophy of Literary Form

In a minimum of 4 double spaced pages, answer the following questions in a thoughtful way. You do not have to answer the questions in any given order but there should be clear organization and structure to your essay.

1. What is the rhetorical situation? Who is the writer?s audience? What is the writer?s purpose? Also, think about where the item originally appeared. This may help you to determine the purpose, audience, and scope of the text?s argument.

2. How would you describe the writer?s ethos? That is, what can you apprehend in the text about the writer?s character, ethics, attitude, and overall credibility? thos3peaks to the trustworthiness of the writer. Those who employ ethos to persuade say this: ¥lieve me, identify with me, because of the kind of person I am./span>

3. How would you describe the logos of the text? /gos 3peaks to the logic of the text. More specifically, think about how the supporting claims and the implied claims of the text reinforce the overall thesis. How are they linked together? Also, how does the writer use evidence, data, to support the thesis? Those who use logos to persuade say this: ¥lieve me because what I say is reasonable./span>

4. How would you describe the pathos of the text? How does the writer appeal to emotions? !thos-eans ¥eling,!nd it speaks to the desires, attitudes, and deeply ingrained values of a person. Pathos is frequently communicated through vivid descriptions, details, and examples. Writers use such things in order to invoke emotional responses. Pathos, like ethos and logos, is also communicated through the style and tone of an essay. Those who use pathos to persuade say this: ¥lieve me because X feels good, bad, fearful, joyful, admirable, (etc.) at the very cores of our beings./span>

5. How does the text?s structure work? Why are the elements of the text arranged as they are?

6. What is the role of style and tone? Style is one of the most important aspects of any rhetorical text. Style speaks to the overall shape, mood, and atmosphere of the text.

7. What seems to be the writer?s dominant strategy? Each of questions 2-6 addresses a particular kind of rhetorical strategy. All of these aspects are more than likely present in the text at issue, but in most cases, one strategy is dominant. If possible, identify the dominant strategy.