Examine the key elements of the rhetorical situation/English
Descriptions of Composition Projects
Composition Project 1: Campaign Rhetoric
With one of its major focuses on both textual and visual rhetoric, English 102 invites you into an in-depth analysis of how text and image work together. In politics, product advertising, education, business, and many other contexts, we see words, pictures, and even sound coming together in campaigns to send messages to their audiences. Your increasingly sharp ability to analyze the rhetorical situations of such campaigns not only contributes to the strength of your communication, but it also helps to strengthen your ability to “read” and critique the world around you. This first project invites you to analyze and evaluate a campaign that interests you. In this project, here are important steps to take:
1. Choose a campaign.
a. Use research to get to know some campaign(s) in the media around you: Web, TV, print, radio, and mobile phone.
i. An anti-drug campaign for teens?
ii. A local Senator’s campaign for re-election?
iii. Starbucks’s line of seasonal coffee drinks?
iv. A university’s recruiting campaign?
2. Examine the key elements of the rhetorical situation: the communicator, audience, message and purpose, context
3. Analyze the rhetorical strategies the campaign is using to send its message
4. Use this analysis to evaluate this campaign
Your Audience
Your instructor and your peers are part of your audience. But the message you send with this analysis is likely to be of interest to audiences in and out of your field. Thus, it is up to you to decide who you want your audience to be, based on your purpose, message, and context.
Form
Depending on your audience, purpose, message, and context, this composition may take any one or a hybrid of textual forms: e.g., an opinion piece, a letter, a memo, a report, a blog, etc.
Research and Evidence:
Your composition will draw on at least one form of primary research (see Praxis 200-205) and at least one form of scholarly research.
Additionally, you may draw on other sources (journals, newspapers or magazines, Web sites, images, popular culture) as your audience, purpose, and message require.
