Critiquing Rhetorical Effectiveness

Evaluate whether a text's rhetorical choices actually achieve its purpose with its intended audience.

Identifying devices is only half of rhetorical analysis. The other half is judgment: does the text achieve its purpose with its audience? Effectiveness is not the same as agreement; you can find an argument effective while disagreeing with it, or agree with an argument that is poorly made. To critique, connect each major choice to the rhetorical situation and ask whether it helps or hurts. Consider an original letter from a student to a school board requesting a later start time.

It opens with a sarcastic remark about board members 'who clearly have never been teenagers,' then cites strong research, then ends with a vivid story of a classmate falling asleep while driving. The research and story are well chosen for a policy audience. But the sarcastic opening likely alienates the very people being asked to act, weakening ethos before the evidence arrives. A fair critique would credit the evidence and pathos while arguing that the tone undermines the letter's purpose with this audience.

• 1Effectiveness is not the same as agreement.
• 2Judge each choice against the audience and purpose.
• 3Credit strengths and name weaknesses specifically.