The art of rhetorical analysis is a concept that was new to me just a few weeks ago. Never had I thought to analyze text based on the literary choices made by the author. Equipped with the knowledge of rhetorical analysis, it becomes easier to understand an author’s underlying motives. For example, who is the intended audience, what reason do they have to write, and what is the context for said piece, Etc. Having practiced rhetorical analysis in the literature of other scholars, I will attempt to dissect my analysis rhetorically.

            The genre of my essay was almost like an argumentative essay, comparing all the lab reports and all the literary choices the authors made, ultimately deciding which author did it best.

My motive for making the analysis was to explore the authors’ different literary choices and how that could affect the reader’s interpretation of their research. Correspondingly, I chose to read about the effect of violent video games on children because it’s a relevant topic that is still heavily debated. 

            My purpose for doing this was to examine how an author could include some rhetorical strategies into their otherwise bland documents to capture the reader’s attention. Going into this task, I thought it would be hard for the authors to include rhetorical strategies, as many of them, like metaphors, just add redundancy to what should be a serious report. Through my examination, I could distinguish some strategies they used and saw how they influenced my understanding of the information provided.

The intended audience for my analysis was my professor and my classmates. I am writing this hoping they read and understand that I can rhetorically dissect literature.

With the rhetorical analysis essay soon ending, I can confidently say that the learning outcome this assignment helped me achieve was “engage in genre analysis and multimodal composing to explore effective writing across disciplinary contexts and beyond.” Never have I analyzed literature rhetorically, but with this assignment, I was able to engage with the literature and explore its inner workings. I can now take these skills and apply them in my writing across disciplinary contexts and beyond.