"Do Sweat the Small Stuff" is an October 2014 New York Times Op-Ed piece written by Mark Bittman, a known food writer who advocates food system reform.
Summary Reflection
I believe that a summary of any written work shows that the writer comprehends an author's message, and he/she can now accurately summarize the its content and the author's purpose. Personally, my summary of Bittman's article served as a blue print for me when writing the analysis. Each article, column, and book has its points of interest. The summary of any written work strips all the unnecessary supporting details and highlights the main ideas. After writting the summary, I conceptualized the sections of Bittman's article that I would later decide to analyze.
Preparation for the Rhetorical Analysis:
Most students are tempted to write a report or review about the article, which would be a commentary rather than an analysis. Analysis is a general word for a plethora of modes for analysis. I imagine that an analysis is like a microscopic lens that may be changed when the mode of analysis changes. Analyzing the author's purpose and intentions is different from analyzing his rhetoric. The prior is a semantic approach and the later is a rhetorical approach. Some students may have never analyzed for rhetoric before, so a lesson about Aristotle's modes for persuasion (ethos, pathos, logos) provided a different lens for analysis. Generally, these modes of appeal are easily understood, but they are quite difficult to notice in more advance kinds of persuasion and rhetoric. To resolve this issue, I simply re-read a text several times and note all the places where the writer attempts to appeal by one or all of the modes. I did some extra research on ethos, pathos, and logos to better understand how to analyze them and on to focus only on them when reading a text. The RAD charts and the Quote Sammy were also absolute great ways to structure the paper and diminish the confusion on organization.
Writing the Rhetorical Analysis:
The temptation to analyze and infer the author's message stuck with me the entire way; however, I just asked myself the questions: How does he persuade, to what extent, and why is this effective? These questions avoid the tempting question: What and why does he try to posit. However, this question forgets the "how." These were only slight mental games that kept me focused on the correct lens of analysis. It was a real challenge to avoid the word "audience" in the analysis. I read several sample rhetorical analysis, not to mention I wrote impromptu analyses in AP Lang. in high school, and everyone seems to always include the word "audience" or use ethos, pathos, or logos as a possessive noun instead of writing "appeals to ..." I remember I used to write how the author appeals to an "audience" when I wrote rhetorical analyses in high school; now, such a construction seems to be less open and little repetitive. I had to place much effort into two parts of each paragraph in my paper. The first issue was setting up the evidence. I only used a block quote once in my paper as an illustration to the reader, so the reader may have a better understand of the rhetoric Bittman appeals to at the the beginning of his article. Any other quotes required attribution and a setting. A writer could not simply shoot a quote at the reader in hopes that it seems self-explanatory. To resolve this problem, the summary is a great solution to provide an overview of a situation or content before providing evidence. The second issue was with analyzing how the appeal works. In this case, one could write, "Bittman effectively appeals to pathos." This is the "what." The "how" would sound like this, "...appeals to pathos by creating vividly emotional images." The "why" complements the "how" by possibly elaborating on the way the pathos evokes feelings of empathy and compassion. The second is obviously the core skill to be learned in this assignment. Overall, I find rhetorical analysis a great way of writing to not only notice but also study why arguments seem so appealing.
image source: http://vafoodbanks.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/fresh_food.jpg
