Rhetorical Analysis: Speech is the third rhetorical analyses this semester. In this assignment, you are looking for a speech (entertainment, political, movie, historical, etc) and analyzing it for structure.

Two major types of structure that we could look for are Toulmin’s model (claim, grounds, warrant, backing, qualifier, rebuttal) and Rogerian model (understanding, bridging, seeing the value of claims in an opposing view).

Try to find a speech that uses one model or the other. Not every speech may be a perfect example for analysis. Once you find a speech that works, chart out how that structure is used and then assess how well it is used. Does the author of that speech use all parts of the Toulmin model or all aspects of Toulmin argumentation? What effect does this have on how effective it is?

This analysis will be 1.5 pages long, double spaced, and your analysis should try to state the “why.”

Sample Student Essay

Sample 3 RA (.docx file)