WRT Rhetorical Analysis of Adriana Foster
Professor Mangini
My rhetorical analysis of Adriana Foster’s project will analyze the elements of her project that help to get her message to the audience. The analysis will include the aesthetic appeal, modes of communication, messages, and the mediums used to convey the message.
Rhetorical situation includes the speaker, the audience, and the intended message. There are a few speakers in the project, one of which I believe is Adriana in support of Obama. Others include Malala Yousufzai, Marie Folks-Hampton, and possibly the viewpoint from a homosexual. The genres supporting these speakers are a fifty-word story, two short stories (one of which references an article), and tweets and six word stories. The audience is anyone who is a potential voter in the election, as well as anyone who wishes to be informed about President Obama’s political viewpoints on the issues mentioned. The message of the project is pro-Obama. The issues covered include equal rights for gay marriage, women’s rights, freedom of speech/thought, and being an informed voter. Her intended message was to get people to vote because their votes make a difference.
The speaker Malala Yousufzai is a credible speaker because the author includes the link to the original article discussing her attack by the Taliban. She also includes a picture from the article. The short story of Marie Folks-Hampton appeals to reader’s emotions by gaining sympathy for a rape victim. The author appeals to the audience’s logic by writing the six word stories about voting for the first time. The only way to change something that you want changed is to get involved and vote. The best appeal to the audience is emotional: the audience feels sympathy toward the young girl who needs an abortion, and the young girl who was shot for voicing her opinions. The modes of images, words, and especially the sound of the spoken word poem impact the emotions of the audience. The listener can feel the passion behind the words spoken in the poem as it is read.
Narration is used as a rhetorical strategy throughout the project. The author narrates the spoken word poem, and two characters narrate their own stories. Persuasion is also used in the introduction and in the six word stories. Again, the reader can see how passionate the author is when she writes about the power of voting.
Some of the genres used in Adriana’s project are six word stories, tweets, pictures, fifty word stories, spoken word poems, word collages and a prezi. By recording her spoken word story she lets the audience relate on an auditory level, adding another aspect to attract the listener. The spoken word poems inspire the viewer to be passionate about voting in the election and making a difference. The fifty word stories incite emotions in the viewer to feel compassion toward the speakers, to agree with their viewpoints. I believe that Adriana did a great job creating characters that readers can feel compassionate about.
The computer was the main medium used in Adriana’s project. She also used website on the internet to create some aspects of her project. In particular, she used Prezi, Jing, and Twitter. Adriana also used screen shots from an iPhone for pictures in her project. To create the fifty word stories and six word stories she used a word processor on the computer and pasted it directly onto weebly. Weebly is the website she used to put the whole project together.
The modes she used in the project were words, sounds and images. The main use of sound was in the spoken word poem. The images used were for humor purposes (the Big Bird picture) as well as to give the stories visual aspects. Words made up most of the project, particularly the fifty word stories and the six word stories. The six word stories were effective at times, but I think there may have been a few too many of them. The most powerful aspect of the project was the spoken word story. It draws the reader in and captures their attention from start to finish.
I liked the color scheme of the web page: the white background was not distracting and the pink words hinted at a feminist viewpoint (which she has, since she is in fact a girl). This also helped support most of the characters throughout the project since they were female. I think the neutral background was a good choice because the project covered a few different aspects of the election. I think the sections of the project should have had some form of dividers to section off the genres. I also think that the genres should have had some kind of order, maybe a running theme of how the author felt about each subject (or how the characters impacted her decision to vote).
Adriana’s project did a good job of getting the message (to vote) across to the audience. Her project would attract anyone who is pro-Obama, and particularly women who can relate to the different characters. The only thing I would add to the project would be a running theme of how each political standpoint/narrator impacted the author’s opinion on voting.