Hooked on Rhetorical Analysis

Analyzing Fame Junkies

Much like the work you'll be taking up for your execution of ProjectTwo, Fame Junkies is a book-length argument that is organized around a central thesis, but divided into distinct sections (both sections and chapters in this case) that support that thesis and perform the rhetorical strategy of the book in particular ways.

For today's class, we will collectively work on creating an appropriate thesis statement for a rhetorical analysis of Fame Junkies. Afterward, we'll break into teams that will collaboratively compose supporting paragraphs for that thesis based on the chapter of FJ that they were assigned.

We can get closer to a rhetorical analysis thesis statement for the book by asking some basic questions about the introduction to Fame Junkies:

1. What is the general argument of the book?

2. What form or forms of (definition, evaluation, resemblance, proposal, etc.) is being deployed here?

3. What is the crucial context for this argument?

4. What are the most prevalent, important, or interesting strategies used to support this argument in the introduction?

Building A Thesis

As we discussed during our last meeting the appropriate "skeletal structure" for a rhetorical analysis is some variation on the following:

A = Author(s)

W = Work being analyzed

T = Thesis of that work

X, Y, Z, Q (etc.) = particular strategies used in making/supporting T

In W, A argues T through X, Y, Z.

Again, as we discussed last time, the sample rhetorical analysis on Black No More positions the thesis of that book as a definition argument with three fundamental strategies (irony, conflict b/w appearance and reality, and humor) to drive home this argument:

The skeleton version of that thesis would be:

How might we leverage the skeletal structure to make a rhetorical analysis thesis statement for Fame Junkies?

Let's Get Rhetorical!

Now that we have a thesis statement to work with in our practice rhetorical analysis of '"Fame Junkies, let's work up possible supporting paragraphs for this thesis. Break into your teams and write a supporting paragraph for this analysis based on the chapter of FJ you were assigned. Most likely your paragraph will focus on how one of the strategies in our thesis statement is deployed in that chapter. When composing these, keep the supporting paragraphs from our previous student examples in mind as well as what we learned about quoting and summarizing from reading They Say/I Say.''