Obama’s, “This is What a Feminist Looks Like

Write a proposal that describes the text you will analyze and outlines your plan for completing the analysis
Length: 250 words words (approx. 1 page)
Assignment
Your proposal should begin by naming the text you want to analyze. It should then explain the argument made by that text and justify your response: What particular ideas or focus can YOU bring to to it? What will make your analysis interesting and unique?
Finally, the proposal should discuss the most important tools for analysis you will use to explain how the text works and outline the writing strategies and rhetorical tools you find important to understanding the text. Look back at the sections on “analysis” and “rhetorical tools” in CEL Ch.6 (169-176) to help you articulate your response.
From this proposal, a reader should be able to understand not only how you will analyze the text, but what important and unique focus you will bring to your analysis of it
Example
Sample Proposal
The text that I am proposing to analyze is “‘Why I Won’t Buy an Ipad,’ by Cory Doctorow, published on the BoingBoing website (Links to an external site.) in April 2010. In the text, Doctorow effectively uses appeals to logos to achieve his goal of convincing people not to buy an Ipad. The issue at hand in this essay is serious. It is not just about whether consumers should purchase an iPad, but also about Doctorow’s worries that Apple and other “big corporations with enormous budgets” are producing “garbage” products that water down technology and make it too easy to consume. The issue of how corporations use technologies to gain control over consumers remains important today. More specifically, we are more concerned than ever with the issue of large technology companies controlling users’ purchasing habits through what Doctorow calls “a technical and social infrastructure” that privileges consumer “likes” over quality. As Doctorow himself notes (Links to an external site.), even ten years after the iPad initially came out, Apple continues to “lock out third parties” from accessing and modifying their technology. Doctorow uses many writing strategies and rhetorical tools to appeal to his readers, who are largely people interested in technology, media, and popular culture according to the BoingBoing website. Most important is his tone: he writes with a very playful, tongue-in-cheek voice as a writer and makes the seriousness of Apple’s control over technology seem comically exaggerated. I plan to focus primarily on this use of tone in my analysis, but also show how Doctorow’s use of metaphors as well as examples from popular culture (such as in his expression, “the Wal-Martization” of technology) draw in an audience both emotionally and logically. I believe my biggest challenge will be to relate this article back to the larger issue of consumer capitalism, since it will require me to read about how the sales and marketing of the iPad have changed since Doctorow wrote in 2010.

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