The final paper is an abstract and annotated bibliography. You will select one short text and analyze it closely as a specimen of rhetoric. Paying attention to its diction, its style, its grammar, and other features of its language, you will make an argument about how this short text is interacting with its audience. If it addresses a particular problem or event, what sort of response is it encouraging, and how is it doing so? If it is an advertisement or example of propaganda, in what way is it attempting to shape or manipulate its audience’s attitude toward whatever it is discussing? If it is a manipulative work of journalism, what important details of the story is it leaving out or minimizing, and why? Does it use euphemisms or other kinds of evasive language, and if so, how, and why?
The kinds of texts you might consider are really unlimited in nature, but a few examples are the following:
Manipulative news articles in national (or local) newspapers or other media
Advertisements (print) or television commercials (please supply your example to me in some form)
Manipulative television news segments
Official pronouncements from large organizations (hospitals, universities, corporations) or governments
Corporate messaging or self-presentation (in social media, on their own websites, in television commercials)
Speeches delivered by important public figures or politicians
The final paper must contain a summary of your argument, describing the nature of the evidence you’re looking at and what you think you’ll say about it; 2) five+ texts you will be using as sources of information to help you place the text you’re examining within some sort of context. These could be news articles published by reputable sources or they could be works of analysis published in peer-reviewed academic journals. Avoid random websites or sources that seem suspicious. For each of the five+ entries, a one-paragraph summary of the content of the article should be supplied along with a statement describing its relevance to your argument.
The summary must consist of your words, and any language appearing anywhere in your paper that is not your own must be set within quotation marks and cited. Entries must be formatted in accordance with the standard rules for bibliographic entries: see the following website for guidance. Points will be deducted should bibliographic entries not be appropriately formatted.
Times New Roman, size 12 font, double-spaced.
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