Rhetorical Analysis: Strategies Used in a Scientific Proposal

Using Rhetoric to get What You Want

Rhetoric is everywhere in daily life. Whether it is just a conversation, paper or a advertisement, every form of communication involves rhetoric. Rhetoric has many aspects that all interconnect and build off of each other to create a strong argument. In order to understand what a paper or conversation is really trying to say it is essential to consider the audience, subject and persona. Along with those three elements a reader must also think about the organization and visuals of a paper in order to develop their opinion of the paper. All elements in a paper are considered rhetoric and are used as a way to strengthen the writer's claim. In the article A Proposal to Design a Wind Turbine for Residential Use a group of students utilized rhetoric in order to create a compelling paper as to why residential wind turbines should go into development. The use of repetition, evidence and organization allows the reader to grasp what the students were trying to convey and possibly be persuaded into favoring their beliefs.

A key element of rhetorical analysis is looking at the writer and knowing their background. A group of four students, Caylee Johanson, Zach Hallowell, Greg Rolph and Rob Sutton, from Wentworth Institute of Technology created a proposal for their Mechanical engineering course to be submitted to their professor. An important thing to notice is that, the paper is not written by just one person it was a team effort and collaboration. Four separate opinions worked together to create one cohesive document. Within the group there is only one female whereas the remaining three are male. Based on the fact that they are college students one can assume that they are in their early twenties. Their young age gives the impression that the writers would not possess the same amount of knowledge on the topic as someone else who has been n the field for twenty years. It is important to notice the gender of the authors because that...