Analysis of Effective Executive Assignment

Assignment #1 Rhetorical Analysis Paper

PURPOSE

So far in class, we have begun a conversation about persuasion and rhetoric. For this assignment you will practice your skills and use your knowledge of rhetoric to analyze Peter Drucker’s The Effective Executive.

This assignment will extend your abilities to analyze texts rhetorically. It will strengthen your abilities to sustain focus a text. It will require you to focus on answering a question with a thesis driven argument regarding the rhetorical choices of an author.

TASK

Based on your reading of The Effective Executive, your task is to analyze Drucker’s use of rhetoric. Your paper must address the following issues: All writers employ rhetoric in their work that is whether they are trying to entertain, inform, or persuade writers make specific choices about the language they use, the structures around which they organize their writing, their word choice, and so many other elements of communication. Your paper must address this overarching question: What rhetorical methods does Drucker use and to what effect in the book The Effective Executive?

To prepare for this task I suggest you ask these questions of the text: What rhetorical situation is he responding to? Who are his audiences? What is his major purpose? What secondary purposes might he be addressing? In what ways and to what degree does he establish credibility throughout the book? How does he use logical arguments? What are his claims and evidence? What are his most convincing claims and evidence? How does he link his claims and evidence? In what ways does he organize the book, the chapters, and the subsections of the book? How does he use the titles of chapters? How does he use subtitles and topic sentences? What key terms does he use? How does he appeal to his audience’s emotions? What is the effect of all of these choices? In your paper you do NOT try need to cover all these questions. But, you do need to have thought about all of these questions in preparation for writing and you might choose to address many of these questions.

Your paper must be between 1200-2000 words.

To do this assignment well you should really focus the scope of your paper as precisely as possible. Rather than trying to cover all the questions above, you should focus very specifically on a couple of very precise rhetorical elements, and very specific sections of the book so you can have very detailed and specific analyses. You should make a case in your introduction as to why you have chosen these elements. That is, state why they matter and why they are worth your attention and the reader’s attention.

AUDIENCE/GENRE/STYLE

This is a rhetorical analysis ESSAY. It should have a clear introduction that lays out what you are doing, why you are doing it, and a little of how you are going to write this essay. There should be a lot of quotes since you want to show readers clearly the connections between text and your tool of analysis, which in this case is rhetoric. Your audience is your peers and your instructor.

Rhetorical Analysis Paper Rubric